The mother of all screwups that I've seen has to be a
demonstration mass drop at Tuas - a whole lot of Mindef brass were
there to watch. The pallet on which the Mercedes jeep is dropped
has 3 parachutes. Damn thing rolled of the Charlie ramp and only
one opened. One of the boys was on the ground packing up his chute,
heard a rushing noise and dived aside just in time to keep from
getting squashed. Write off one Merc and one mounted Milan system.
That was not a good day for 3rd transport.
Abseiling practice during BCT, doing a casualty rappel. My buddy
was not the most height-loving kind of guy, and I was tied to his
back as the casualty. He slipped while getting into L-shape and let
go of the rope. Next thing I knew I was looking 8 floors up at the
ground - he weighed 85kg, I weighed 65, and we both landed on my
back on the cliff. Anyway, the safety line got wrapped around my
leg and as my buddy kept flailing about, it got tighter and
tighter. I headbutted the back of his head (good thing we were both
wearing helmets at the time), and it was enough to stun him. I told
him to keep still, called up to the safety line belayer and asked
him to give me some slack while I untangled my leg. Once I did
that, I told my buddy to plant his feet on the cliff and walk, not
bounce, down the cliff. I left it up to my platoon sergeant to tear
a few strips off the guy, but when I got back to barracks that
night, I checked my back and saw that I had a bruise on my back
from my shoulders to my hips.
Company exercise in Singapore. The three platoons were to approach
the target from separate directions. My PC decided that he wanted
to cut across this gravel pile which was about 2 storeys high. We
got up to the top, going two steps forward and one step back, and
found hat the bush on the other side was too thick to cut through
quickly. I did a quick recce and reported that it was the same all
along the length of the gravel pile. The PC insisted on trying
another spot, and by the time we were done, we had gone up and down
four times without finding a break. Eventually we skirted around
the pile and the bush, as I recommended originally, and got to the
target an hour late. Needless to say, the OC did not take kindly to
this and the PC was assigned a whole pile of extras. Anyway, on the
way back, I referred to the PC as Wally Weenie the Wonderschmuck,
and the name stuck. For the rest of his tour with us, whenever
anybody was looking for the PC, they would ask Wheres
Wally?.
Night FIBUA exercise in Serimbun. We were the guinea pig batch for
Mindefs study into the effectiveness of issuing each man with a
laser sight. The sight we used had a bracket that was bolted on to
the barrel of the weapon, with the laser emitter sliding on and
fastened by quick-release levers (similar to the ones found on
bicycle wheel hubs). Anyway, went tom the first room, activated the
laser, saw the red dot and fired. Same thing happened with the
second room. Got to the third room, hit the activation button and
got nothing. I checked my weapon and found that the sight had
dropped off because the quick release lever was worn down. Anyway,
we had to call for exercise cut, hit the lights and find the damned
thing it cost $1400 and damned if I was going to sign a 1206 for
that.
LRRP exercise in Brunei. In our team we had two snipers, but one of
the section commanders pulled rank and insisted on navigating. We
walked for 5 hours, did a position check and found that we were
only 2 klicks from where we started the bugger had gone around in
a circle. We took a break and one of the boys whipped out his
camera I still have the photo of the lot of us looking exhausted
and pissed off, with the section commander looking somewhat
sheepish. Anyway, when we started off again, the snipers did the
navigation and got us there within an hour and a half.
Same LRRP exercise. The mission was to look out for a Land Rover
with a cross on the side, and report the number written on the
canvas cover. After a day and a half, a Rover appeared, but it
didnt have the cross. Two majors and a colonel got out of the
Rover and poked around in the bush for about half an hour, then got
back in and took off. We sent a report, but it wasnt relevant to
the exercise anyway. I caught up with an old school mate who was an
OCS instructor, and I asked him if he knew anything about it. As it
turns out, some OCS cadet had his rifle stolen while he was asleep
the weapon was later recovered at a nearby village. The cadet was
an SAF scholar, so he didnt get much more than a reprimand.
