2 Weeks of Retreat

I went back to camp for my reservist from 19th Jun to 30th Jun. I had thought that these 2 weeks of in-camp training would be a holiday break for my stressed out mind. The truth turned out to be far from what I had imagined.

Week 1

The first week if ICT was rather relaxing. Day 1 was in-pro and some simple revision of what we had learned. Day 2 was our IPPT or physical fitness test. I was worried that this time I might not get my silver results which I got last year as I had not been exercising regularly. Surprisingly, I still managed to obtain silver standard (got $200 award). Just that my 2.4km run was slower than before. Think I got to buck up on my jogging routine le. Day 3 & 4 was the shooting training (not siong one). Come Day 5, we went for Company Mission Exercise. We reached the Lim Chu Kang training area at late morning and spent half the day doing some battle drills etc. Then we rested until 2am before we moved out for the mission. It was a 3km walk followed by an attack to enemy base. The route was quite easy as we did not walk into thick vegetation. The only bad thing is that the area had lots of sand flies and my hand was bitten all over. By the time we cleared the objective, it was already 9am. The exercise transit into defense mission and we had to dig 1 "grave" each to lie inside and wait for enemy attack. Exercise was cut at around 11am and we proceed back to camp to clean up and prepare for bookout. We were allowed to go out of camp for the weekend.

I had intended to ask my friends out to spend the weekend but they were too busy playing Ran.Online, so I decided to join them play. But my internet had been giving me problems and I always disconnect from the game. I got so fed up that I decided not to carry on playing. Good thing is I saw her online, so I spent the rest of the night msn with her. Until my eyes closing then stop. On Sunday I woke up quite late cos I was too tired from the outfield training. I spent the whole afternoon looking for her birthday present. It was a necklace with a rectangle fibreglass pendent. Hope she likes it. If given more time, I could have gotten her a better present. I bought a ring for myself from the same shop as I couldn't resist the temptation. I had a quick dinner at home and went back to camp shortly cos got to book in by 10pm.

Week 2

Day 1 was BUA training. My friend & I did not attend as we were not feeling too well. Day 2 & 3 was our Battalion Mission Exercise. As the attendence rate for last week's CME was very low (only 30% attendence), the Commanding Officer had issued a warning that those who did not attend the BME will have to come back for make-up training during December. Sad to say, his threat did not prove effective. In fact, it backfired. By doing so, he had also caused the soldier's morale to drop drastically. Those who did not attend last week's training continued to report sick to get excused. This time round, the training was very siong. At 11pm, we started walking a 6km route towards objective. Almost the entire route was thick vegetation. It was so dark that I can't even see the person infront of me. To be honest, I had never walked this kind of route throughout my entire 2 years of active NS time. I can't imagine this bast*** could have planned this kind of training for us reservist soldiers to go through. One of our guys could not take it and lost consciousness halfway through. His body was trembling vigourously and he vomitted white foam! 6 medics and 1 medical officer attended to him and they actually waited for more than 30 minutes before they sent the guy to hospital! That's atrocious! What if he could not hang on for that long? Whose going to answer to his parents? I'm utterly disappointed with the way they handle this situation... We reached objective at around 7am and carried on with the attack, which we took more than 2 hours to clear the objective. The CO had decided that we had to redo the attack as the trainers commented that it was not good enough. Given the fact that the route was too siong (rumoured that other reservist unit is not so siong) and one of our people was sent to hospital, our morale had hit rock bottom. We had agreed ourselves that we will not redo the attack. After some negotiation with our OC, our unity could not withstand the test and some of the men decided to do it. The rest had no choice but to follow. We returned to camp by Day 3 6pm. Day 4 was cleaning weapon and returning of stores and other admin matters followed by a nights off. Since it's the last night for us, we chatted until 4am then sleep. Finally comes Day 5, last day of reservist for year 2006. The whole morning I was busy running around to settle my statement for weapon part lost due to training. By lunchtime I managed to get the officer to sign my statement. If not I might not be able to out-pro. Managed to leave camp at 4pm. This is just the beginning of the very important day. I was rushing like mad from Tuas to my house

Pls visit this website for some of the photos & videos we took during the ICT http://hanalexu.multiply.com/