Royal Bermuda Regiment Soldiers secure a building during their final field training exercise as part of Exercise Island Warrior 24. U.S. MARINE CORPS
THE WATCH STAFF
About two dozen members of the Royal Bermuda Regiment (RBR) and the Turks and Caicos Islands (TCI) Regiment trained at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune in North Carolina for two weeks in June 2025 as they practiced patrol, surveillance and other infantry tactics in a program designed to identify potential noncommissioned leaders among the junior ranks. The annual Island Warrior exercise also included participants from the Cayman Islands.
The RBR Soldiers were privates who had been picked to participate in leadership training. The RBR has a long relationship with the U.S. military, particularly at Camp Lejeune, near Jacksonville, North Carolina. The two-phase exercise spread over two weeks qualifies privates to be considered for lance corporal. The troops drilled in patrol, attack, fieldcraft and navigation techniques, according to Bernews, a Bermuda news site.
From March through May 2025, an RBR training team taught the Soldiers tactics and how to accurately digest and interpret battle orders. RBR Lt. Corrie Cross said those skills were tested during June’s exercise in North Carolina. “We try to summarise all the learning from the previous few months and really push the troops to push themselves and determine if they can cope under pressure,” Cross told Bernews, a Bermudian news website.
“Ultimately, what we’re trying to do is replicate a stressful scenario to test their leadership capacity as well as check how much of the information they’ve retained,” an RBR spokesman told Bernews. Island Warrior, which ran from June 1-14, included a 10.5-kilometer map-reading and navigation exercise, an obstacle course endurance run and live firing on ranges of size and style not available in Bermuda. A highlight was an infantry immersion training component that featured a re-created foreign urban environment where role players acted out high-pressure scenarios that forced Soldiers to act quickly and decisively, the website reported.
The RBR is a 300-member force made up of mostly reservists. The RBR’s focus is disaster relief, especially after hurricanes, maintaining public order and defending the British Overseas Territory (BOT) from security threats. Bermuda’s small size, 54 square kilometers, presents significant obstacles for training. Earlier in 2025, an RBR contingent traveled to Jamaica for a multinational training exercise with other BOTs and Jamaican Defence Forces. Increasing training opportunities and expanding force readiness is a high priority in the latest RBR planning strategy.
In early July, the RBR welcomed its second recruiting class of the year. Twelve RBR recruits were joined by 23 new TCI Soldiers for a two-week basic-training course, including foot drill, weapons handling, map reading, patrolling, fieldcraft, first aid and physical training, according to the Royal Gazette, a Bermuda newspaper. Sharing the training costs helped both BOTs, said Lt. Col. Duncan Simons, the RBR’s commanding officer. Simons has said a key objective for the RBR is to increase reserve ranks. The opportunity to train new Soldiers with the TCI Regiment proved valuable. “Having the TCI Regiment join us means that we can run our camp with lower numbers of recruits with slightly less overhead because we are sharing some of that cost with the TCI Regiment, so it is a win-win,” Simons told the newspaper. “For the Soldiers on the camp, there is the advantage of cultural exchange and the intangible benefits that come along with that.”