First Outfield Exercise

Backdated to 2 Feb 2005


On the Thursday of the 3rd week we had our 2nd book out. It's Chinese New Year!
A week-long outfield exercise awaits us when we book in, but we got to enjoy a long weekend first.
Chinese New Year was uneventful for me. I chose to spend most of it resting at home.
So when I returned to camp I started the week feeling rested, and in higher spirits.

7 days of outfield. We will be doing route marches, learning our fire movement and other relevant jungle warfare soldiery skills. We will be eating combat rations, and carrying our rifles everywhere. (The sergeants have warned us that they will steal any unguarded rifles and award confinements to anybody who has their rifles stolen)

We were issued tents and teamed up in twos. I got paired with Khairul. After our march, we proceeded to our pre-allocated areas and set up our tents. Putting up the tents was easy, but digging the drainage channels was not. There was a huge tree behind our tent, and its roots was all over the place. We had to hack and chop away at them for ages before we managed to get the pits done. After that, everyone had to help dig the latrine pits.
By evening, everything was completed. The tent is only waist high, for 2 person to crawl inside to lie in. There was very little room, and we could barely sit upright or flip over when we sleep.

The next few days was spent in outfield lessons, on tactical movements and navigation exercises. They were not as tiring, but sitting on the comfortable grassy slopes in the shaded forest simply makes us doze off during the lessons. For those who could not fight the Zzz Monster sitting down, they had to do it standing up, and with their rifles raised over their heads for the entire lesson.

Activities are ceased early in the outfield, since it usually gets totally dark by 8 or 9pm. At night time the use of torches was forbidden, and we were to keep our noise levels down rest early for the next day, as part of the training was to maintain noise and light discipline. If we wanted to chat we had to grope around in the darkness and huddle together in the small tents.

The combat rations was okay for the first few meals, but I got simply tired of it by the 3rd day. The glutinous rice was okay, but the spaghetti bolognaise was dry and the smell of tomatoes and preservatives made me sick. From the third day onwards I did not bother eating the main meal packs.
The dessert packs were delightful. The green bean soup and chopped chestnuts in soya milk was wonderful in the scorching hot day; they tasted sweet and cool.
Still, I did not feel very hungry when I was outfield. Much to my surprise, 2 packs of biscuits and 1 dessert pack could let me go on for a whole day. It was really little, barely sufficient to make 1 normal meal I would have elsewhere.

At night we had powder baths before we sleep. To ensure our 'hygiene' is maintained we were inspected to check that we had powdered ourselves properly. We were to slap ourselves and generate a cloud of powder. If we could not do that we had to powder ourselves again and rejoin the queue.
St Luke's Prickly Heat powder. Water of our dry bath. We used up the big tin in just 5 days.

On Thursday we marched to the western side of the island, where the deserted buildings of the Tekong Residents still stood. (Pulau Tekong became exclusively owned by SAF a few years back and residents were reallocated to mainland Singapore) The area was preserved exclusively for training purposes to simulate combat in urban areas. There was a working tap there. Leopard company had a 'technical break' there that evening. We were allowed a proper bath (with water), a real privilege which was rumored that we were the only lucky ones to receive.

On the fifth day we were ordered to pack up our tents as we march back towards School 2. We resettled at the forest near the stretch of seaside that leads to the company line. Over there, we were told to prepare our own 'beds' - shell scrapes. Shell scrapes are man-sized, knee deep rectangular pits dug in the ground for us to lie inside in the event of artillery bombing. Lying in these pits would ensure that flying shrapnels would not hit us.

I had the same problem of tree roots with my digging area again, and my shell scrape took me the entire day to dig. The more fortunate ones who had their allocated areas on sandy patches of ground finished quickly, but they were gathered to help dig out a fire trench for our next lesson. By the end of the day our arms were ready to drop off and the blisters that developed on our hands are enough to last us a lifetime.

That night we slept in the open in the shell scrape we dug, under the cool night sky.
"When you go for the outfield exercise you will practice digging your own grave."
Now I know what the joke meant.
It was the first time I slept outdoors in the open without a shelter over my head. Fortunately it did not rain. In fact throughout the entire duration of the exercise it only drizzled lightly once in a hot afternoon. That's SAF weather control for you.

On the sixth day lessons resumed as per normal. We filled in our shell scrape at night, and had another route march back to company line at night. We reached at daybreak, where we were debriefed. End ex! We washed up, rested for a while before we booked out in the morning.


1 month of my BMT has passed. 2 more months to P.O.P.