Tactical Break
POSTED AT 02:10 AM

I blog about little else nowadays outside of the army, and it's hardly surprising when I'm spending almost all of my time in camp. A 5-and-a-half day break like this smack in the centre of the 9 week course is pretty much as long as breaks go, and a nice prelude to what's yet to come - the 7 day field camp.

Yes, the foreboding thought of a week-long field camp is certainly an ominous one, and though it's just the night of book-out day I'm already starting to feel the all-too familiar pressure of booking in 5 days later.

Positive attitude, positive attitude. As long as I can hold on to that, I think I'll be able to put up with whatever they want to throw at me.

Fortunately/unfortunately, our BCCT lessons have now come to end, culminating in the Basic Assault Course which basically involves crawling around in mud with camou on, getting dirty, and putting the rifle swings and smashes to practical use on dummies. while screaming your head off all the way. Needless to say, the whole area was pretty muddy - 'You can be sure that it's going to be muddy, because I indented the rain' - but I think even though some of us came out of the BAC practically encased in a layer of mud it was still a pretty fun affair. Whoever didn't like rollicking in the mud as a kid?

In general, you pretty much get damn bloody vulgar in the army. When the sergeants and officers spew expletives left right and centre you can't really help but pick them up as well and after a while you catch yourself using them even at minor annoyances. I don't know about hawk coy but at least for us we get a pretty healthy/unhealthy dosage of expletives daily.

Live range was a pretty fun affair, except that a lot of shit happened to me. Among other things, my firing pin broke, and my target caught fire. Not exactly events that you want to happen, believe you me. I had to write a statement, and I certainly hope my name is not blackmarked to be condemned to the deep, dark pits of the army.

When targets break down, catch fire, or when the shit just hits the fan in general, a cease fire is called and if you're lucky enough to be the firing detail at that time you just stand around in the foxhole or lie around in the grass waiting for things to get done, and the officers will start talking nonsense on air with their walkie-talkies. On one occasion the conversation degenerated into a hokkien talk-cock session between a couple of the officers and our CSM. Not to be outdone, the non-Chinese sergeants tried to join in on the conversation by adding in a few choice hokkien words and phrases of their own from their limited command of the dialect.

In civilian news, I'm going back to Malaysia tomorrow for the new year. At least I'll be able to catch up on my sleep during the long car journey. I'll probably be back by Friday, so at least I can have some time to myself to spend as a civilian in Singapore.

Yes, field camp's-a-waiting.
Feeling: sleepy

This day, we fight
POSTED AT 10:38 PM

The Return of the King special extended version on DVD runs for about 4 hours, and I pretty much spent my whole day doing little else but sit through the whole thing in front of my television. Not that it wasn't enjoyable, it's just that you need plenty of stamina to last through the whole thing, especially the last half an hour after the ring was destroyed.

I watched the movie when it came out in the cinema, and watching it on television in my living room certainly brought back memories of watching it on the big screen, more than a year ago. Somehow you tend to remember these things.

It's always been like that. When you look back on things time always seems to have just flown by with reckless abandon, yet when we're actually stuck in the cycle of everything the second hand crawls slowly around the watchface in its neverending journey.

Already 4 days have crept by without me noticing. It's funny, because I'm always making plans about what I'm going to do with the time that's given to me, but in the end when I look back nothing's been accomplished and I've only pushed my work closer and closer to the deadlines.

At least, be glad for small mercies. Guard duty personnel are booking in tonight. I'm grateful to be still here in the comfort of my home, because my platoon didn't have enough people who needed to be punished, and drew lots for guard duty. It's heartwrenching, I can tell you, to be doing guard duty on a fine Saturday when you could be out in town with your friends or spending time with your family, especially so when you did nothing wrong to deserve that kind of treatment. It sucks to the core, and all I can say is I salute those of the guys who drew the marked lots, and took on the duties like the men that they are.

Re-range personnel are booking in tomorrow night. Am I glad I've got that shit out of the way now. And I am thankful.

I've got a really bad headache now, and I suspect it's due to the upset of my biological cycle. I'm just not used to sleeping late and waking late anymore, which is why I'm going to sleep now and reveille at 0530 hours. Perhaps I'll even water parade first thing in the morning.
Feeling: uncomfortable

T minus 15 days
POSTED AT 04:56 PM

We've now come to the point where we've gone through the week long field camp, and it's really been some experience. For us we had a really, really slack field camp whereas we could see the neighbouring ninjas doing infinite PT and all sorts of other nonsense while we were sitting around munching our biscuits. Yet I think the whole experience of not bathing, not brushing your teeth, camou on, SBO on, with the bloody rifle stuck to you 24/7 like some grotesque extension of yourself, the shitholes and of course the damned combat rations really taught me quite a bit. How not to take things for granted, such as the simple luxury of having fresh, hot food to eat everyday or even cold water to bathe in every night; how to put up with people and maintain some semblance of civility even if they're driving you up the wall; and most of all, how to keep yourself going even when morale dips down into the doldrums.

I keep telling myself, comfort is a frame of mind, and indeed it is. I don't dare to say that I've been pushed to the ultimate limits of my personal existence, because I've gone through much worse times both physically and mentally before, but this rather protracted week long experience has shown me that as long as you have something within you to draw upon and give you strength, physical abuse or discomfort counts for nothing. It's only when your mind starts to break down that everything begins to unravel, and from then on it becomes a mental battle.

Make sense?

Spending time with people almost all the time for weeks on end makes you really get to know them, like them or hate them. I'm glad to have made some good friends here, but there are also those people that really annoy the hell out of me.

Anyway, back to field camp. It's quite different from in-camp training, which is basically meant to develop your fitness and discipline. Outfield, it's all about how to fight wars, how to keep yourself alive in a battle, and how to do it when it counts. Like what a friend of mine said, field camp is more or what army is about.

On one occasion, we were having a chat with our OC, who put across a rather interesting question to us, the perpetual dilemma of the soldier: When the time comes, would you be able to take up your weapon and shoot dead another human being. And he gave a very good answer to that question. I echo his sentiment. I may be well trained at shooting at plastic targets, but I really don't know if I'll be able to pull the trigger when I'm staring down my front sight tip at a real human being. But one thing I'm very sure of is that if the target is shooting at me, I would not hesitate to empty my magazine. When such hostility is present, it becomes a fight for survival. Shoot or be shot at.

Anyway, a well-deserved rest day today, and I saw a surprising number of familiar faces around Raffles Place today. I mean, it's not exactly the kind of place you would expect to meet fresh JC graduates, is it? Lunch was great, especially since it came hot on a plate and not cold in a drab olive green packet that has to be squeezed out like toothpaste.