Purple Light
Sunday, July 17, 2011
Like Mark said, it's just four more months to ORD for me. D-Day is on the 5th of December, Which falls on a Monday. I don't feel like accumulating leave and clearing it just before I ORD, though. I want a fitting end to the date of significance, so I'm going to come back on that Monday rather than push it to the Friday before. So far, even with all the days of perspiration-drenched work, even with the punishments that came my way, I still feel like NS has been a really nice and significant journey. I thought I'd share my part on the journey thus far. Might have a spoiler or two for Chen, just fyi. After hearing what Ben said about the 'vanilla' experience, I realise others might desire that too.
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Starting out, I really felt a sense of trepidation when I stepped onto the island. I tried to keep myself at ease, but I couldn't help but feel that deep inside, my uncertainty of what lay ahead, as well as how I'd take it was killing me. I remember the processing that day was long as hell, and that ceremony that I've seen before, where the parents are separated from their sons in the auditorium, was now finally where I was experiencing it for myself as a new recruit.
That day, the Regimental Sergeant Major who had the face to match his title, made short work of a guy who wouldn't stop talking when he was making his brief right after the turning in of pink IC's. Able to carry his bark as far as I've ever heard a person do, he frightened all of us stiff for some time. And when we unpacked all our items in the parade square for checking, and the bugle call sounded for sunset, whereupon the sergeants stood at attention while we sat gazing dumbly at something we didn't understand, that was something I'd remember for a long time too. I love the sound of the bugle call. We don't have that in the Navy.
For the first week, I recall myself feeling utterly low on morale every time Routine Orders was done before lights out. The thought of missing home, missing people I so wanted to see and the general unfamiliarity of the environment thumbed down on my sentiments. Being made toilet IC was also just a sad stroke of bad luck, but it was a good experience for me, for that was when I learnt some things on how to, or how not to get people to do things.
Thankfully, I was as lucky as a BMT batch could ever get, and our confinement period never materialised due to the grave importance of Chinese New Year. A few days later, I can't remember how long, I got to book out and return to a home decked in red and ready to welcome visitors. My hair, of course, was as short as anyone's ever seen it. A small price of pride to pay for a welcome respite. My older brother would take some time to tire of his comment that "my hair looks just great" every time I got to book out.
As the weeks wore on, I kept ticking off the weeks of the brief stay on Tekong, and my morale was just about average. I wasn't gung-ho material, neither was I mopey. That's not to say though, that I kept a nonchalant outlook to things.
The night before we were to move out for field camp, a Sunday book in, I fell ill with a high fever, and reported to the Medical Center, coming out with an ATT C for one day. I seriously yearned to dig my own shellscrape while looking on as people struggled with theirs, something about digging soil gives me a satisfied feeling. That, and the other occasion where I slit my finger with the amazingly sharp SOG were the two times I reported sick in Tekong. On the latter, I remember not noticing as my blood dripped from my finger to my elbow as I went down to Coy Line. One moment it was excruciatingly painful, the next moment I felt nothing. I don't know why.
SITEST was an exercise that I didn't enjoy, sleeping underneath towering palms that swayed in the moonlight seems very alien and slightly discomforting to me. Also, my team and I were pathetic, thinking after a while that the tests were aimed at seeing how good one was at failing, only to realise upon reaching the rendezvous point that many others had completed the tasks along the way. Sitest was what I believe was the reason I didn't get to Command School, and my ATT B for field camp was what I believe sent me to the Navy. Until now, I'm still not sure of why I got sent to there.
When the time came for POP, things slowly got better, if just slightly. On the last night, my bunk moved all the mattresses into the middle of the bunk, pushing aside the tables and went amok whacking each other with pillows. Other bunks were more rowdy, giving people blanket parties and the like. The main offending bunk locked themselves up after everything was done, going so far as perching a pail on the door to ensure nobody got back at them.
I quickly returned home from Tekong after the brief but eventful nine weeks, receiving comments from my brother and parents that I smelled sour, so too with all the other recruits, something every tekong recruit goes through and eventually assimilates with. If it isn't sour, it's highly antiseptic! A few days later, the trip to Malaysia was welcome as ever, and when the time came to play paintball, Mark and I felt ready as we'd ever be to get some kills.
.>>Navy segment ahead in the next post.
Labels: NS, thoughts
posted by joseph at 9:24 PM