Mosquito Food

Hello everyone, I have just survived 2 gruelling weeks in Tekong. Many many things happened during these 2 weeks, I shall try to break it up into parts and share the juicy ones.

1] Ex. Nutcracker

This exercise is really the most shiong one of all the exercises in BSLC. It is actually to setup a defense site, to defend an objective so that the enemy cannot capture it. So what are we to do over at the defense site? First, we will have to dig a shellscrape, a personal one. Its like a grave, except its not so deep. Just enough for you to prone and engage the enemy, while still under ground level. Only your helmet and rifle barrel is supposed to be seen.

The second and most challenging one would be the fire trench. Its to be dug by your buddy and you, overnight. When you stand in the trench, the ground has to be at your chest level. I actually fell sick after digging my shellscrape, and had to take a rest... my head felt like exploding! But after the rest I felt much better, and continued digging the trench with my buddy. Everyone is so fucking shagged out... you can see people just sitting beside the trench stoning, you can see people holding their torches while illuminating the trench so that their buddy can continue digging in the dark, and still falling asleep. The best ones can be digging and half asleep. They look as if they are doing some ritual, like praying to something...

This is the most mentally and challenging thing I have gone through ever since I have enlisted.

2] Ex. Grandslam

So what is this? Its actually a platoon harbouring overnight, and then fighting or ambush patrols will be sent out in the day.

Sounds easy, but people will have to take turns to do sentry duty and things like that... some are 2 hours long. So we don't really get much sleep in the night, just enough only. When we get to the sleeping part, we need to make sure our weapon dosen't get stolen by our instructors. And those doing sentry duty better not be caught sleeping. Many people were caught, and they were in the weekend guard duty list. My friend got his rifle stolen while sleeping, and he got 2 days of weekend duty. Luckily he managed to get away with it before book out...

The patrols were nothing hard, we have been fighting too many times, its routine to us. This exercise is nothing compared to nutcracker, only the night part is hard.



So after all this, we were told that most of us has passed BSLC, and promoted to the rank of Corporal. So much shit we have been through, and finally we received our corporal rank. Of course the official donning of the rank will be next week, after the 28km route march. I'm so glad everything is over, I made lots of good buddies along the way too. Buddies that suffered together with me, laugh and enjoy when time permits.

So next week... would be a good week I guess. Tell you more after I pass out.