Anyway I believe EOD should be considered elite judging, by the
high amounts of risk in their job scope, especially so when they
are dealing with real, live ordance.
If you wanna classify in terms of special-skill identifications
(badges & tabs), then other such experts like snipers,
parachutists/riggers, Rangers, etc. must also be recognized
alongside the EOD personnel. But they're highly-trained soldiers,
rather than highly-trained units per se.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Awards_and_decorations_of_the_Singapore_Armed_Forces
In the Singapore context, those in 36 SCE train only as combat engineers too.
EOD = Explosive Ordnance Disposal, geddit? i.e. Bomb disposal unit.
They're not like the Viet Cong sappers who infiltrate to plant
explosives as sabotage or ambush. This local equivalent would
instead be the CDOs, who train their own demolition experts. NDU
also has their own EOD sub-unit.
You know Jason Lim, the weirdo artist (~lol~) who dropped his
chandelier at the Venice Biennale? He's a Pre-U buddy of mine &
a former bomb-disposal expert at 36 SCE. He'd brought me up to his
bunk once to "take cover" when I was in his camp, & I got to
learn that his vocation was quite a good-life, even boring one.
Sure, the dangers are there (when activated) & the technical
demands are quite high. But he also had a lot of downtime -- plenty
of standbys & on-calls -- when not attaching out to follow
combat units doing blind clearance inside the SAFTI live-firing
areas.
