I know I promised to change my blog's layout, but I think I'd may have to delay doing that for a while.Reason is that the last 4 days have been really tiring for me. On Thursday was Exercise Nutcracker. Its basically an exercise that tests your skills and know-how of platoon harbouring. On Thursday we arrived at our designated spot in the forest and started digging our trenches. Now digging may seem easy but it isn't. We were supposed to dig through the night and complete the trench by daylight, which was 6 hrs later. But try digging with little light, tiredness, sleepiness and you'll realise its no easy feat. Well, everybody managed to dig their trenches by 4pm on Friday, by then we were really tired considering that we were not allowed to sleep. Around mid noon on Friday, I was given the Sectional commander appointment. Had to constantly go out for section patrols or fighting patrols which was a real strain on me. I had to lead my section on deliberate and quick attacks. Sometimes when you are tired, you make wrong decisions, which results in doing the same things over and over again. Or when one of your section members make mistakes or refuses to cooperate, you'll have to do everything again. Soon everybody starts getting angry with one another, and tempers start to flare. But luckily these did not happen. it didn't end yet. Once the patrol was done and I was back at platoon camp, I had to resume digging or help out those that had half completed trenches. Then we had to make our FOPK (firetrench overhead protection kit), which was quite easy compared to digging a trench to chest level. Soon night came and sleepiness started to set in. We had to keep awake no matter what but some of them just could not take it. I had to walk around asking people to wake up. What's more frustrating is that after you have woken them up, they sleep again. Worse still, some of them had their rifles taken away from them by our instructors as they sleep, and we'll be the ones who get the shelling from them. Everyone makes mistakes too, including me. Around 3-4 am, when I had finished my rounds and sat down for the first time I immediately fell asleep, when I woke I found out that my blank attachment had been removed. After that, I was afraid to even just rest sitting down. If I wanted to rest, I'd just stand and not move. Then at around 5am, our instructors started to throw thunderflashes at us, it was chaos for those waking up to explosions and gunfire. But I realised that even those that were sleeping started to return fire and cooperating, which made the situation easier to bear. After a while Apple sector was being over-run and I had to lead my reinforcements to Apple sector. It was hard considering that we had to run in the dark, with holes in the ground and tree roots everywhere. Soon my sector, Banana sector started to get over run too, we all had to rush back to reinforce our positions and direct the incoming reinforcements. Around 6am, we were given withdraw orders, we had to put on our full battle order, packs and all, and run out of the forest and prone in the open outside space outside. At that point, I thought the exercise was over and we could all go back, bathe and rest, but I was wrong. The forest opposite our base started lighting up with gunfire, the exercise had not ceased! We had to do a platoon fire-movement towards the 'enemy'. We had to run and prone across this rocky and stony flat ground in our full packs. After the platoon had done this for about 150 meters, we had to charge the enemy. After everything ended, we ran another 300 meters to a clearing where we had to sort out our men, ammo and rations. It was at this point that I realised that one of my men was missing. We found him later, he was sleeping in his trench! How he managed to sleep through gunfire, explosions and shouting I do not know, but I do know one thing. When you are tired, and I mean really tired, anything can happen. You lose control, you forget who you are, and you start hallucinating. I'm glad its over, next Tuesday is Exercise Grandslam, which I think is going to be much worse but I guess its no problem for me, considering that all my mates would be doing it together with me. There's something special and reassuring to see the men under you carrying out your orders even though they are tired and all. It encourages and strengthens everybody. Savant at 5/23/2004 09:19:00 am ;
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