Chapter 1 BMT
I looked through my army photos and found that I only have a few photos of my BMT. Even so, I could still vividly remember many moments of my time in Tekong as they left a deep impression on me. I could remember clearly the first day of enlistment, where I went to Pasir Ris interchange with my parents. Ken Ang came to send me off and also to laugh at me. But still, he gave me 2 bars of Snickers. So I want to say thank you to Ken for those Snickers even though I never ate them cos they melted on the way to Tekong. As I took the ferry over to Tekong, I remember my father saying that it looked like a chalet. Well, looks are deceiving. I remembered the poignant moment when I exchanged my IC for my 11B and ID tags. And I remembered taking the oath in the auditorium. The oath of allegiance to go die for Singapore. The saddest moment of the day was when my parents left for the mainland and I was left alone on that bloody island with no idea of what the next 3 months was going to be like. I felt helpless. I was posted into Foxtrot company. If I was enlisted in the afternoon, I would have been in Delta Company. A few hours meant the difference between hell and heaven. At that time, I told myself that it was probably fated that I would have to suffer throughout my NS life. I was pretty spot-on. After my parents left, we were assigned to our platoons and collected our stuff. Marching with our civilian bags and duffel bags was tough and memorable. I was assigned to Platoon 1 and it was a good thing cos I only had to climb one flight of stairs. My first day in Tekong started pretty badly. I recall going down for first parade in my slippers. Luckily, the sergeant wasn't there yet or I would have been in trouble. The days after that were pretty horrible. Not because of the tough training but because of bad platoon mates. I had originally harboured thoughts of going to OCS, but after seeing how people in the platoon fought to go into OCS, i was disgusted and killed off that thought. Anyway, I wouldn't have got in because I performed badly in BMT. I have to concede that. I had to take my SOC 10 times before I passed. A few incidents stand out during my BMT. I don't have the time to list out everyting that happened to me in BMT. One incident was my misfiring incident during field camp. I loaded my blanks into my rifle but was then told by my sgt to put 5 more rounds because there was an excess of blanks. Forgetting that I have already cocked my rifle, I removed my magazine and squeezed the trigger. A loud bang went off. Everyone was stunned and kept shouting "What happened". I myself was shell shocked. My balls were in my mouth. My buddy came over and said that it was a stupid thing to do and he proceeded to show me how it should be done. However, moments later, in another section movement, he himself misfired. Our sergeant told us to report to our platoon sergeant and we duly did so. Our platoon sergeant told us that he would deal with us later. So for the rest of the field camp, my buddy and I were thinking of all the worst things that could happen to us. And our sergeant had to rub it in by saying that we will get charged. He told us that we should take it like a man and just go into DB for a few days. After hearing what he said, many thoughts ran through my mind. Thoughts about my future mainly. Therefore, for the rest of the field camp, I wasn't really concentrating and got a lot of scoldings from the sergeants and my section mates. I was pretty pissed off by some of my section mates. But that is another story. As it was, my misfiring incident came to a happy ending. My platoon sergeant forgot about me and my buddy because apparently there were many others who misfired. They got confinements. I felt guilty at that time. But I didn't need to because I got a weekend guard duty shortly afterwards. My buddy was lucky and escaped the duties. I realised that there is too much that happened in BMT to write it all down now. So I will continue in the next entry.
