Friday, August 11, 2006
FIELD CAMP Day 1
Today is the first day of our 7-day field camp, one of the most dreaded activities in BMT. We started with a 8km route march to the field camp site, when we reached there all tired and sweaty, we had to immediately build our own busha. (A small tent) and had to quickly dig a drainage around the busha to prevent flooding of the interior in the event of a heavy rain. Just as we were in the middle of doing our drainage, it suddenly rained! It was a real test of drainage and I was never so interested in water flowing in a purpose-built improvised drain, hoping the water wouldn't overflow into the busha. And the drain worked perfectly fine! We had our first combat rations for lunch. It was surprisingly tasty and can be eaten right out of the pack, and it's just amazing, that it doesn't need to be heated or stored chilled and can be so roughly handled and each ration can last for over 2 years!
After that, the rain subsided and we had lectures and at night we had a stupid powder bath, everyone had to strip totally without light at night in a jungle and powder bath completely and let them check that we've completely powdered ourselves. I found it extremely stupid, because of the way things were done, we had to stumble back to our busha in complete darkness and the journey itself made us perspire already, then in the darkness we had to feel our way in the busha and sleep amidst all our stuff and junk all over the place, hugging our rifle to sleep in the busha. It was an uncomfortable night
Day 2
Today we did a very disgusting thing, we had to change into the wet and dirty Admin shirt that we used for yesterday's road march and it was kept in a ziplock. Omg, it was disgusting, the smell, the sticky feeling, the wetness. Urgh. We did 5 BX on sand and dirt, had a short run then had to camo on for the rest of the day, had breakfast with our rations. Whilst doing so, the commanders ran around tearing down Bushas that were flimsy and those who didn't bundle up their items with the ground sheet had all their items in the field pack thrown and strewn all over the place and we got some punishment for the sloppiness. Then it was lunch and lectures, and we practiced tactical movement, Farid snapped at night because of the busha issue and dirty clothes. It's going to be another long night...
Day 3
Sigh, 4 more days to go, but so far it's bearable. Punishments and all the tough activities I can take, I can even take the sweat, the grime, the dirt and all the training, it's just the dirty clothes that we have to re-wear in the morning that really urks me off. What hygiene nonsense! It's the most disgusting thing ever I've done in my life, at least in NPCC ATC and OBS we had clean clothes to wear after a day's tough training!
But still it's so far a lousy field camp, morale is low amongst the platoon, later we had a OPP test on what we've learnt on Observation and Listening Post test. We were also re-tested on our concealment and listening and observing what the commanders were doing, Lieutenant tested us on this, and later we learnt how to go about doing the range card as well.
At lunch we had a re-supply and I had no choice but to visit the disgusting shitting area, flies were buzzing all about the exposed shit, the smell was ok, but the size of the flies was a real put-off. Then we had a light rain + rest.
Then we had navigation by Day and night walks, it was relatively slack today because of the slight drizzle. We ended the day with a night walk through some bushes, and the Commanders were all very high, they were going around scaring the recruits throughout the night walk and pretending to be a vampire. Haha, practically every sergeant was trying to scare their own recruits, even the fierce ones.
At night we gathered, telling jokes, laugh and teasing each other, and we slept early.
Day 4
Today is our Technical break! Or FO - field Routine where we could shower and have a short rest OTOT. The camp could be quite fun actually if the people in the platoon were more cooperative and helpful towards each other, but so far it's relatively okay. Today we practiced our fire movement when contacted with the enemy and we fired many blanks! It was quite fun and the commanders were throwing thunderflashes, something similar to a loud firecracker simulating arti, grenades or snipers.
So we practiced our Jungle fighting, Arti-drill, Sniper drill, Contact drill, during the arti-drill we had to carry "injured soldier's", and later I had to dig my own shit-hole and shit. Then it rain quite heavily and we were forced to wear our goretex raincoats. But it was useless because our pants and underwear will get wet anyway.. We had our first hot meal in days, and then we go to bathe!! It was only 3 minutes, but that 3 minutes was heaven after 4 days of sweat and grime. We slept early and at 4.30am, I had a short guard duty, everyone was sleeping though.
Day 5
Today we are going to the new campsite, and we did more fire order practice, firing more rounds, and the fun thing was when everyone knew what to do, we did the fire order at section level with sergeant Rohaizad, he was really fun to be with and possibly the most slack sergeant ever, never punishing us, and always telling us stories and spicing our training up.
Then we had Lunch and had to quickly break our busha, suddenly it rained very heavily and we all had to take cover in the FIBUA village, like we were running from artillery rounds, but the rain was very heavy. We were all wet, muddy and our equipment and field pack were all wet, Sergeant Ghany fucked us because we couldn’t listen to instructions and it wasn’t passed down clearly, as a result he kept hammering us. Farid made us do crunches and pushups in the mud.
After the rain subsided, we went for the group battle course, having to do the fire-order in 3-man group level, we waited a long time, but never went for it, it was cancelled after many hours of waiting! The reason wasn’t very clear, but it was because night was falling and there wasn’t enough safety in place.
We wasted a lot of time idling around like stranded idling soldiers in a war fighting in the rain! I had that fantasy though, we only need to go through 2 more days and this field camp is over! Anyway, whilst we were waiting the fucking yihao was really irritating giving his fucking attitude again, finally at 7 plus, the tonner finally arrived and we headed off to the reclaimed land. It was already very dark, and we slept cowboy-style in the open land with stars above our heads, it was a very romantic setting and could have been perfect if not for the wet groundsheet and the frigid temperatures. It was so cold I woke up several times.
Day 6
I woke up early because of the chill, folded my goretex, and lit a small fire to warm ourselves. Then we gathered for morning parade, only to get punishment double-whammy from both Farid and Terence because the company left clothes lying all around, losing items, and what really pissed them off was the shit hole at the last campsite was so disgusting and smelly they had to get sergeants to clean it up and we got fucked for it.
Today is going to be relatively short, the day's plan just allotted for digging, we have to dig our own shell scrape and fire trench and will be spending the whole day digging.
I was quite happy with my shell scrape, it's the size of a coffin just to fit your body inside for artillery drills, but the fact is that, if there’s artillery, you're as good as dead. Mine was nicely shaped and then we rested for lunch, and started on the section level Fire-trench, a far bigger hole to fit 2 men, as deep as a foxhole for the tallest man in the section.
We worked at a relatively good pace and the commanders were happy with the progress of our digging, Sergeant Rohaizad, Ghany and even Terence came in to help, and when we finished with the trench we were all very shagged and tired but we were very happy with our work because we worked fast and effectively. We did everything together and it was very fun and everyone was "high".
After we were done, we took a few photos, all the commanders came to our trench too and everyone was all very high.
At night we did a stand to alert before sleeping. The scrape was like a grave, ironically we are digging our own grave, but I managed to get some rest, it wasn't the most comfortable, but it was okay.
Day 7
I slept fitfully, had quite a few dreams during this field camp, some of them still quite vivid. This morning I suddenly woke up at about 5am, I was uncomfortable but bearable; imagine sleeping in a grave with sand all around you.
Today is our last day of the field camp! So far I feel that our platoon sergeants have been protecting us from the other platoon sergeants.
Anyway, today we did our BIC - Battle Inoculation course. It was like a simulation of war. Live GPMG rounds were fired above our heads, but I found the BIC disappointing, there was no thunderflashes, no sprouts of sand bursting from the ground, no live-return fire, just leopard and back-crawling all the way under the barbed wire. Sigh. But I could hear the bullets whizzing by, which will definitely make you press your body closer to the ground!
We took the tonner back to coy line and spent several hours cleaning our stores and our rifles before we could shower and clean up. I was happy with the way I cleaned my rifle and finished it relatively fast, cleaning it good and clean and all the parts where the sergeants were sure to check, and sure enough I passed fast and went up to clean up.
Oh well, that sums up our 7-day field camp. All in all, I don't think it was very physically demanding. The only put off were the disgusting things that we were forced to do like, doing crunches in the mud and wearing our sweaty, smelly and wet dirty admin shirt the day before every morning for morning PT.
That was really ee-yucky! Never in my sane life would I ever wear a piece of dirty clothing soiled the day before locked in a ziplock bag overnight the next morning. It was the dirtiest, muddiest, wettest week of my life. But relatively okay. Punishments and push-ups I can take... sleeping in wet underwear and re-wearing of dirty uniform the next morning is another thing, and of course we saw wild boars, large centipedes, rats etc. Still what I can really say that it wasn't very tough, several times it was fun, I like such mentally and physically challenging stuff actually, but I like to keep clean at the same time.
OBS and ATC was tougher, but at least everyone loved it, everyone went through it together with the same goals and everyone spurred each other on, that wasn't really the case in NS, and when you get screwed because of someone else's mistake, it really feels like shit.
Johnny and I in full-camo
Yup that's me.
2:53 AM
