You, like many others here, have made too much of the complaint.
What is wrong with complaining in this instance? You say one night
of disrupted sleep should be tolerated. But if there wasn't a
complaint, would there be a 2nd, 3rd and 4th time? In fact, in my
experience, once a route had been checked out, and planned for,
commanders usually prefer to reuse that route in future because
then they do not have to recce the route, look for the best route
to the hospital, water points, potential danger areas, etc, etc.
Chances are that had there not been a complaint, the route would be
used again, and again and again.
I suspect alot of the animosity here is due to the perception that
the soldiers invovled may very well be punished. If so, I hope that
Mindef would not be so stupid, but I recognise that disciplinary
action may very well have been taken. Coz this is the army and this
is the way the army does things.
But she is clearly not at fault. She can't have known how the army
works. She is a civilian who doesn't know better. She was
inconvenienced, she acted on it to try and prevent it from ever
happening again. She did not say "punish those soldiers". Neither
did she say "Ban those soldiers from using ECP". I do not detect
any intention on her part for our soldiers to be punished for such
a slight mistake.
