A little whisper in the dark

Serve And Forget

The National Service scheme is pretty much a rite of passage for all Singaporean males, and so it often is the common denominator when guys come together in social situations and search for common ground to chat about. Whether you were rich, poor, studied up to Masters or as little as Primary 8 Mono, you probably belonged to a unit of men, had a story or two to tell.

And my special moments this period of my life were of:

......handing in my pink I/C, and literally losing my identity (from then on I was either Chao Recruit, or simply "Chan")

......waking up at before the sun came up. Every morning. They call it reveille. I call it torture.

......the first time you saw the standard obstacle course

......being given your first live grenade, which you held in two hands like it was something sacred and fragile (it really is quite safe till you pull the pin)

......going on field camp, spending half the day in a training shed while it poured outside, and going back to our bashas to find that 90% of the tents had been washed away down the slope.

......caught for smuggling snacks to field camp and being made to eat all of it at once

......the canteen 3-tonner that pulled up every few days during field camp loaded with Twisties and cold soft drink

......chiong sua (Counterstrike for real)

......night prowling duties, particularly during the Chinese 7th Month.

......us BMT trainees toward the end of our course marching and shouting POP LOH! when one platoon of BMT recourse trainees passing by responded with ORD LOH!

......sleepless nights wondering why there was 13 beds in the bunk, why one of the beds was a special green colour and there was a Chinese talisman pasted above the front door

......having to go to the toilet alone because they always make you drink one litre of water before you go to bed

......three mosquitoes parked in a row sucking on the blood in my arm

......mosquitoes so numerous, fat and slow that you can stomp them to death with your boots if they flew along the ground low enough

......played with pyrotechnics

......learned to drive a forklift

And a whole host of other things that I can't mention here.

I draw a deep breath, and I still remember the pungent smell of rifle cleaning oil, Kiwi boot polish, and Prickly Heat Powder.

Serve And Forget? Not likely. It wasn't all bad, really.

posted by Chung Leong @ 12:50 AM