...and that spells the end of my outfield activities for my Basic Section Leader Course. Yeah, Exercises Wanderer and Grand Slam are over as of Thursday afternoon.
It was probably the most tiring week in my course so far, for me personally. For some reason I seem to have a bull's eye or Canadian Bull target on me, for this week especially. Firstly, I "kena arrow" to be the Harbouring i/c for Exercise Grand Slam. Next, I was the LSC (Leader Section Commander) for the first day's fighting patrol mission. All this translates to little sleep for me. The majority of the company slept late to do their Navigational Data Sheet for Exercise Wanderer after booking in on Sunday evening, and for my detail we slept at 4am. The following morning, er, I mean the exact same morning, (or should I say an hour later?) we woke at 5am, and moved out for Pulau Tekong by 7am.
Returning to Tekong evoked a sense of longing in all of us I think. Stepping onto TFT from the ferry, seeing the all-so-familiar "Welcome to Pulau Tekong" sign, it all felt like we had never left the place which saw us through our basic military training. Looking in the distance at the building which was Ulysses Company, I remembered my BMT days and felt kinda proud of being a Ulysses Warrior. We moved off to the grass patch beside Tekong Parade Square, and we all reminisced a bit about our Graduation Parade, more affectionately known as POP.
Then everyone arrived and we snapped into action; no time for recalling all the fond memories of the place any more. Camoflage on, smoke grenades drawn, NDS checked, and off we went to our start points for the day's Navigation Exercise.
Exercise Wanderer was a true test. The signal set each detail had to carry was much heavier than what we lugged along for our previous Navex, Exercise Gypsy. The jungles of Tekong were also much thicker with undergrowth than Mandai, so it made bashing a little harder. We got real tired quickly even though we took turns to carry the signal set. The first checkpoint was easy, and we found it, shaded the relevant military symbol and set off. However, our luck ran out. The second checkpoint was there, but a white sign was there and the yellow sign belonging to Sispec wasn't around even though we triple-confirmed our MGR and combed the area thoroughly. The third checkpoint wasn't any better, and the fourth checkpoint was in the middle of a town area, abandoned now and used for urban ops training. Which meant we got to the dinner point having found only one out of four checkpoints, and were in danger of failing, unless we found at least one night checkpoint out of two. And night checkpoints were notoriously difficult to find - we found none out of Gypsy I and II. It was hard to get the group to keep going, for morale was really low. But somehow, the four of us banded together, found motivation out of nowhere, and miraculously, as we combed the SIT Test area, aka the reclaimed land on the south of the island, we found a faded sign lit up by our torchlights, and true enough it was our checkpoint. And that was a somewhat happy ending to our Exercise Wanderer =)
En route, we ran into BMT recruits. We laughed when we saw them training, not really at them, but at ourselves as well for they were mirror copies of what we were back when we were in BMT. Group level fighting? Failure to observe the four-second rule? Using the M-16 rifle? Heh, all these are things of the past. We now fight in section level, fight better, and use more advanced weaponry. I felt a rush of pride as a Sispec trainee for once.
After Wanderer, we reported back at Rocky Hill, the old Sispec compound. There we rested, debriefed, and showered at the run-down and partially flooded toilet. It was also there where I was "arrowed' to become the Harbour i/c and LSC for day one's mission. Which meant that I stayed up to do the Operation Orders for the following day with the other two LSCs while the rest slept. In the end, I went to sleep at 4:30am, and woke up at around 5am, aching all over. Then we set off in full battle order for our harbouring site, where Mustaffa the LPS organised the platoon via us LSCs to set up our harbouring site. It was tough being an LSC, for there were too many things to do and too little time. Some tasks were uneviable, and we had the uneviable task of assigning people to do those tasks. Sure, the things had to be done, and each person has his fair share of work, but I still felt a little guilty getting my friends to do fatigue work like digging the latrine, etc.
After much scolding and running about, the harbour base was set up, not too well, but not too shabbily either. Then it was time to begin the day mission, and as LSC I issued the operation orders, before we set off for the mission. I was totally exhausted by then, due to the lack of sleep and physical exertion, and I made several errors during the mission, such as flanking the enemy without proper cover and concealment, failing to re-org after a fire and movement exercise, etc. But in the end, I managed to complete the fighting patrol without screwing up majorly. Cue sigh of relief =p
The next few days were routine field camp activities, except for the stand-two at dawn and dusk, where we had to maintain high alert, proning down in our full battle order. Cue back cramps =(
More fighting patrols, day and night ambushes and harbouring drills ensued, and someone's advice and my former PC's weapon for us (courage!) pulled me through it all. Heh, take everything like a Bio or Chem test eh? Interesting advice.
Since we had 9 or 10 people in our section most of the time, we could rest one or two people each mission, but I guess the field camp showed the true colours of people. Obviously fit people opting to rest, healthy people suddenly developing feverish symptoms... I gave them the benefit of the doubt as I got zero rest despite the workload of being the first day's LSC and overall harbouring i/c.
A heavy downpour occured on day two of Grand Slam. How much we have grown - whereas we were all very depressed when rain came on our first day of our first field camp, our mood weren't really affected by the rain this time round. In fact, some just slept through all the rain, while the rest gathered in small groups of two or three and chatted. We even ate our butter cookies in the rain heh.
And it was a triumphant return from Tekong on Thursday. Before we left the Tekong Parade Square, we did our Delta war cry, and for once we did it whole-heartedly. It was definitely an impressive display, and the company of recruits at the same Parade Square applauded us. Funny indeed =p
Just when I thought I had enough arrows on me, here comes another. As we were cleaning our weapons, four from each platoon were randomly chosen for some mysterious footdrill lesson, and guess what - I was one of the four from my platoon. Out of the 16, 8 were chosen, and gues what - I was one of them. Turned out that we had been selected to be part of the Sispec contingent for the 9th Division Change of Command Parade! It was a somewhat pleasant surprise.
Though we had to sacrifice time for the parade due to the many rehearsals, I guess we have our privileges too. For example, our off-in-lieu on Monday was void due to a rehearsal, but we received berets, the 9th Div Formation Badge and an arms badge =p
In any case, goodbye Commander 9th Div, Brigadier General Toh. *salutes*
<< Home
|
kheng yong; 19th dec 88
[x] Ashley
My Rappelz Profiles
AquamarineBeryl Lvl 62 Soul Breeder
Fluorospar Lvl 50 Holy Warrior
AmberFlare Lvl 38 Kahuna
AzureLapis Lvl 27 Strider
DawnTopaz Lvl 44 Bow Fighter
AuroraTurquoise Lvl 21 Dark Magician
Seraphinite Lvl 29 Cleric
AsterSapphire Lvl 20 Sorcerer
All About Them Words VER 1.0
