Hell Week is Over

Finally, the hellish week was over. No more ICT till next year. Wee.

[ Monday ]

Booked into camp. Morale was very low. At 1:30 pm, we loaded stores and boarded the 3-tonner. We arrived at the site at around 3 pm. The near-bank TCPs (Traffic Control Points) deployed first. Mine was TCP23, the last checkpoint before the river crossing. It's just a sandy road leading to the harbor. We are also in charge of a Holding Area, which is just atop a hill for people to park their vehicles before they cross.

We started operating at 6 pm. My duty was from 10 pm to 12 midnight. Since it was the first day, no vehicles attempted to cross the river. The 2 hours passed veeery slowly as I chatted with my section I/C, Andy. The motorcycle platoon smuggled in chicken rice. It was heavenly. At night, I tried to get some sleep on my groundsheet. It was horrible; every few minutes, I would hear mosquito buzzing around my ear and I would try to swat them away. This repeated throughout the night and I don't think I got any sleep. At 2 am, some tanks came into our Holding Area to do practice support fire.

[ Tuesday ]

It began to rain very heavily from 8 am onwards. The weather was reported CAT1. Everyone stayed in the 3-tonner and chatted for hours. Thanks to the rain, I skipped my 10 am duty. Everyone prayed the rain would last all day and it'd be an 'exercise cut' but I guess it is wishful thinking on our part. The rain finally stopped in the afternoon. No vehicles again for the whole day. It was a waste of time.

At night, the first convoy came by and everyone was real busy. I was very nervous during my duty at 10 pm. Andy told me to man the telejay while he halted and directed traffic. It was quite horrible as the convoys arriving did not tally with our vehicle sheet; seems like commanders switched convoy numbers at the last minute. It was hell. One senior guy named Wong came out to assist us cos' two guys were simply not enough. The telejay kept ringing every five minutes and it was stressful relaying information between my section-mates and the Exchange. Our PC complained that we needed more men at the Holding Area, so everyone who got off duty had to go there for... even more duty. I slept at around 2 am but could still see and hear convoys coming in.


[ Wednesday ]

I woke up and was surprised to hear that we were down to the last few convoys. This means that vehicles kept constantly coming in throughout the night while I slept. Unfortunately, I had food poisoning. My tummy was hurting like mad. Had to go do my business on a hillside and I saw pieces of tissue everywhere, too.

My duty was at 10 am again. It was quite busy. As usual, the telejay buzzed like crazy. There was a miscommunication and I almost got F'ed by the Exchange. The senior, Wong, was still around and helped talked things out with them (I would later learn that Wong actually was being a super-man by assisting every single duty personnel that needed help, in addition to his own duties.) With a lot of help, the last convoy left to cross the river. The exercise was cut soon at around 1 pm. Everyone was elated. My tummy was hurting. On the way back to camp, I almost puked due to motion sickness. We were allowed to go home at night.


[ Thursday ]

Returned to camp in the morning to do washing and accounting of stores. Nothing happened. Spent most of the day sleeping and booked out at night.


[ Friday ]

Alas, the final day. Everyone was in high spirits until a series of major screw-ups happened. We were supposed to out-process in the afternoon at around 2 pm. Suddenly, it was reported that the Medic platoon lost like 5 stretchers (the thing is so big, how is that even possible?!). Everyone was held back in the training shed while investigations were going on. Time passed very slowly. We did nothing and idled till around 6 pm (that's 4 hours!). It didn't help that one idiotic Captain kept pestering us to do area cleaning 3 times. One of our guys finally broke down and openly said he was going to lodge a complaint since it felt like the Captain was doing it on purpose. With everyone's low morale and bad mood, a few sided with the guy and started hurling abuse at the Captain. It was a nightmare for me; I just want to book out and what they were doing weren't helping. Our PC & PS came to help calm the situation.

Finally, at around 7 pm, we were allowed to go. After each person forked out $2 to pay for the lost stretchers, of course. It was so late already. What a waste of time. I just hope what the 'complaint guy' did will not make the unit condemn us when we come for our next ICT.