Well when you play with the bull... sometimes you get the
horn.
But heh, I do know for a fact that people tend to do many funny
things on exercises, esp. topo overseas when you are left all alone
to your own devices with no one to watch over you in a foreign
land.
Some end up supplementing their rations with those of the local
"ninjas" and maybe even tossing away or donating their SAF rations.
We even saw local kids running around with SAF Long 4, if you want
to get an idea of how some soldiers are desperate enough to reduce
their load.
It's not unknown for some daring soldiers to try getting a faster
means of transport by making arrangments with the locals to hitch a
ride. And did end up harbouring in the dewllings of the locals and
getting cosy with them.
So a joyride does not sound strange to me at all, a lot of stranger
things have been done by NSFs. But it is a very stupid idea no
less.
But I certianly don't buy the story about the car looking
abandoned. No one simply abandons a car with the keys and all in a
drivable condition in the middle of nowhere. Your brother should
have radioed for help and attempted to manage the person's
condition... assuming he was telling the truth to begin with. How
the entire detail ran out of water is another thing hard to
believe. I trained in Thailand where it hit 46 degress but we never
came close to running out of water.
Even if he did want to take the car, he should have radioed his
intentions to begin with (hence shifting the responsibility of that
choice away). Unless his coms were down...
But of course, that is besides the point. The whole idea of if you
are going to do something that is probably going to have serious
consequences in the SAF... is best not to get caught at all in the
first place.
