The past week has been a week of highlights... Range and Field Camp!
Home On The Range
After days of practising in the IMT, it's time for us to go fire using live ammunition.
And that means Range for 2 days.
It's not that kind of stuff where you simply drop by at a site and do what you have to do for a few hours, then leave. The whole company had to stay there for the whole bloody day, from 8 in the morning to about midnight.
So for 2 days, I could only sleep at around 1 a.m.. That's after we return to our bunks to have shower and shit and do other admin stuff.
The first day was Saturday... and it was allocated for trial shots alone... our actual tests will be on the subsequent Sunday.
Before the start of everything, I was very nervous because of the seriousness of it all... we're dealing with live ammunition! When I finally got my first magazine of live rounds and began my trial shot, I realized that I couldn't really take the noise and the recoil of the rifle when I fire. I tend to blink my eyes at the very moment I squeeze the trigger and the shot was fired -- something which didn't happen in IMT.
One memorable thing about the Range was the starry sky when night falls. You never get to see such a starry sky anywhere in Singapore!
And on the first night of the range exercise, I had fever, and because I didn't want to miss the tests, I used Panadol to keep my temperature under control... on the second day, aside from Panadol, I also drank lots of water to try rehydrating myself... my detail-mate Leon can testify as to how many times I went to the toilet during Range Day 2!
The tests turned out to be OK for me... the most difficult part was prone position without sandbag support. I did the night version for this test and none of my shots got in! However I managed to pass all the other positions of shooting, of which my favourite was the one where we stand in a foxhole with sandbags to support our arms.
Sick again
After trying to keep my temperature under control so as not to miss Range, I finally reported sick first thing on the day after Range.
At the medical centre, I finally found the car magazines which Colin and Shixiang read when they reported sick... they were old issues (year 2000 to 2001), but the cars inside were familiar models (to me, whose knowledge of cars is limited to Initial D cars). There were even a few articles on the Civic EK-9, and after reading those exciting comments about the EK-9, I grew to love that car even more!
Back to my illness, I was under the impression that as long as my cough wasn't cured, my body temperature will keep rising so as to resist the attack of the virus causing my cough, so I told the Medical Officer to change my cough medicine as the one I got last time wasn't effective enough.
So my new medicine contained some familiar pills like Paracetamol (main component of Panadol), Dequalinium and Chloramine. New ones include some brown cough mixture (instead of the pink one I got last time) and Vitamin C pills (which turned out to be very tasty).
Field Camp
Fortunately, I managed to recover from most of my illness by the time the Field Camp began. According to Army rules, however, I was still "on status", so I could not march with the rest of the company to the camp site... all the "status" people were to help do some admin work before boarding the tonner which will take us to the camp site.
The PES C Field Camp has a duration of only 4 days, so it wasn't so tough... for me who was on status, it was even less tough... every morning when they go for exercise and run, the status people will stay at the camp site to help look after the rifles of our platoon mates doing training, together with those who did guard duty on the previous day.
The Field Camp basically taught us not to take cleanliness for granted. There was obviously no toilet, so we had to pee at a selected site (which began to smell like a zoo after day 2). The place where we shit was divided into cubicles using canvas sheets... each cubicle consists of a... hole in the ground into which we drop our "bombs" and cover them with soil after we're done with our business.
And I actually tried shitting that way once... on Day 2 morning.
The training on movement under enemy fire was the most enjoyable one. We got to fire blank rounds (whose recoil was not as great as the one caused by live rounds) and all. It was a rewarding experience, except for the time when I volunteered to be the leader of a group of 3 during a practice drill... in that exercise alone, I got the greatest frequency of weapon stoppages.
The combat rations (long-shelf-life versions of a variety of rice and noodle dishes) were OK for me (though it was not so OK for most of the others), and when there was time for us to cook our own meals (we're given instant noodles)... those were the best moments for me during the whole field camp. I couldn't deny that I fould the instant noodles to be better than the combat rations...
As for clothing, I only had one set of No.4 (the camouflage patterned uniform) for the first 3 days (after which they will give us resupply for uniform). So you can imagine how my No.4 smells of ammonia after I finally got to rip it off my itchy back.
Yes, since we only get to apply talcum powder on the 1st and 2nd nights (they call it the "powder bath") instead of washing ourselves, my back got very itchy at the beginning of Day 3. Even after the camp, my back could still get so itchy that I would go into a convulsion and my face would suddenly get contorted in a way which will make those people around me think I was possessed.
