Tema,(Greater Accra) 5 Nov. The five-week long Combined Services Training (COST ’97) programme which involved 18 instructors and 128 men of the Ghana Armed Forces ended at the Michel Camp in Tema today. During the exercise, the first to be organised under Ghanaian instructors and with local materials, the soldiers were exposed to advanced airborne and infantry skills. They were taken through subjects such as communications skills, skill at arms, physical training, disaster management, patrolling and ambush techniques and navigation. At the closing ceremony, the soldiers treated the large audience, including Brigadier Francis Yahaya Mahama, Commanding Officer of the First Infantry Brigade, to a spectacular rappelling exercise (dropping from a helicopter by rope) while others dropped from an aircraft at the height of 6,000 feet. Brigadier Mahama congratulated the soldiers for their splendid performance during the exercise and urged them to impart what they had learnt to their colleagues. He noted that during the exercise there was close co-operation among the soldiers who were drawn from the army, air force and navy and urged them to exhibit the same solidarity at all times in defence of the country.
