Sunday, August 21, 2005
This hasn't exactly been a good week because platoon live firing sucks. Am I glad it's over and done with. Monday as usual was just lectures on platoon battle formations and the various things we would be doing for the next few days in camp. Spent Tuesday and Wednesday trying them out. I would say Thursday foreshadowed what happened for Friday and Saturday. It just kept raining and raining on Thursday so we took shelter at flight till it stopped. We eventually managed to practice our dry runs once with universal rounds and 2 times with blanks and we were done for the day.
Usually by Friday night, we would start having the booking out feeling but sad to say, it was not to be. Had to wake up again at the obscene time of 4.00am to get ready for platoon live firing. Travelling from one end of Singapore to another end sucks but we could do with the 1 hour of sleep in the coach. Back to Pasir Laba camp but this time it's much more deeper inside. You should have seen the shocked expressions of our faces when we saw the hill where we were supposed to carry out the platoon live firing. Well, the csm said it's around 30 degrees, that's why we've been doing 5BX with webbing and helmet on certain mornings. The numerous hills in the deeper part of Pasir Laba camp kinda convinced me that Singapore wasn't a concrete jungle and it wasn't all flat land to begin with. We didn't even managed to carry out our dry run until around 12 because the rain just wouldn't stop. It started to pour even after lunch so the live firing didn't commence until 3.30pm. Can you imagine our pissed off and how low morale got when the whole coy was stuck in the tents?
We were just worried that we won't get to book out at all and had to wait until Sunday morning if we didn't finish in time. It makes alot of difference whether we book out on Saturday or Sunday morning even if it's very late on Saturday night. 9.30pm was the time I stepped out of cab.
4 days 3 nights of field camp next week. They call it Excercise Earthworm. Read between the lines. I will remain uncontactable for the next 4 days so please don't get pissed off if I don't reply to your sms. Someone please message me the score between Arsenal vs Chelsea.
