Sunday, May 23, 2004
Exercise All Out was... well, all out. Imagine 5 days of little sleep (and i mean little sleep: about six hours for the whole week!), heavy groan-inducing field packs, trudging through endless dusty roads, bashing blindly into the vegetation with branches, thorns, roots smashing into you from face to foot, sneakily creeping around our objectives to "see without being seen", charging head on with rifles blasting when we WERE seen, and of course, forcing down our delicious (choke) combat rations.
An experience indeed!
Lessons learnt:
1)it is no fun getting lost and reaching our end point at 6.30am.
2)the more you eat, the lighter your field pack gets. (alternatively, you could sneakily throw your biscuits away into the bushes. but do remember to keep the wrapper)
3)Never, NEVER attempt to bash through the vegetation at night. (now you know why we reached our endpoint at 6.30am)
4)When spotted by the enemy, (and you know he can only fire blanks) RUN as fast as you can, ignoring any shot whatsoever fired.
5)There's more than one way to conduct a reconnaicence mission. How about dressing up as the enemy? Or better still, pretending to be from sispec? Innovative solutions indeed!
6)When attacking an enemy hq site, the most garang way would be to enter with a bang: machine guns firing, smoke screen at the gate..
7)Plans are never 100% foolproof. Sometimes, a whole day of planning can be thrown right out of the window.
8)Vehicles are not only dangerous, but are a huge waste of time when you have to avoid them. Irritating. Imagine having to duck inside the vegetation for 1.5 hours waiting for it to drive off! Did i mention they were dangerous? An attempt to run away from one landed me in a drain and resulted in a sprained ankle. Yes, im a "bai ka" now. Bleargh.
9)Distances seem shorter when you're occupied with looking at the map.
10)Commandos isnt so bad after all. A whole week of shaggness, fatigue, hunger, doesnt seem as bad as any tekan session. I think 2.5 years in Commandos will be very possible to not only survive, but to excel in, if the tekan-ing stops soon.
Oh yes, and a big congratulations of 1st Commando Battalion for attaining the (rightfully ours) Best Combat Unit award this year!
You know, there're alot of bad things about the army, but i guess sometimes i overlook the positive things as well.
he rocked the party at 1:56 AM |
