Batch of 01/06 BMTC School 2 Whiskey Company Platoon 2 Section 2


Week 1.

Day 1: Enlisting Day. We were led to recite the oath and my first encounter with Company Sergeant Major (CSM). Said goodbye to Mum and Dad and Sis. Officially a Recruit in BMTC - a.k.a the lowest lifeform in the SAF. Collected all our items.

Day 2 to day 7: We have lectures in the morning. Then lectures in the afternoon. And more lectures at night. I feel like I'm in Tekong JC rather than Tekong camp. We had a lot of talks. CO talk, OC talk, CSM talk, WO talk. Who says army is tough? Then we met our Platoon Commander (PC) and Sergeants. More about my sergeants later. That's about it for the first week, apart from a holiday break for Hari Raya. But next week kenna confinement :(

Also got to know a few of my bunk mates. All are basically very nice and friendly people. All my fears of chao ah bengs are gone! We are actually all A level and educated students in a scholar company (mostly RJC and HCJC muggers) and zero people in my platoon smokes! It's an achievement leh... Overall adjustment to army life is good.. But our commanders are super vulgar people, esp CSM. He talks a lot of dirty jokes which shows no respect for the females, and its disgusting. But a lot of people enjoyed the jokes.


"Hey! I don't wanna lead an army life..
CO I want to go
OC don't let me go
Mummy I wanna go...hom-om-ome."


Week 2.

No kidding, but really more lectures. This time at least they teach us Technical handling. Listening to lectures is really boring and confusing, because hands-on is much more difficult. The sergeants just rushed through all the theories. So fresh recruits learnt how to assemble and strip rifle in 1 minute. No kick lah. Then we had very lame first aid test... fail also nevermind :) Anyway if really something happens to a soldier, you just forget what you have learnt and shout for the medic :)

Time to time saw JC friends at cookhouse, but normally no time to talk. Admin time is also very limited. No time to read books/bible. Only had just sufficient time to call back home and talk a while before lights out.


"Training to be soldiers
Fight for our land
Once in our life,
Two years of our time.
Have you ever wondered, why must we serve?
Because we love our land and we want it
to be free, to be free... yah!"


Week 3.

Start of the fierce chin up regime. 3 times a day, each time do one set of 8 pullups. Cannot do, do assisted. For each assisted chinup, do 5 pushups. I'm a zerofighter (means I do zero chinups). Very demoralising to see everyone so fit over there. Had our first IPPT which I failed, of course.

"In the early morning march
with my field pack on my back
with an aching in my heart,
and my body's full of sweat.

I know, I know
You have to go.
So hurry back home,
Cause I miss you so."


Week 4.

Went IMT for BTP. Nevermind if you don't know what they stand for. Basically its arcade time! Firing on computer simulated targets. All recuits, however, must treat it as if it is live firing. Recruits will get whacked if parts of their body is in front of the trigger. "You want to die izzit?!", or if they mis-fire. Means you suddenly hear a fake bullet shot sound. Congratz, you have kenna'ed guard duty. Overall the shoots are quite simple.

Also did our 4km route march and 6 km route march. The 4 km route march felt like hell because its our first time doing it. 6km one was progessively easier, as we will later find out for our 8km, 12km, 16km and 24 km route marches.


"Purple light, at the warfront
That is where, my buddy died.
If I die
Would you bury me?
With my rifle and my buddy and me-me-ee."


Week 5.

Chinese New Year break. We had a 5 day break. I was planning to use these 5 days to really train my pullups, but I had to fall sick on the second day of CNY with high fever. The fever was scary; normally my fever subsides after just 1 or 2 days. This fever went on for 5 days. Felt really terrible and had to lie on bed the whole day. Had to take MC from private doctor, but went in just in time for field camp. I know this is something I cannot afford to miss...


"They said that in the army
the girls are very fine.
You ask for Charlie's angels
They give you Frankenstein!"


Week 6.

The climax of BMT is here - seven day field camp! No bath, no LUX shampoo, no bed, no blankets, no proper toilets! We are going into the jungle! I missed the first day 8km route march since I just recovered from fever (Day 1 status) But because of this I had to do sai kang i.e. carry water cans. Damn heavy and hello? I was sick, remember? Why do I have to do this?

We pitched our basha tents and I slept with my buddy. Not as comfortable as a bed of course, but the ground was not as hard as I thought, so it was sleepable. Lights off for field camp is at 9pm instead of usual 1030pm at bunk. And it was better to sleep anyway, becuase it was so dark and there was nothing to do! Everyday we were given combat rations. The food all had wonderful names - Chicken Pontay Rice, Oriental Seafood etc. But we found out that the nicer the names sound, the worse is the food. Some of us even resorted to eating biscuits instead, but for me the food are okay. Suddenly we ALL miss cookhouse food.

Woke up at 0530 as usual, but you couldn't see anything. We had to fall in platoon level some way away from our tents and it was just so irritating having to ask around where my platoon is. Finally settled in and guess what - we were late. So we had tekan sessions. Pushups, crunches (legs support 3kg rifle), and jumping jacks with rifle. The jumping jacks was a killer...Try doing it with a 3kg weight and you will know...

The 3rd day also kenna tekan session. I believe it was because morning has too much time, so give us all this crap. Lecture start at 1000. So what do we do from 0800 -1000? Tekan lor! Another form of tekan or time wasting tactic is called Removing and Pitching Bashas Again. We had to remove our tents, build it 100m away and when we are done... we pitch it back at our original position. Fantastic.

We learnt about field disciplines and stuff like that. Moving in a section in a file formation and also the most fun one, fire movement, as well as artillery drills, casualty drills and so on. Fire movement drill we got to fire blank rounds, which made our rifles very dirty and make me very irritated because of the carbon emitted.

Field camp was also the turning point for me. I was whacked like mad by Platoon Sergeant Yunus because I was a blur toad and couldn't understand some army things. So he made ME stand one side and watch my bunk mates leopard crawl in the muddy water (he selected the spot purposely). All their long 4 become so dirty while mine is so clean. This incident made me feel very bad because it was my mistake. Then as if it was not enough, I was made the casualty, which means my bunk mates have to carry me and run...Wah seh, after all these, I apologised to my bunk mates. But at least they understand and try to teach me those things that I don't know. The punishment is so bad that I swear I will never get into trouble again with Platoon Sergeant Yunus. Low morale.

Luckily for me, the next day was a better day. I was called upon to "teach" a bunk mate who missed the lessons. Too bad for PS, but he had no chance to punish me this time, because I finally got everything right! Thank God... the whole day went well, and my morale was sky high for the rest of field camp.

Second last day - Trench digging time! A unit personnel can dig a shellscrape in 45 minutes, but we were given 2 and a half hours...haha because we are recruits, remember? Then some of us still cannot finish... We also dug a fire trench and then we took some pictures with PC and sergeants. At night we had fresh rations - Western food! Great food, but our morale was very low because we are super exhausted after all the digging and the rain and our smelly uniforms.
At night the entire company was suddenly called to fall in in Full battle Order, field pack and all, because our OC is such a nice guy and he had prepared for us to go to SISPEC training shed (sheltered!) to sleep instead of swimming in our shellscrape over the night. And we also changed into fresh uniforms.....shiok...

Last day of field camp! Everyone was waiting for this! Only one last event before we can go back company line for a reaaaaally good bath - The Battle Innoculation Course. Basically we had to leopard crawl and backcrawl for about 100m, with live bullets firing overhead to simulate enemy fire. And we had to keep low at all times, though the bullets are fired at 3m overhead, so I don't think anyone will get shot :) It was tiring, but at last we finished field camp! Took a tunnel back to company line, but we had to wash all over stuff and clean rifle before we can take a bath late at night.

By the way, throughout the entire 7 day field camp I only pang sai twice, and I also don't know why. Could be the food.


"SISPEC warriors, we are the warriors.
SISPEC warriors with pride we will lead!"


Week 7

Went for a 3 day, 2 night Situational Test outfield again. But it was much simpler after going through the 7 day field camp. This is a test to pick out those Commanders-to-be. Some people obviously wayang'ed their way through, but I just be myself. I was in India detail, with 13 other people whom I don't know. We had to work together as a team. Sergeant Khairul in charge of my detail was very nice, letting us go short cuts, and even offering us his fresh rations! Overall, we learnt a lot of teamwork but some stations are really lame. We had to perform artillery drills, casualty drills, sniper drill and commando drill. The casualty drill on our last day was super tiring. Our stretcher "broke", so we had to use groundsheet to carry the casualty. And the Sir purposely chose the heaviest one. In the end we had about 6-8 people carrying one person. But alas, it was over and back to Coy line!

We also had our live grenade throw. This is our second time throwing, the first being a dummy grenade. The waiting time was crazy. We waited more than 5 hours for that 5 minutes of grenade throwing, because I was in detail 20.


"From the land air and sea,
we will strike our enemy.
They have called us the queen
of the battlefield... woahh...
We are brothers in arms, we are brothers proud to be
We are the first, the one and only infantry!"


Week 8

We were confined due to our live range. Like our grenade throw, it also involves a lot of waiting, so we brought along books and magazines to read. First we had zeroing, followed by first part of day shoot, then night shoot. The next day we completed our day shoot. A lot of people got whacked by commanders because of the seriousness of the event, including me, though mine was due to a faulty magazine. Some people don't know how to check clear rounds, and some don't know how to perform IA drills. For me, I missed one round for day shoot i.e. 15/16. But for night shoot the flashing target on my lane was super dim...so I virtually missed all the shots, but my score was moderated by sergeants and overall I got a 22/32. Which was still very lousy...because I know I can hit them!!

We had our 16km and 24 km route marches as well. Somehow it got easier as the distance increases... we struggled during the last 4 km of 16km, but for 24km, all of us completed it! For our 16km route march, because some idiots did not hold their rifles properly, the whole platoon were made to high pod rifle, which was pretty tiring. Then still, some idiot did not hold properly, so we had to rifle overhead. A lot of us cannot take it. It was so bad and our IC was so stressed that he cried. Yes... and he was not that gu niang type, but it was really too stressful for him just because a few black sheep refused to co-operate. We were also told when we stopped our dinner break that we had to rifle overhead for the last 4 km because someone refused to sing. Luckily, our OC intervened and instead got PS Yunus to tell us why he did all this. It was a great speech he made as he told us his intention of training us to be soldiers all this while. I believe a lot of us respected him for him doing what he did after his talk.

For our 24km march we were determined not to repeat the same mistake again, and thank God for the entire march we did not got into trouble. We sung our hearts out. Especially when we reached SISPEC parade square our company was deafening! It was really impressive. As we finished our march and entered into BMTC parade square we made sure none of us reserved anything, for it was our last event as a platoon together. Our PC came to talk to us, declaring that this is the first time he felt proud to march alongside us! And he also said, to him, we are already privates! We all applauded, then took some pictures with our sergeants, before heading back to sleep around 2am.


"Whiskey Two,
Whiskey Two,
Whiskey Two, Whiskey Two, Whiskey Two...
We are the One
We are the Champions
We will always be the One! (Whiskey Two!)"


Week 9

The last week of our BMT, we had our Graduation parade rehearsals. Obviously some of us couldn't march properly and this angered a lot of my bunk mates. But fortunately we improved and did a pretty nice job (except one part screwup) for our Passing Out Parade (POP). It was really a wonderful and memorable experience in BMT! We took photos as a section, as a platoon and even with my PC. On our way home, we know we will not be coming back again. We met PS Yunus, and I thanked him. 3 weeks ago, I would never have thought I would be thanking him. I met OC and even CO.

The journey may have ended, but a new one has just begun. All the friends that I made will not be forgotten! Goodbye BMTC!


"ORD,
Back to studies,
Got degree
So happy
Can't forget
Days in army
with my rifle and my buddy and me-me-ee."