With pride, we lead
POSTED AT 02:15 AM

Ok, major overdue updates as to what's been happening. I'm sorry, I can't help it but every weekend I just sit here at the console but it's too hard to get anything out into words.

First things first, no I don't think they cut the BSLC length. Not too sure about that though.

The last few weeks of BSLC have been mainly outfield, with many, many practices on contact drills, patrolling, ambushes and the like. At least it's still pretty comfy and all, heading back to company line every night and eating fresh rations out of nicely packed cardboard boxes. It's always nice after weeks of lectures to get out into the field and do some real work - at least running around in the jungle feels more soldier-like than sitting in lecture rooms learning about voice procedure or ops orders.

Field camp, on the other hand, was a pretty tame affair. For one thing it turned out to be pretty slack, for I was expecting numerous turnouts, stand-tos and the other punishments, but it wasn't too bad. But it was also extremely boring, because we did the same things every single day. As interesting as it seemed the first time my section went out of our harbour site as a fighting patrol, it all soon became all too repetitive, for we even took the same route and encountered the same contact points for each subsequent patrols. It got rather ridiculous at one point when we didn't even need to wait for the enemy to contact us, but could take the initiative to charge straight at their ambush point.

Mosquitoes played a large part in this field camp, and it was rather different from my BMT experience when we hardly encountered any stinging insects during our week-long field camp. Blame it on the rain I suppose, but the mosquitoes were out in full force, especially at night. It's hard to sleep when there's that constant buzz around the ears and one bite coming in every ten seconds, but that's how it was for me at least. In the end we had to resort to burning some insect repellant to get rid of them - tactically, of course, for light discipline still has be maintained at night - but on the downside I had to wake up almost every hour to relight the repellant. By the time we got back to company line the exposed parts of my wrist were covered in a mess of bites. Rather scary stuff to look at.

I had the misfortune of losing my blank attachment as well, though not at all due to negligence, I am certain. It's not that I dropped it somewhere or left it behind, but rather it just flew off the barrel while I was firing my blanks. Too bad, either way it's still lost, for we searched high and low for it in vain, and that means the automatic two extra duties. It's rather frustrating for me because I did my equipment checks ever so dutifully, and still the thing goes missing.

With the summary exercise out of the way, the last week was spent in the relative comfort of in-camp training and huge amounts of free time. Of course the gloom of the two extras was always hanging over my head, but on the whole I thought the confidence obstacles and rappelling that we had to do was pretty exciting. To wrap up term 1, we had a company happy hour on the last night there, which was basically good food and beer. All too soon we were packing our things and on the fast craft back to the mainland to enjoy our long weekend.

But of course that was not to be. On Friday, Sgt Tan called me to report back to Tekong that evening, to pack my stuff and FO to SAFTI the next day. Crossover time. That meant no more long weekend, but also no more BSLC term 2, and most importantly, no more 2 extra.

Definitely I wanted to head over to OCS. Somehow, it seemed much more meaningful and beneficial than a course at SISPEC. Yet I think I am glad things turned out the way they did - of course I wouldn't want to stay on for BSLC term 2, but I'm glad that I spent the last 6 weeks on tekong and then crossover, rather than a direct entry. It's been a great experience, for SISPEC is full of colourful characters, both instructors and trainees, and I think I've learned a lot more about people management and relationship here. It's also been a humbling experience to meet all these people from different backgrounds. I'm A-level, but my instructors all come from O and N level backgrounds.

That said, I really wanted to make the cut for the crossover, and to find myself suddenly at SAFTI, wearing the two white bars on my shoulders and receiving the gold collar pin, is really an opportunity that I'm immensely grateful for. I guess the direct entries may not share the same sentiment, but after 6 weeks at SISPEC, and enduring endless taunts of the promise of OCS, it's really a great feeling to finally achieve something I really want. There's not really much pride in SISPEC, relatively speaking at least, but I think there's a lot of pride amongst us SISPEC crossovers. Somehow it's hard to change away from our old motto of With pride, we lead, SISPEC!!!!, but I think it's a change that we're all glad to make.

Yet I don't think we have the right to call ourselves officer cadets. Not yet. After all, we've only spent a day at SAFTI. We haven't been initiated, we haven't met our PCs, and we most certainly do not have the discipline which is demanded of any OCT. In time, we will learn, and make it our own.

So...
POSTED AT 07:30 PM

Having already spent 3 weeks so far in OCS, I still think about it sometimes - what it really means for me to be here. Throughout my whole BMT and life at SISPEC, OCS has always been the place that I aimed so hard to reach - everything I did, I did with this goal in mind as my source of strength and motivation.

Now that I'm here I seem to have lost my direction some what.

Be back next week with my thoughts.

Back
POSTED AT 03:08 AM

Just back from a 4 day field camp, which was pretty damn exhausting. Physically, we've all had to push ourselves onwards again and again, mission after mission; mentally, there's always the pressure to perform up to standard, and to keep your men alive.

Being outfield always manages to put things in perspective somehow, and this experience was no exception. All the training, lectures, discussion groups that we've gone through back in civilisation all come to a head when we embark on our field exercises. Even if it's blanks and not live rounds we carry and everything is pretty simulated, it still is stressful on the ground when we have to make decisions right there and then which concern the life and death of 27 other men.

Simulated, of course. But are you really thinking about that fact when you're fired upon from superior ground and your instructors are screaming at you to do something?

It's really not easy. It's not like chess when you can see clearly how all yhe pieces move around in formation. When you're the commander it means that you've got to move your men around like pawns on the chessboard while hiding behind cover with the vegetation all around. You can't see anything and there's so much noise that no one hears what you're shouting anyway.

Big pressures to handle. But we've got to face up to it somehow, right? It's our duty to excel.

On a separate note, I wonder how many people are doing now. Out of school and being in army means that you tend to lose contact with a lot of people. I know university results and everything are out, but I don't really know where everyone's headed. Soon we'll all be on our way to wherever our destination may be, and never to meet up again. Kind of makes you sad sometimes, doesn't it? I long to return to days past, but then again you never get what you want.