Fieldcamp @ Simpang (Part 3)
26 Jan 2005
Woke up at 0645 hours to do the stand 2 until 0715 hours. Was shivering again. Just hated the cold mornings at Simpang. Breakfast consisted of glutinous rice and pastry filled with dry curry and green peas. Ate an extra piece of glutinous rice, just in case. After breakfast, I shaved but it took quite a while as the blade was blunt already. Looked into the mirror and saw that my face had a combination of tanned + oily + old! Looked kind of weird to me. I haven’t washed my hair ever since we entered Simpang and when I get back to camp, I would have to get rid of the little bits of sand stuck in and around my hair.
Woke up at 0645 hours to do the stand 2 until 0715 hours. Was shivering again. Just hated the cold mornings at Simpang. Breakfast consisted of glutinous rice and pastry filled with dry curry and green peas. Ate an extra piece of glutinous rice, just in case. After breakfast, I shaved but it took quite a while as the blade was blunt already. Looked into the mirror and saw that my face had a combination of tanned + oily + old! Looked kind of weird to me. I haven’t washed my hair ever since we entered Simpang and when I get back to camp, I would have to get rid of the little bits of sand stuck in and around my hair.
Me, My M-16 and My 106mm
Prow from the front view
Prow from the side view
Warrant Law came to our section and asked us to improve our prow and jeep. So I decided to get a parang to chop and collect some branches. The branches near the prow were good but they had an enormous amount of killer red ants which bit my hand and the lower parts of my legs. And boy, they can really bite! I abandoned the branches near the prow and moved to PC’s location instead to see if there were any good branches that I could use to cover our prow even better. And indeed there was! Branch after branch did I cut and handed them personally over to our section. Ramlee then helped to further camouflage our prow.
Warrant Law came to our section and asked us to improve our prow and jeep. So I decided to get a parang to chop and collect some branches. The branches near the prow were good but they had an enormous amount of killer red ants which bit my hand and the lower parts of my legs. And boy, they can really bite! I abandoned the branches near the prow and moved to PC’s location instead to see if there were any good branches that I could use to cover our prow even better. And indeed there was! Branch after branch did I cut and handed them personally over to our section. Ramlee then helped to further camouflage our prow.
In and around the prow - part 1
In and around the prow - part 2
By 1000 hours, it was quite hot which all the more made me exhausted! Ramlee told me to stop as there were enough of branches. I took a break of about 10 – 15 minutes. As PC’s side was still in the process of having sandbags filled and put in their respective places. I really pity the guys at PC’s side. A lot of people were unhappy with the way Sufian worked. It is with no doubt that although he downgraded temporarily (pending a medical review), the way he did things was too much. Doing things slowly, taking his own sweet time, talking too much… basically anything and everything you could think of to not help the guys (in army terms, it’s called keng or chao keng).
By 1000 hours, it was quite hot which all the more made me exhausted! Ramlee told me to stop as there were enough of branches. I took a break of about 10 – 15 minutes. As PC’s side was still in the process of having sandbags filled and put in their respective places. I really pity the guys at PC’s side. A lot of people were unhappy with the way Sufian worked. It is with no doubt that although he downgraded temporarily (pending a medical review), the way he did things was too much. Doing things slowly, taking his own sweet time, talking too much… basically anything and everything you could think of to not help the guys (in army terms, it’s called keng or chao keng).
How to man the gun in such hot weather?
Simpang in the Evening
I felt personally that he should not be helping with the prow at all. There were other incidents that happened that I do not wish to mention. Overall, he should be posted to some other unit where he will save us a lot of frustration and unhappiness. After helping out with almost 80% of PC’s prow, we moved back to our own section where we took a nap. Even though the weather was hot, it was cool enough for us. Later in the late afternoon at around 1500 – 1600 hours, we heard the sound of choppers flying around our area. These were the UH – 1 Huey and Chinook helicopters. Initially, I thought these helicopters were part of the exercise but later found out that they were from another unit having their own exercise at Simpang. But seriously, the sounds coming from these choppers were really intimidating. I can imagine if we were to fight a war, the commands given, firing of weapons, men running from one position to another, helicopters flying overhead, it could prove to be a very intimidating sight! Skipping to the late evening where our exercise was about to start, we had a quick dinner of instant noodles using the bunsen burner.
At around 1915 hours, we stood by waiting for the action to start. We soon heard communications from different sections of Charlie company relaying messages to and fro. As the hours passed by, it soon became evident that our gun, the 106mm Recoilless Rifle was not needed even if the 84mm and LAW ran out of ammo. PC even requested for reinforcement but to no avail. The least that we could say was that we fired, not the 106 but the M-16 during the exercise! It was until 5 minutes passed midnight that Warrant Law asked us (Jeeps 1 & 2) to have a small briefing. He briefed us on how we fared during the exercise and later told us to go non-tech. We dismissed and after that, cleared our arms and went non-tech. Luckily we did not fire blanks; otherwise our chamber would have been full of carbon! We reached our prow, took our positions and slept…
I felt personally that he should not be helping with the prow at all. There were other incidents that happened that I do not wish to mention. Overall, he should be posted to some other unit where he will save us a lot of frustration and unhappiness. After helping out with almost 80% of PC’s prow, we moved back to our own section where we took a nap. Even though the weather was hot, it was cool enough for us. Later in the late afternoon at around 1500 – 1600 hours, we heard the sound of choppers flying around our area. These were the UH – 1 Huey and Chinook helicopters. Initially, I thought these helicopters were part of the exercise but later found out that they were from another unit having their own exercise at Simpang. But seriously, the sounds coming from these choppers were really intimidating. I can imagine if we were to fight a war, the commands given, firing of weapons, men running from one position to another, helicopters flying overhead, it could prove to be a very intimidating sight! Skipping to the late evening where our exercise was about to start, we had a quick dinner of instant noodles using the bunsen burner.
At around 1915 hours, we stood by waiting for the action to start. We soon heard communications from different sections of Charlie company relaying messages to and fro. As the hours passed by, it soon became evident that our gun, the 106mm Recoilless Rifle was not needed even if the 84mm and LAW ran out of ammo. PC even requested for reinforcement but to no avail. The least that we could say was that we fired, not the 106 but the M-16 during the exercise! It was until 5 minutes passed midnight that Warrant Law asked us (Jeeps 1 & 2) to have a small briefing. He briefed us on how we fared during the exercise and later told us to go non-tech. We dismissed and after that, cleared our arms and went non-tech. Luckily we did not fire blanks; otherwise our chamber would have been full of carbon! We reached our prow, took our positions and slept…
posted by 106ers at 20:59
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home