Friday, May 13, 2005
field camp was actually quite fun. it was really tiring both physically and mentally but it was one hell of an experience. out of the seven days we were outfield it rained on five of the days. that part was kinda fucked up but the fact that we managed to endure all that shit and pull through really makes you feel that sense of achievement. ill more or less sum up what happened day to day.
day 1
we left company line in the morning and headed to our first campsite. the place is called pematang. the night before i made sure i shit out everything i had in me cause i really did not want to shit outfield especially after all the stories you hear from your friends whove been through field camp. so anyway we only left company line after like half an hour of field pack inspection. its really irritating actually. unpack everything inside your field pack and then repack everything back in. repeat this cycle a number of times and add some push ups and crunches in between. but of course my platoon was always the fastest at whatever we had to do. so once ready we were off. it was an 8km route march to pematang. the first 4km was alright. some of my friends and i were leading the songs and cheers as we march. together were called the karaoke club. were the ones in charge of leading the songs whenever we march. so anyway after the first 4 km more or less most of us were shagged. it must have been due to the fatigue from last week. we didnt book out that week cause of the field camp. so we just endured all the way and reached pematang eventually. the place wasnt that bad. the drainage canals were still more or less there thanks to the last batch of campers. so we thought that field camp wasnt gonna be that tough. we spent some time pitching our barshas however you spell it and digging the drainage canals a bit more. then had some lectures after that. i actually enjoy the lectures conducted cause you get to eat all the junk food that you pack inside your webbing. by the way did i ever mention how amazing saf equipment is. for example i was able to stuff in two accessory packs into my webbing. its amazing enough that you can stuff a whole frigging gore tex jacket into that small little compartment at the back of the damn thing. then theres the field pack. it looks really small on the outside but dont be fooled. its like some bottomless pit or something. you can stuff lotsa shit inside and still make it look like its not gonna burst. talk about digressing. halfway during the lectures it started to drizzle. the commanders thought it was nothing much so they decided to carry on. then the rain started to pick up. all the recruits were asked to go back to their barshas till the rain stops. so my buddy and i just slacked in our barsha and talked while eating our biscuits. we were thinking if thats the way things are gonna be field camps gonna be a breeze.it rained for quite a while. at that time no water was leaking into our barsha so there was really nothing to worry about. soon after that the rain stopped and we had to consume our combat rations for lunch. before field camp i was really not looking forward to eating combat rations cause i always had the impression its worse than cookhouse food. and trust me cookhouse food isnt that great. when i first tore open my combat ration packet i was disgusted by what was inside. it looked like something that was really mashed up. i just held my breath and ate my food. it turned out to be quite good. at least better than the cookhouse food. after lunch we carried on with some more lectures and some practicals before it was evening. had dinner then we had our first powder bath. whoa. its a first for me. a huge bunch of guys stripping down to only their undies and powdering themselves. and the commanders had to inspect us after that one by one to see if we really powder bathed properly. it was quite fun actually. some of us had to do performances in our undies in front of all the other guys. "this is my rifle this is my gun this is for fun and this is for fuck" some are really funny shit man. anyway i can go on forever about the powder bath but i wont. by seven the place is already very dark. its actually quite freaky. we had admin time after that to do whatever we wanted to till torchlights out. since most of my platoonmates didnt bring any watch we decided to just sleep early and get some rest to recover from the last week of activities that were quite tough. i couldnt sleep well that night. woke up around five times thinking that its time to get ready and fall in but every time i woke up and looked around everyone was still in their barsha. then it started to drizzle again. it was nice and cold. so i went back to sleep.
day 2
i woke up around 5 something thanks to my buddys snoring. it actually isnt snoring. its more like moaning. he makes all these kinda sounds in his sleep that are just really irritating. every time he makes those kinda sounds id nudge him to make him stop. so i woke up. took the top of my long four of to get ready to change to my vest slack for 5bx. for those who dont know its a kind of exercise thing. halfway while changing i decided to brush my teeth. i wanted to make it a point to maintain my oral hygiene throughout the camp by brushing at least once a day. in the end i only brushed my teeth twice out of the seven days. its kinda sick if you think about but when youre outfield and as time goes by and conditions start to get harsh you start to not give a damn. hahaha. i just remembered. i forgot to mention that combat rations are dry. thats the reason why they can be kept for such a long time. so you gotta drink more water to make up for that lack of water. its also cause of this reason that most people lose weight after field camp. i certainly did. i just took my weight just now. i lost three kilos. its not that bad i guess. ive got friends who surely lost much more than that. so for those laterally challenged people out there join the army. its a really good lose weight programme. so back to the second day. we consumed our breakfast before falling in at 630. breakfast is basically the stuff in your accessory packs like biscuits and such. one more thing. in field camp wherever you go youve got to bring your rifle along with you otherwise the commanders will try to take em away and you get into a lot of shit for that. so we did 5bx and a "short run" after that. the runs only 1.5km but it doesnt feel short at all when youre in vest slack. to add to that after the run we still did two sets of push ups crunches and burpies. i swear that after all that i felt like just falling out and giving up. luckily for me throughout the seven days i didnt. by today the soild at our campsite was really squishy and muddy all thanks to the rain the night before. really slippery too. the day went on with more lectures and practicals. sometime after lunch during a lecture it started to rain really heavily. just like that without any early warning. so all of us had to rush back to our barshas to take cover. this time round we werent so lucky. water was leaking into our tent. my buddy and i had to lie down while holding the barsha up so not that much water would leak in. by then a lot of us were already complaining about the bad weather. this kept up for like an hour or so before lectures resumed. the soil was really muddy and slippery this time. and since we had to do all our practicals and stuff in the field we were all basically really dirty. by the time night falls theres usually nothing much you can do due to the very low visibility. the strange thing about this night is that it was darker than the night before. we powder bathed in the evening and then we carried on with our own personal admin time. most of us were grumbling about how muddy the soil was. were were really looking forward to the next campsite that we were going to head to tomorrow. we imagined that it could not be any worse than the conidition at pematang which was already very bad on its own. the groundsheets we sued to make the barsha were already very wet and covered with mud. somehow me and my buddy managed to clean the groundsheet a bit before lying down on it to sleep. once again i had a sleepless night. thanks to my buddys weird sounds the not knowing of the time and also thanks to the rain which came once again in the middle of the night.
day 3
we woke up slightly earlier than normal that day to pack up all our stuff and break down our barshas cause we were gonna move to our next campsite. before moving off we had field pack inspection. so we really got shouted at and did some pumping. then we had to clean up the place. of all sections my section was chosen to dismantle the latrine and pack up all the equipment onto the tonner. while my section was busy taking out the iron pickets and the cloth one of friends wanted to take a shit cause he was having a diarrheoa attack. he couldnt take it anymore so he just shat right in front of everyone beside some tree out in the open and just placed some tissue on his shit to cover it. it really isnt that fun to pack up a shithole while your friends shitting in front of you and youre able to see the shit slowly come out from his anus. so once that shit was done we route marched on to our next campsite which was an oil palm plantation. by the time we reached it was late morning. the campsite looked really good. very dry and even. so we were happy to get a place better than our previous campsite we thought that maybe things arhsawere starting to go uphill again. after pitching our barshas we had to dig our drainage canals. this part was frigging tiring cause of the really hot weather. this is one of the two days when it didnt rain.we spent a number quite some time digging cause we were really tired and the weather wasnt really helping. not to mention the ground was actually quite hard and there were lots of roots all over the place which make it hard to dig. after the drainage canal was done we had lunch and some rest. then we continued digging. the oc digged a rather deep drainage canal for us to see and use a gauge. we had to dig our canals to at least as deep as his before we could stop digging. so we slaved in the sun till we finally managed to finish digging. after digging we went for some lectures and did some practicals. it was a really tiring day. all of us were looking forward to next day cause of the technical break. the time when wed actually get to bathe and feel clean and have personal admin time for ourselves while theres still daylight. back to today. section movements are pretty fun. me and my section were enjoying ourselves just wasting rounds and playing with the thunderflashes. were lucky to have a really nice section commander who can relate with us really well. so after all that we just had dinner and went to clean our rifles. then it became dark and theres not really much that you can do when its dark so we just tried to fall asleep. so thats more or less day 3. i shall stop here for now. ill continue later on or something. boy im frigging shagged now. out.
day 1
we left company line in the morning and headed to our first campsite. the place is called pematang. the night before i made sure i shit out everything i had in me cause i really did not want to shit outfield especially after all the stories you hear from your friends whove been through field camp. so anyway we only left company line after like half an hour of field pack inspection. its really irritating actually. unpack everything inside your field pack and then repack everything back in. repeat this cycle a number of times and add some push ups and crunches in between. but of course my platoon was always the fastest at whatever we had to do. so once ready we were off. it was an 8km route march to pematang. the first 4km was alright. some of my friends and i were leading the songs and cheers as we march. together were called the karaoke club. were the ones in charge of leading the songs whenever we march. so anyway after the first 4 km more or less most of us were shagged. it must have been due to the fatigue from last week. we didnt book out that week cause of the field camp. so we just endured all the way and reached pematang eventually. the place wasnt that bad. the drainage canals were still more or less there thanks to the last batch of campers. so we thought that field camp wasnt gonna be that tough. we spent some time pitching our barshas however you spell it and digging the drainage canals a bit more. then had some lectures after that. i actually enjoy the lectures conducted cause you get to eat all the junk food that you pack inside your webbing. by the way did i ever mention how amazing saf equipment is. for example i was able to stuff in two accessory packs into my webbing. its amazing enough that you can stuff a whole frigging gore tex jacket into that small little compartment at the back of the damn thing. then theres the field pack. it looks really small on the outside but dont be fooled. its like some bottomless pit or something. you can stuff lotsa shit inside and still make it look like its not gonna burst. talk about digressing. halfway during the lectures it started to drizzle. the commanders thought it was nothing much so they decided to carry on. then the rain started to pick up. all the recruits were asked to go back to their barshas till the rain stops. so my buddy and i just slacked in our barsha and talked while eating our biscuits. we were thinking if thats the way things are gonna be field camps gonna be a breeze.it rained for quite a while. at that time no water was leaking into our barsha so there was really nothing to worry about. soon after that the rain stopped and we had to consume our combat rations for lunch. before field camp i was really not looking forward to eating combat rations cause i always had the impression its worse than cookhouse food. and trust me cookhouse food isnt that great. when i first tore open my combat ration packet i was disgusted by what was inside. it looked like something that was really mashed up. i just held my breath and ate my food. it turned out to be quite good. at least better than the cookhouse food. after lunch we carried on with some more lectures and some practicals before it was evening. had dinner then we had our first powder bath. whoa. its a first for me. a huge bunch of guys stripping down to only their undies and powdering themselves. and the commanders had to inspect us after that one by one to see if we really powder bathed properly. it was quite fun actually. some of us had to do performances in our undies in front of all the other guys. "this is my rifle this is my gun this is for fun and this is for fuck" some are really funny shit man. anyway i can go on forever about the powder bath but i wont. by seven the place is already very dark. its actually quite freaky. we had admin time after that to do whatever we wanted to till torchlights out. since most of my platoonmates didnt bring any watch we decided to just sleep early and get some rest to recover from the last week of activities that were quite tough. i couldnt sleep well that night. woke up around five times thinking that its time to get ready and fall in but every time i woke up and looked around everyone was still in their barsha. then it started to drizzle again. it was nice and cold. so i went back to sleep.
day 2
i woke up around 5 something thanks to my buddys snoring. it actually isnt snoring. its more like moaning. he makes all these kinda sounds in his sleep that are just really irritating. every time he makes those kinda sounds id nudge him to make him stop. so i woke up. took the top of my long four of to get ready to change to my vest slack for 5bx. for those who dont know its a kind of exercise thing. halfway while changing i decided to brush my teeth. i wanted to make it a point to maintain my oral hygiene throughout the camp by brushing at least once a day. in the end i only brushed my teeth twice out of the seven days. its kinda sick if you think about but when youre outfield and as time goes by and conditions start to get harsh you start to not give a damn. hahaha. i just remembered. i forgot to mention that combat rations are dry. thats the reason why they can be kept for such a long time. so you gotta drink more water to make up for that lack of water. its also cause of this reason that most people lose weight after field camp. i certainly did. i just took my weight just now. i lost three kilos. its not that bad i guess. ive got friends who surely lost much more than that. so for those laterally challenged people out there join the army. its a really good lose weight programme. so back to the second day. we consumed our breakfast before falling in at 630. breakfast is basically the stuff in your accessory packs like biscuits and such. one more thing. in field camp wherever you go youve got to bring your rifle along with you otherwise the commanders will try to take em away and you get into a lot of shit for that. so we did 5bx and a "short run" after that. the runs only 1.5km but it doesnt feel short at all when youre in vest slack. to add to that after the run we still did two sets of push ups crunches and burpies. i swear that after all that i felt like just falling out and giving up. luckily for me throughout the seven days i didnt. by today the soild at our campsite was really squishy and muddy all thanks to the rain the night before. really slippery too. the day went on with more lectures and practicals. sometime after lunch during a lecture it started to rain really heavily. just like that without any early warning. so all of us had to rush back to our barshas to take cover. this time round we werent so lucky. water was leaking into our tent. my buddy and i had to lie down while holding the barsha up so not that much water would leak in. by then a lot of us were already complaining about the bad weather. this kept up for like an hour or so before lectures resumed. the soil was really muddy and slippery this time. and since we had to do all our practicals and stuff in the field we were all basically really dirty. by the time night falls theres usually nothing much you can do due to the very low visibility. the strange thing about this night is that it was darker than the night before. we powder bathed in the evening and then we carried on with our own personal admin time. most of us were grumbling about how muddy the soil was. were were really looking forward to the next campsite that we were going to head to tomorrow. we imagined that it could not be any worse than the conidition at pematang which was already very bad on its own. the groundsheets we sued to make the barsha were already very wet and covered with mud. somehow me and my buddy managed to clean the groundsheet a bit before lying down on it to sleep. once again i had a sleepless night. thanks to my buddys weird sounds the not knowing of the time and also thanks to the rain which came once again in the middle of the night.
day 3
we woke up slightly earlier than normal that day to pack up all our stuff and break down our barshas cause we were gonna move to our next campsite. before moving off we had field pack inspection. so we really got shouted at and did some pumping. then we had to clean up the place. of all sections my section was chosen to dismantle the latrine and pack up all the equipment onto the tonner. while my section was busy taking out the iron pickets and the cloth one of friends wanted to take a shit cause he was having a diarrheoa attack. he couldnt take it anymore so he just shat right in front of everyone beside some tree out in the open and just placed some tissue on his shit to cover it. it really isnt that fun to pack up a shithole while your friends shitting in front of you and youre able to see the shit slowly come out from his anus. so once that shit was done we route marched on to our next campsite which was an oil palm plantation. by the time we reached it was late morning. the campsite looked really good. very dry and even. so we were happy to get a place better than our previous campsite we thought that maybe things arhsawere starting to go uphill again. after pitching our barshas we had to dig our drainage canals. this part was frigging tiring cause of the really hot weather. this is one of the two days when it didnt rain.we spent a number quite some time digging cause we were really tired and the weather wasnt really helping. not to mention the ground was actually quite hard and there were lots of roots all over the place which make it hard to dig. after the drainage canal was done we had lunch and some rest. then we continued digging. the oc digged a rather deep drainage canal for us to see and use a gauge. we had to dig our canals to at least as deep as his before we could stop digging. so we slaved in the sun till we finally managed to finish digging. after digging we went for some lectures and did some practicals. it was a really tiring day. all of us were looking forward to next day cause of the technical break. the time when wed actually get to bathe and feel clean and have personal admin time for ourselves while theres still daylight. back to today. section movements are pretty fun. me and my section were enjoying ourselves just wasting rounds and playing with the thunderflashes. were lucky to have a really nice section commander who can relate with us really well. so after all that we just had dinner and went to clean our rifles. then it became dark and theres not really much that you can do when its dark so we just tried to fall asleep. so thats more or less day 3. i shall stop here for now. ill continue later on or something. boy im frigging shagged now. out.