Radio Psychedelica

Gave blood today. The clinic was held at the local Legion, and I showed up after supper when I got off work. To my surprise, the parking lot was full, and the Army was playing war games; a pair of Cougar APCs were guarding the front door with a lot of very hot and sweaty soldiers running around in full kit. Part of the exercise involved guarding Town Hall - a whole platoon pacing around the front door. As part of their scheme, they were 'guarding' the Mayor. While I was half way through the donation process, a sergent came in and thanked everyone for putting up with the commotion, and finished by saying "..And you can have the Mayor back now."
To which some wag responded "Oh, you can keep him."
While I am a strong believer in Practise Makes Perfect, I am less than impressed with the exercises I've witnessed. The APC's are parked in the camp in neat and tidy rows, ideal for aerial attack. There never seems to be any form of AA equipment.
The camp is guarded only by a sentry at the gate.
Patrols moving through town tend to be tightly bunched together. The platoon 'guarding' Town Hall, not only had no cover, but their Squad Machine Gunner was wandering around several hundred feet down the street.

To improve these exercises, I recommend they call for local volunteers to play hostile militias.
I know quite a few people that would enjoy running around town trying to catch the troops with their pants down. This would improve training, and give the volunteers some experiance with homebrew quasi-military operations.

The question in my mind is: was the exercise staged to include the Legion to give people some reminder of the battlefield demand for blood? Or was it merely bad timing, serving to complicate and make difficult the blood donation process?