Army Daze

Just back from a rare meet-up with my closest friends in the army.

It was nothing much, just a small gathering at Newton Circus food centre.

Only four of the six of us turned up. J had an unfortunate event while P had to accompany his new found taiwanese girlfriend.

Sometimes we all need a meet-up like this to bring ourselves back to our glorious past. D, A and G hardly changed at all. And as always, we talked about our days in the army together. We have a pretty checkered history in our NS days, the 6 of us. To cut a long story short, back then each other was all we had and all we had were each other(did i just say the same thing twice?).

Anyway the crucial thing was to update each other and exchange new handphone numbers and thats what we essentially did.

D just quit his job(still can't figure out what it was) at JP Morgan and is currently looking for something else or starting his own biz(yet again).

A's a fireman. Nuff said.

G is still with Accenture and is thinking of quiting.

The thing about all Singaporean men is that 50years on after serving our beloved nation, you put us back together and we'll STILL recall accurately all the funniest, weirdest army stories we experienced. Such is the power of arming men with guns and paying them shite, for two freaking years.

Everything.

Its a pity none of them will be joining me incamp this March. How sad. But the bright side is we still belong to the same brigade hq, all except A the fireman.

So for old times' sake, here's one of our little humble stories to share...

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One faithful night during our recce course in the midst of a 5-day super-xiong exercise, the six of us were on mission trying to recce an enemy position on the other side of a knoll. Now all this was simulated in LCK and we were moving around the thick jungle at 2am in the morning in total pitch darkness.

Now we were walking in a single file and I was the basher for this mission(means i take lead and bash through the bloody forest). A was behind me, G was behind A, and D P J were all following behind.

All of a sudden, A screams and we all hear a loud splashing sound. And A was behind me. A was screaming and splashing and screaming "hong gan liao! hong gan liao!" as if he was gonna die. Splashing goes on for a good 1-2minutes before P finally pulled out a torch and shined on him and we all see him in a shallow flooded ditch beside our beaten path. He had slipped into it and thought he was gonna drown. When in fact the ditch was only knee-deep. So there was A standing knee-deep in the ditch exhausting his vulgarity vocab. We had a good laugh(A was angry with us for that) and all the while A was screaming, G found a diverted path to take.

It was only till we reached our holding area(by then it was too far to track back)that we realised that in the midst of A's panic, he lost his helmet, and 2 bags of our food rations for the night. Smart.

Thankfully the next morning the exercise ended. On the walk back to camp I fell into a half-filled trench and broke my ankle. But thats another story. Haha.

Okie so I can't blog a story as exciting or interesting as it really happened. But still, one day I'll read all this and remember to laugh about it again.

*sigh*

Its reservist for me in March. Darn.