My Year 2020 Series | Part 3: Unit Life in the Army during the Coronavirus Pandemic

 

Part 3: Unit Life in the Army during the Coronavirus Pandemic

My BMT journey came to an end with an extremely tiring 24 km Victory March, the parade for the presentation of my division patch for mono-intake recruits like me and the momentous Passing Out Parade which changed me from a recruit to a private. I came back home, legs shaking, back aching, uniform smelling, and eventually passed out on my bed (disclaimer: I showered and had lunch) for a solid 6 hours in the afternoon.

While waiting for my unit posting, I got to enjoy the longest break I ever had ever since I enlisted into the Army. That break lasted a week, and was called “block leave”. During that long break, I had the time to sort out my personal life. I signed up for a scholarship, did reflections on my performance as a recruit, did a stocktaking of my army items and caught up on the shows that I wanted to watch.

I made a pretty depressing dedication on Instagram, noting how weak and helpless I felt during the tiring route march, thanks to my tendency to be affected under the heat easily. I took the opportunity to thank those who have helped me along the way too. I append the caption here:

END OF BASIC MILITARY TRAINING For me, this phase of life ended on a sad note. I did my best, pushed myself beyond my physical limits in my fatigued body, and ended up in a wreck. Yet, I believe I have grown as a person. During the route march, I had non-stop sweating. The heat I felt was so bad that it made me giddy. I felt so warm and so thirsty that I thought I would be able to suck the whole of the Singapore river dry. I learnt to focus less on the embarrassment of being the only person to take off my helmet (and later even my field pack that I carried) and channel my attention to the kind people looking out for me to keep myself sane. I thought I could walk for very long distances, for I spent much of my free time in that way while I was still a civilian. But by the time I arrived at the floating platform, I could barely stand up straight. My knees kept on bending, and my body swayed, about to faint any time. I tried to forget about the pain, and just move as fast as I can without being concerned about looking like a zombie. In the end, the results matter the most, all the other things are insignificant. Unfortunately, I could not attend the parade with my rifle. I only made it for the re-entry, where I did the pledge, anthem and cheer. Still, I was too tired to notice my surroundings and missed the platoon photo. I learnt not to despair, and did the things that only I could do at the time, that being helping my company mates to adjust themselves before the re-entry part of the parade. I could only receive a closure from this mad phase of my National Service thanks to the efforts of the commanders and my platoon mates. Thank you. I will always be grateful for their taking care of me. And sorry, for not being able to make you guys proud and kept on disappointing you. Fortunately, I had no regrets from my BMT journey. I did whatever I could, and understood more about myself from the success and failures that resulted from my actions.

Saying farewell to my BMT section

Things were pretty messy after the parade ended. Everyone was tired, and I even missed out on the platoon photo because I wanted to go home so badly. We did not really manage to say goodbye to each other properly. Therefore, my BMT section planned to have lunch together to get in touch for one last time.

The meeting was on a hot Tuesday afternoon, at a Korean BBQ restaurant in Orchard Central. We did nothing much but to talk and eat. I had quite a big appetite, so for almost 4 hours straight, I kept on eating, barbequing and taking more food and drinks. I have tried out most of the food and drinks, and have also learned how to cook a soft-boiled egg. Not everyone was so into eating, some spent the time mostly on their phones and some took a smoke break.

Anyway, by the end of it, we were pretty happy with how much we ate. Some of my section mates decided to linger around the area, while I headed to Mount Faber SAFRA e-mart to stock up on supplies - only to come back home empty-handed because it was closed on Tuesdays. At least, I got to enjoy the massage chair there, so the trip was not completely wasted.

As block leave ends, school holidays start and postings are released

My family had relatives over who had come to gather, have fun and eat meals together. These were relatives with my younger cousins since the March school holidays started and they had time on their hands. The gathering felt pretty festive and reminded me of the reunion dinners we had on Chinese New Year. For me, I exchanged pleasantries with the guests and mostly kept to my own devices, since I got hooked on a few anime and Korean drama shows.

On a bright Sunday morning, the much-anticipated unit postings were released online. I was relieved to be posted into infantry as a trooper, but part of me felt bad about the opportunity cost of having forsaken the path to a commander. At the end, I rejoiced, knowing that as a trooper, I would probably have less duties and could have more rest time.

New faces, same commanders

Being placed into a mono-intake batch meant that most of the people would walk the rest of the NS journey together with me after BMT. As such, most of our commanders were familiar faces. There were surprises - my platoon had a new platoon sergeant who is a good-looking Indian lady, and there are quite a lot of men from other companies in BMT posted into my company.

It took some time before we broke the ice and began to mix around more. At the start, there was a lot of explaining to do and lessons to go through for the new people. Fortunately, everyone is a quick learner and we get along well with each other. It was heartening to see the new guys open up more and become more involved in what we do at our unit.

In a couple of months after being posted to my unit, there were even more new and familiar faces joining us in our NS journeys. These were mainly the fresh batch of commanders who went to training institutes after BMT to learn how to command people.

Being a rifleman in an infantry unit - during a pandemic

Being a rifleman meant that I had to carry my SAR 21 rifle wherever there was a mission and to take down enemies or defend an objective. Since I was a reserve, I switched to the semi-automatic weapon when its original holder had to retire for a while due to knee injury. My unit is a motorised infantry, so I can expect less walking and spending more time on the terrexes in future, when training and missions gradually introduce the motorised aspect of operations. For the rest of the time, there were physical activities to build up my physical and combat fitness, and also cleaning and maintaining of the equipment and living quarters. We would also celebrate festivals together and commemorate milestones with parades.

Training changed drastically under the Covid-19 measures. The amount of movement we can do at any one time has been reduced. That meant when moving out of camp for training, everyone had to do it batch by batch and that was especially the case for live firing exercises. As such, there were some sessions that had to be conducted during the weekends where there were no more available slots on other days. Everyone also had to abide by safe distancing rules and wear their masks. Coloured tape started appearing everywhere to guide people on where to stand, and “spider webs” made up of paper strips demarcated different parts of a building to their respective functional groups. I welcomed the change because it meant that the tempo of training had been lowered and that we also did not need to camouflage on our faces in the field. As for large scale events like parades, they had to be scaled down significantly - only those that were involved were to be in the mustering square, while the rest stayed within their individual functional groups in the building.

As Singapore started moving on to Phase 2 of exiting the Circuit Breaker period, things gradually returned to normal. The camouflage was back on, and more of us could gather in any place at any point of time. Still, there were stringent measures in place. These included the enforcement of mask-wearing and social distancing, frequent temperature taking, banning most sports and games, making declarations using SafeEntry and not mixing around with other functional groups.