Not exactly life changing nor defining, but definitely disturbing, on a subtle almost subconsious level.
3 weeks away with the Singa Armoured Legion in Taiwan has no real parallel in metaphors and analogies, except its a world gone mad with extreme situations.
The nearest thing I can think of is the situation Arsenal is in. When they win, they win extreme, not through goals by the regular strikers or wingers but with some central defender scoring eg Cygan against Fulham and Campbell against Everton (on his EPL season debut and stand-in captaincy too!- that guy is Mr Incredible). When they lose they lose like the biggest flops in EPL history. Who the F loses to Boro and Chelski twice in a row?
Anyway the bunks in Taiwan are something like those out of some Singapore history book. There were 50 of us cramped into one room like a bunch of opium and rat infested coolies living in a Geylang shophouse, having just survived a grueling journey from Fujian and on the verge of a term of despondency.
I'm prone to exaggeration most of the time, but this is quite simply what I've been through. We slept on sponge mattresses that were right next to each other, so the whole course (minus the instructors) was sleeping together on two giant double decker beds. The latrines weren't so bad except fot the fact that you couldnt throw used toilet paper into the toilet bowls cos they'd cause the pipes to jam up, resulting in shit soup in the porcelain bowl.
But there was hot water for the showers occasionally, which led to some form of morale recovery.
The weather was extreme. I'd thought that Singapore was hell on Earth, but Taiwan seems to be bent on claiming that metereological title. 34 degrees Celsius in the day and 20 by dusk. Amazing stuff.
The training was not bad, probably because we'd gotten used to being outfield. In fact it was fun in a bizzare macho sort of way, charging around and firing blanks. We got to see our Taiwanese counterparts doing their stuff too, including Armour recce manouevers in their V200s with an OH58 Koiwa Scout chopper and an AH-1 Cobra attack chopper. The latter was dead cool, espcially when it did its mock strafing run over our position.
Live firing was crazy shit. On the first days we fired in sandstorm conditions as the wind and dust combined to create extremely low visibility. Then the rain came and turned all that loose topsoil into mud, just in time for the dismounted live firing. The end result was a very muddy me- the muddiest ive been in my life- and a jammed up Section Automatic Weapon. The damn thing had so much mud jammed in it that the bolt couldnt cycle back and forth quickly enough to maintain constant firing, and so I had to manually chamber a round before each shot. It was frustrating having a fully automated machine gun turn into some Lee Enfield bolt action rifle.
And the worst part was the damn OC and Course Commander screaming at and treating us like dogs. The fuckers dont seem to realise what live firing is like for us grunts on the ground. Its one thing to be abused verbally, that's normal in any military in the world; but its quite another to have expletives hurled at one when one self is trying his darndest to remedy a weapon stoppage with live rounds in the chamber.
Then there was the screwy R and R, which was for the most part wasted time on guided tours to theme parks and museums and some dolphin amusement park where the animals behaved like humans and vice versa. We got confined for a full day because some typhoon was hitting the place, even though there wasnt anything except alot of wind. But well, I still managed to go out and buy 3 shirts, a pair of cargo pants, some local confectionaries, and postcards, so it wasnt all wasted.
God worked His miracles too, such as the finding of Albert's rifle muzzle way out in the field, sparing him 21 days of confinement. I'll have to reflect on that later, there seems no rational way that such a small thing could be found in so big a training area.
The flight back was uneventful other than my attempt to watch War of the Worlds and Fantastic Four and sleep at the same time.
And now I have to pass my SOC to avoid a recourse.
