Thursday, February 10, 2005

Traffic blues

Part of our major excercise consisted of splitting us up into groups of 3 to run traffic control points, in which we were supposed to operate a check point with the main guy stopping vehicles (pointsman), another covering him (security) and the third providing support in terms of communicating with the control centre and other checkpoints (radioman). Other hilarious stories to do with this excercise include one where the trainee stopped a non-excercise vehicle that belonged to another unit and made the driver get out and give the password (which of course the poor chap didn't have a clue); and another one where one blur radioman called in to verify a password with the control centre and the conversation went along the lines of

Radioman: "Hullo Control, the password they give is WRONG TONGUE while the correct one is LONG TONGUE, they insist that they are correct, can we let them through?"
Control: "Hullo Radioman, thank you for announcing our password to the world, see me after the excercise"

But i digress from the particular incident i had in mind which would have made for a great slapstick skit (and i'm not making any of this up!).

It was a hot day and i was tasked to the radioman with my buddy as point and the third guy was made security because that was the easiest job (and he was the blurrest bugger i've ever met (save for that one clown in BMT who wore a No 4 top with shorts in a hurry)). Then a call comes in to stop a particular vehicle for checking (licence plate number XXXXX), as it was suspected that they were smuggling guns. Lo and behold, the vehicle in question comes along the road and my buddy the pointsman stopped and challenged them. Since we had to search the vehicle, he directed it into a sideroad just around the corner and followed them on foot. As i had to man the radio, i couldn't help him, but security could. Unfortunately, the blurfuck was still in dreamland and only awoke when i threw a stone at him (couldn't yell at him like i wanted to since that would have given away our position) and he got up to give cover to the pointsman.

Meanwhile, the two occupants of the vehicle (actually instructors) decided to test the reaction of the pointsman by getting out of the vehicle unbidden. My buddy promptly freaked out abit because there were two of them while he was still alone (yelling from time to time for security to cover him) and they were advancing upon him. He took decisive action in commanding the two suspects to lie down on the floor, when security decides to show up and is faced with a barrage of "Lie down!! Lie down!! Get down on the floor! NOW!!" from the pointsman (by now) yelling at the suspects. So security lies down on the floor in the middle of the side road to 'give cover' to the pointsman. This was met with "Not you lah you idiot!!" from the pointsman and the scenario was ended by the instructors because they couldn't stop laughing.

6 comments:

lun said...

i think he is. cos only provost does traffic regulatory control if i'm not wrong. i'm from MP btw

zeenie said...

well done watson! That was a long time back though. =)
nice to see people talking about me in front of my back. lol
PDH!

TriplePeriod said...

Confirm MP...in Tekong right? Fellow MP...well-done well-done..

Gingerbreadman said...

Wahahaha! So funny. Looks likes that lots of provost here. MP here too.

JACK ARMY said...

Interesting post. I'm in the US Army. It is interesting to compare how exercises are different and the same in different countries.

Keep up the good work.

Anonymous said...

Reminds me of the time when an actual spike strip was used for one of the PDF excercises, and a rover delivering ration to the umpires came speeding into the con area without stopping and the MP on duty activated the spike strip, blowing up all 4 of its tyres. Angry driver was getting out of his vehicle screaming that he's not part of the excercise while other witnesses around collasped with laughter.