argh. my wrists hurt. all thanks to the 3-day-2-night-trench-digging aka exercise nutcracker, which was one of the highlights of last week (apart from section live firing, which was a bore. shall talk about that later)
yes. exercise nutcracker. as the name suggests, both of its objectives have been achieved over the period of 3 days and 2 nights:
1) we trainees have learnt how to dig our own shellscrapes and fire trenches, cover the openings of the fire trenches with FOPK and camoflauging it.
2) we trainees have our nuts cracked.
let's skip the unimportant parts. -fast forward- we were allocated places for our shellscrapes and trenches just before last light. after marking the places using our white tape, DAMN IT HAD TO RAIN. and a heavy one too. zzZ. had to seek shelter in a training shed nearby. after the heavy downpour we went back and started digging. oh my god. MUD. mud that stuck onto our ET blades and was hard to remove when we scooped them up and threw them on one side of the ground. mud that felt so heavy when boots sank into it and one found it hard to lift his feet. mud that felt so yucky when it stuck onto your hands and your face (somehow. or maybe it was just me -_-)..
actually, given the heavy rain the conditions were supposed to be more conducive for digging of the shellscrape. i repeat. SUPPOSED. however, in reality it was untrue. the lack of proper lighting (we had only moonlight and candlelight; L torch wasnt allowed) and other external factors (like itching of the body, aching, etc) came in. what could be done easily in around 1 hour took us more than 2+ hours instead. for me it was even longer. i was pretty unfortuante: my lighter was spoilt in the middle of the night and i had to travel back and forth to my buddy's area to get candlelight. and given my so-called night-blindness, i could hardly see in the middle of the night. furthermore, my body just kept itching and itching for no reason until i spent more time scratching my body instead of digging the shellscrape! think it's the mud that's causing all these problems. haish. by the time i finished my shellscrape winston was on his shellscrape dozing off.
it was around 1am the next morning. fatigue started to set in. luckily we had nights snack - a couple of cakes and milo. somehow it helped to freshen us up for quite a while and make us more alert for fire trench digging. without further ado (aka MAI TU LIAO), everyone gathered their digging equipment and started to dig their trenches. different people had different tactics - some would dig in buddy level, aka both of them dig at the same time. others would choose the 1-dig-1-rest option, aka one would dig while the other would rest. after a while they will alternate and take turns, and so on. for me and winston, we adopted both methods. both of us made up the shape of the fire trench and dug to a certain height, until one of us couldnt take it anymore (i forgot who was the one). then one rested while the other continued to dig. we set an interval of 1 hr for shifts, but then even when one was digging somehow he would doze off while doing so.. lol. like the both of us. when we whacked the chanko into the ground we would just stay in that position for about 30 seconds to 1 minute. then we would suddenly jerk and continue to scoop the soil up the trench. or sometimes we would just stop digging, sit on the side of the trench and sleep..
so we dug and we dug. around 5+ am we decided to speed up by adopting the 1st tactic. we were happily digging when suddenly we heard a loud BOOM! we were so shocked we didnt know what to do; after shouting "CONTACTED!" we quickily jumped into the fire trench to take cover and kept still there until further instructions. we stayed inside there for quite a while and then at the next moment we heard our dearest sgt richard scolding the other platoon mates for skiving during digging. after that the famous "60 counts of 4" was heard followed by "1,2,3,4... 2,2,3,4...". luckily we slept tactically and didnt get caught. otherwise we would have been even more tired. after everything was over we continue to dig. by then fatigue level was very high and movement was very slow.
so we dug and we dug. all the way until 7am where we had stand-to. aka we had to be in our shellscrape in prone-supported position. aka we got to doze off! lol.. well of course i dozed off quite a bit. after stand-to we continued digging until 12+ where we had trench-inspection. luckily my trench passed as it was above chest level, so we got to slack abit in the afternoon while the rest were still digging :)
in the afternoon we had some reinforcement drills. actually i dont know what is that cause i was too tired and my trench was supposed to be a reserved trench in an infantry platoon, so i didnt get to participate much in the drills. just that i dozed off while firing blanks and shouting some codewords! lol.. it was just so so tiring lah. couldnt explain more. after that we packed up our fieldpack! thought we would be leaving the area. well actually we did.. we just walked for a few 100 metres away from the site, had a quick debrief by our PC and then we went pack to cover up the trenches we made. YES u didnt see wrongly. we covered back the trenches with the soil that we had dug out during the 1st day and night. WTF. we were extremely tired already yet we had to hold onto our chanko and ETs somemore. zzZ. we had no choice to scoop back the soil into the holes. finally we finished everything at 3+ am. and dozed off for quite a while before waking up at 6+am the next day to load back stores and touch up on the filled holes. morale was high by that time as we were yearning to go back to camp and bathe!
and then the rest is history.. no lah. the same old stuffs. we took transport back to camp, unloaded stores, washed up and cleaned our weapons. for me i left early as i had to bookout for MOE interview, which i think i flunked totally. shall elaborate more of that in the next entry.
in retrospect nutcracker was an unforgettable experience. it was one that pushed many of us (including me) to our limits, both physically and mentally. imagine staying in mud for 3 days 2 nights?! haha. we had our ups and downs then.. and when do anyone else have the chance to go to a place and dig his or her hearts out?
i mean.. literally.