They're On A Permanent Route March - Army Tests Equipment For ACTIC And Tropics -- Troops carrying dummy gas cylinders climb barbed wire on the combat course at Hoath Lane, Gillingham, near Chatham, Kent, as they test Army equipment. Thirty men with the Army's least enviable job are on a 'permanent' route march at the British Army's test ground attached to the Field Test Center at this Kentish Navel base. Each day they they slog from eight to 12 miles over cobbles, boulders and sand of a 600 yards course to put the Army's boots through their 350 miles 'passing out' test. April 7, 1948.