I've gotten numb to the feeling of walking long distances because Brunei proved that even in the most trying circumstances (pouring rain, bursting load, wet boots, heat rash, sandfly bites), there is still some comfort in marching to the sound of the water flowing over smooth rocks, leaves shuffling in the wind or to the cleansing rain that pelters on your war-hardy body all day. There's the ha-ha bird that laughs at your plight and you laugh back all in good fun. Another expletive from yet another man fires into the air, and like a horse given a good whip, I hurried on. The longer this drags, the longer my men suffer.
There is no way to describe the sheer brutality of Brunei training, not to me because I can take everything in quite a robotic way, but to the men because it hurts them. I'm not even talking about foot rot, fatigue or the red, swollen feet that are damaged beyond recognition, perhaps more so is the burning question of WHY THE HELL AM I DOING THIS. Maybe it's got to do with the growing irrelevance of jungle warfare, but it hit me like some rock from the sun as I sat down and was talking with the men one day. Every, single man in the platoon, had put their families and lives behind, their problems (suicide, failed marriage, separation, financial woes) at the back of their minds, to commit to, come to think about it, rather pointless walking, observing even more pointless tactical fieldcraft, attacking fortified objectives that your mind is tuned to falsify. It's laudable is it not, this mettle and courage to plunge into the unknown.
Brunei training ransacked me, and dug deep down from within, the very reason why I wanted to be a Platoon Commander in the first place, a reason which I have known but whose meaning was still kind of fluffy, a reason which I had found hard to convince myself to believe.
As we ascended the spectacular 7 knolls, some of the men were already limping in agony. One had his socks already eating his flesh, another had to walk with an improvised walking stick. During one of the rest points, one man was starting to cry, this strong man whom I never worried about. It was strange, but even in the rain, he was using his pen to write out the Chinese character ENDURE on his palm. He looked at me and muttered,"Sir, I'm doing this for you ok!"
More defining moments came, but they register better in the form of unwritten memories.
This Platoon has worked out fine. I'm proud of their fighting spirit. Every single one of them.
There is no way to describe the sheer brutality of Brunei training, not to me because I can take everything in quite a robotic way, but to the men because it hurts them. I'm not even talking about foot rot, fatigue or the red, swollen feet that are damaged beyond recognition, perhaps more so is the burning question of WHY THE HELL AM I DOING THIS. Maybe it's got to do with the growing irrelevance of jungle warfare, but it hit me like some rock from the sun as I sat down and was talking with the men one day. Every, single man in the platoon, had put their families and lives behind, their problems (suicide, failed marriage, separation, financial woes) at the back of their minds, to commit to, come to think about it, rather pointless walking, observing even more pointless tactical fieldcraft, attacking fortified objectives that your mind is tuned to falsify. It's laudable is it not, this mettle and courage to plunge into the unknown.
Brunei training ransacked me, and dug deep down from within, the very reason why I wanted to be a Platoon Commander in the first place, a reason which I have known but whose meaning was still kind of fluffy, a reason which I had found hard to convince myself to believe.
As we ascended the spectacular 7 knolls, some of the men were already limping in agony. One had his socks already eating his flesh, another had to walk with an improvised walking stick. During one of the rest points, one man was starting to cry, this strong man whom I never worried about. It was strange, but even in the rain, he was using his pen to write out the Chinese character ENDURE on his palm. He looked at me and muttered,"Sir, I'm doing this for you ok!"
More defining moments came, but they register better in the form of unwritten memories.
This Platoon has worked out fine. I'm proud of their fighting spirit. Every single one of them.