It was around 4 plus in the morning, i could not sleep. One more hour i will be packing up and preparing to go to field camp in Pulau Tekong...aid
I am worried, stress and frighthen... I am afraid that i could not take the stress. When i am in the fastcraft to the way to pulau Tekong, I began look around me. One followed by one, it was the faces of unwillingness around me.
We reached our destination, just felt my legs are stucked to the ground. Really don't feel like moving at all. We began our field camp with a four kilometre road march. Our field pack is approximately 12 to 15 kilogrames. To our dismay we had to had around 5 kilogrames combat rations to our heavy load. Our full battle order including Helmet, Sar21, SBO and field pack, it was around 35 kilogrames.
The March seemed endless. My vision blured under the scorching sun, My back ached because of all the heavy load. I felt helpless, really helpless.. I began to pray... My friends helped me along the way, without them i think i would had collasped...
We reach our Camp site. Darn i felt hungry... I began to open the combat rations to feed my complaining stomach.A very awful and disturbing smell came out. I almost threw up.. Imagine you have lotus seed soup or lousy chicken rice kept in a packet whicih you have no idea how long it was kept. You would not want to eat those things. I bet even a dog would reject those food... I ate plain biscuits for 3 meals......
We began to put camouflage cream our faces. Green and black faces are all around me, it was quite a comical sight. But when you began to perspire, it would not be funny anymore... We hate lectures the most, really feel like sleeping... But if we were caught sleeping, we would have to be punish. Like doing pushups with 35 kilogrames load on your back.
We began our firing. it was fun... But we were often scolded because we enjoy ourselves to the firing... We carried on this kind of life for 3 days until heaven decide to rain.... It was really demoralising when the rain arrived. Mud was everywhere. How are we going to sleep with all those mud around? Our things are all cover with mud patches as we proceed out training.
I forgot to tell you guys about the powder bath. For 6 days, we are not allowed to bath. We are only allowed to shower ourselves with powder that must cover every part of our body... After this powder bath, we must queue up to let our instructers check us. If fail, we had to powder and re-queue again...
Sleeping conditions were... i do not know how to describe... We were afraid of scorpions and centipedes that were watching us secretly... Our bed was just a thin sheet of groundsheet. we had to laid it on the forest ground that were cover with potholes and merciless small stones... I would not forget that night when sounds of flashbangs and flares shook me up. we destroy our tents and packed our stuffs. It was a suprise attack by our instructers. We were in a very bad and lousy mood, we had no time to pack our stuff. I began to heard all my platoon mates quarrelling among each other. I began to saw our true colours coming out......
We laid down on the grasses after a long hard day... I ask my friend. "do you miss home?" My friend replied: " i really cannot wait to go home, I really wanna go home" We began to feel the soft wind and seeing the gentle swaying trees. It was a relaxing sight... After some time we saw green little lights above our heads. It was the fireflies... I had never seen so much fireflies in my life... We looked in disbelief. Its just like a dream......
The fireflies represent glimmering hope...........................
