SK diary.

D-day -2 (EX-SK)

04:25 was the first 4 digits my eyes laid upon my watch when they opened for the day. It was live firing day for section and GPMG exercise.

Being duty platoon, we had to quickly draw our weapons and load up the stores for the day. We pushed out to the training grounds earlier then the rest of the wing as advance party. It took the wing a few good hours before everything was in place and ready to go. Suddenly the thoughts of firing live rounds hit me straight in the head, the dangerous elements of firing real live rounds.

Walking from point to point in the ground, holding on to your gun with live bullets made me anxious for once. Negligence Discharge ( ND ) and fratricide were at the back of my mind. Besides then the dreaded punishment for ND, it was also the danger of ricochet and the worse case scenario of hitting someone.

After loading and readying our weapons, we were feeling anxious while we had to kneel at our waiting point. The signal was given, it was time to assault the hill. Slowly prowling into our position, I kept more focus to point my rifle downwards. I was worried because the gun I was using wasn't exactly a very new gun, of course there are faults with old guns like the one I was carrying. I have seen the same model firing off a bullet just by putting the gun down with a certain force. With this in mind, I took a lot of effort to put the gun down slowly but swiftly when we were contacted by the enemy. After hitting the floor, I dashed to my position at the far left which unfortunately was overgrown with mimosa. Prone position over the mimosa patch, trying to figure the command issued by my friend with all the gun shots wasn't easy. Crawling around the mimosa patch to improve my cover, cursing and swearing under my breath with each cut I get. Slowly we combed up the hill, trying my best to keep left as the buddy on my right wouldn't shoot my back while he covers my movement forward.

Tiring it was to assault a hill, things got alot more tougher and dangerous when we had to execute the night attack. Firstly we couldn't see each other clearly in the darkness of the night, keeping in line was a difficult task. Not knowing where you are running and proning in the dark was another challenge, most of the time you would land on something nasty or even a hole.

We reached back to wingline approximately at 0200 the very next day. Unloading of stores and cleaning of weapons till 0500 without a wink of sleep. Moving around like mindless zombies, we cleaned the area and finally booked out at 0800 for a long dreaded sleep back home. Feeling demoralised that we have to book back in to camp only 12 hours later and prepare for D-Day.

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D-day -6 (EX-SK)

Doing Cadet Duty Sergeant the day before Platoon battle course was really rush. I don't have the luxury of time packing my gear for the 2D1N outfield. Always running in and out of duty room doing adhoc work for the wingline.

This is where I realised how important it is to prepare your field pack asap. Although I did not have the time to go through my field pack, all those booking in early on a Sunday evening just to touch up on the items in my field pack has paid off. Spending most of my time in the duty room, grabbing what I need only when field pack inspection was activated certainly gave me butterflies in the stomach. Unsure if I had all my stuff down as a emptied the items out of the bag for inspection. Thankfully all was in place and it was time to move out.

The first day was training for PBC, we had never done attacks in the size of a platoon. Putting aside chemistry and such factors, it wasn't easy to co-ordinate a size which was 3 times what we had been doing the past few weeks. My hats off to the exercise platoon commanders who had to put up with the pressure that the instructors has been applying.