At Basic Military Training school

After nine weeks of BMT, all that’s left to do is to see the route which I’m headed for next. Officer, specialist or man. That, and to wait for the final Graduation Parade where I’ll be throwing my cap into the air. I suppose throwing a cap is ordinary enough, but I’m really looking forward to it because it marks the end of this period as a lousy recruit. A recruit’s life is not bad, really, but it will be a pleasure to move on and not be bossed around any longer. “Any recruits here? I need some help.” At 2 am in the morning. Uh, disgusting.

What I will miss is Rocky Hill camp. When we first moved in, we thought our camp was merely a deserted outpost in the middle of the jungle (which isn’t too far fetched, because it’s the old, abandoned SISPEC camp anyway… in the middle of the jungle). On the other hand, the recruits over at the Ladang HQ were getting laptops, internet and all sort of other out-of-this-world stuff. We thought we were worse off, but I think I really enjoyed the stay at Rocky Hill and I’d easily choose it over Ladang… Who wants laptops in the BMT anyway? It’s an extra weight to look after. Rocky Hill was wonderful because the bunks were huge, the air was cool and fresh, good scenery, and no high ranking commanders to watch out for. It was also good to be able to catch glimpses of one or two good friends in neighbouring Quebec and Yankee companies there.

Three coolest things in BMT:

1. Throwing a hand grenade. I was lucky because I wasn’t even supposed to throw it at all…was on Att B. I can tell you, the feeling of holding a real, live explosive thing in your hand and being afraid of it, then throwing it and feeling all that fear leave… is an amazing experience.

2. My encounters with animal life. The most interesting incident was digging my shellscape and finding and nest of eggs, about 8 or 9 large white ones, the size of an M&M chocolate. Not the small no-kick M&M's, it was the size of those M&M's with peanuts inside… maybe slightly bigger. I smashed one with the blade of my digging apparatus and found a snake inside. At least it was a long body with a bulging head. There were no feet at all to be seen, but my sergeant said it could be a lizard with its feet not fully developed. I was, and still am, hardly convinced, but I didn’t have a choice and shifted the eggs somewhere else and slept in that shellscape that night. No mama snake came to disturb me, thankfully… Besides that, I did see a long brown snake sliding across our field camp site once. Also, we saw a few wild boar, a monster centipede crawled up the latrine wall centimetres away when I was squatting down relieving myself, and I once crawled into bed in my bunk and found a bee inside the blanket. Luckily, nothing misfortunate happened - I didn't get stung or anything - so all those incidences became vivid, unforgettable memories to talk with friends about.

3. Having an awesome BMT company, Zulu Coy. We had wonderful commanders, especially our OC, who was like some angel always watching out for us and explaining things to us… I think my platoon performed pretty well, on the whole. We received a lot of praise from our commanders, and generally we weren’t pumping very much. Zulu was also champion for Games Day, and the feeling is great when your company wins and over two hundred people, commanders included, are ecstatic. I do think we’ll be crowned best company in the coming week. Hopefully. But even if we’re not, we’ll no doubt be too busy throwing our caps up to be disappointed.