I am a technician during NS. Got call up to infantry reservist
unit at 2PDF. Tot it will be very siong. But have tahan 3 years of
ICT alrd..
My unit make up of ex-store man/technicians/drivers/cooks etc.. All
not from Combat unit, except for sergeant/pc/oc..
Basically, rifleman just do a lot of defence exercise.. 1st ICT,
basically do all the things that u learned before again..
stripe/assembly of rifles, introduce u to SAW/M203 etc.. go
range...go outfield doing movement.. learn all the hand signal
again.. chiong around in the forest.. go section live firing at
second last day of ICT..
2nd ICT... do back what u do in first ICT.. but in slightly faster
pace.. go FIBUA as well. ALso, got 4 days 3 night defence exercise
at Simpang where 1st two days, u will spend all the time,digging
trenches, and filling sandbags.. You will see the SUN, THE SAND,
THE SEA cos Simpang is at the yishun seaside...
at the 3rd day, everything have to be ready and you will standby in
your trenchs for attacks by enemy forces..Just wait in the trench,
eat, talk cock etc..
If lucky, the ememies go attacks other sections, and u just wait
until exercise is cut. If you suay, the whole section/platoon,
might be deploy to go patrolling and go reinforce other
section/platoon and u have to run around in the darks... You will
get little sleep during these three days. It is a bit siong, but
just enjoy yourself out there.. Pray that u r only digging your own
trench and not the command post or what...that is siong, even
though "tobelco" are indented... 4th day is the packed up day..
unfilled all the sandbags, remove the iron picket from the trenchs,
fill up the trenchs.. even though u feel shacked, u will do things
very fast, cos finally can go back camp to bath..
u will go back to camp from Simpang on thursday and friday will be
spend cleaning up all the stores, which is big big headache... and
sat outprocessed liao.
3rd year is actually more relax... went for range
(zeroing/practise/atp test) for the first week + one or two field
movement exercise.. then spend whole saturday of first week in
camp, preparing the things/stores for the defence exercise the next
week... basically relax all the way in the first week. during
range, just sleep while waiting for your turn.
and we go through the same exercise for 4 days at SImpang and we
finally turn operational in this ICT.
Just dun worry abt it. Everyone is doing the same things and just
do your best and for one thing, there is actually no rank
difference between officier and mens in my reservist unit. My
PCs/OCs/Sergeant, all do the same things as us. They dig trench as
well. They move the logs. They clean up the stores. Oil the iron
pickets..During the defence exercise, they are more tired than us
but they still do their jobs well. We can be filling sandbags in
the middle of the nights and our PCs just doing the same things as
well.
This is what touch us and motivate us to do our jobs even better.
Rather than those officers who only know how to arrow people and do
nothings.
Dun worry, 2PDF is not that siong..
