Wednesday, May 23, 2007

A 2nd hand account of the Taiwan training tragedy

Mi brother was cleaning his riffle when he n his platoon (around 20ppl) looked up into e sky n saw tis plane in e sky flying towards them. Their whole company were in the shed and just rite mi bro's platoon was seated at e corner of e shed so only they saw the plane coming. They were amazed at how grand e plane was when they suddenly realised e plane flippin over (its pilots are flyin inverted now) n flying closer n closer towards them. In fact, it was coming at them!! Sensing something really wrong, tis group of platoon mate ran screaming into the middle of e shed to take cover. Before they knew it, e plane crashed into e small stockroom behind e shed. There was a massive explosion with e stockroom bursting into a wild big inferno.


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Wednesday, May 16, 2007

The unwilling draftee 5

"Bottles up!", "Caps off!", "Drink!" The 200 robots regimentally followed the order given by the seargent who was already in his 'smart 4' (green fatigues with sleeves neatly folded up to bicep level). I couldn't believe what I was made to go through. Replenishing the body with water has got to be the most natural action any dehydrated animal does. Here, it was choreographed to the last detail. Nobody was allowed to drink before the final command was given. Everyone had to hold up the bottle at chest level. The bottle had to be filled to the brim. Dripping--even the tiniest drop was punishable.


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Friday, March 02, 2007

Pick it up lah!

Reservists don't look like that
What reservists don't look like

It rained all of yesterday, pissing down on all of us while we were at the combat shoot range near Pasir Laba Camp (or Pasir Labia Camp, as we called it, which is built around Bukit Vagina, as we giggled some more like secondary school boys, but you know, it's a bit tiring to talk about how vulgar our conversations are when we're in reservist.)

Strangely, we weren't as miserable as we ought to have been - being in wet clothes for what, twenty hours or so and being stung by mosquitoes hardy enough to withstand our saturation spraying of much Off as well as our liberal application of many citronella patches all over ourselves.

As a platoon mate, who shall not be named because these days, if you get named on this blog, everyone in your office gets to know about your exploits in camp, and I really don't want that to happen to you. Unless you want it to. If so, leave a comment and I'll insert your names...

As I was saying, this platoon mate says to a bunch of grumbling fellow troopers who've started a conversation with, "Wah lao, this kind of rain won't stop one leh!", that we should "think about it. How often do you get to walk in the rain?"

I think he meant for us to try to enjoy our day out, and the conversation veered to how some people pay good money to enjoy getting stung by mosquitoes and other sundry insects while getting drenched on eco-tours.

You'd understand by now that despite being in uniform and bearing the latest in automatic rifles and Army gear, we weren't thinking about how proficient we were going to be as soldiers - something which, in this 9th year of reservist (I have to keep calling it that though I know the official name is National Service) training, is getting increasingly laughable given our creeping ages.

The upshot is that for most of us, safety was always going to be the foremost consideration, as an exchange at the combat range between the control point officer and a safety specialist, over loundhailers, in the dark, would testify:

SS: "Hold it! Wait! Wait! Wait!"

CP: "Yes, what?"

SS: "Live round (bullet)! Live round!"

CP: "Where is it? Is it stuck in the chamber (of the rifle)? Is it double chambering?"

SS: "No!"

CP: "Then where?"

SS: "On the ground!"

CP: "Wah lau! Then pick it up lah! Idiot!"


Much laughter ensued. And so, yes, W, you missed out on a good one.

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