A Course in Miracles Explained

Me and a friend exchange a look as we survey the surroundings. They sure weren’t kidding about it being an old camp. Everything seems to be from the 80s – beds are sponge mattresses on weathered one-piece metal frames, metal lockers are banged up, dented boxes sprinkled with graffiti, doors are thin wooden pieces which don’t lock properly. Away from the glitz and glamor of OCS – is this what the real life of the SAF is like?

We are greeted by a major, who turns out to be the battalion’s S3 – the staff officer in charge of training. A tall, imposing figure, he is a no nonsense kind of guy, functional, to the point and without excess. He tells us that we will know our appointments in due time – some of us will be deputies to the staff officers and Company Commanders (OCs), and most of us will be Platoon Commanders (PCs) to the various platoons – but for now, settle in and get some rest, CO (the battalion commander, aka head honcho) Colonel S will speak to us in the morning.

We’ve all heard various things about Colonel S, chiefly that he was the ex-commander of the Special Operations Forces (SOF) – the equivalent of the SAS / GIGN / GSG-9 in Singapore – a squad of elite, highly-trained shock troops sent to deal with hijackings, terrorists, and do other nasty business in war-time scenarios. The SOF has probably seen the most real action in all of the SAF’s peaceful history – in 1991, the SOF was called in when Singapore Airlines Flight 117 was hijacked by Pakistani militants. In a textbook example of a successful counter-terrorist operation, the plane was stormed, 4 hijackers shot dead in 30 seconds, and all 123 passengers freed without harm. Singaporean efficiency indeed.

The morning after, we meet the man himself  - he is a stocky, powerfully built, deeply tanned character who speaks with a slight lisp. He is rarely seen without his sunglasses on – is the SOF sponsored by Oakley? I guess Robocop wouldn’t walk around without his visor – it would just look odd.

An informal class division exists in the regular officer corps – between those who are fast-tracked through the ranks, mostly English speaking, scholarship holders with overseas degrees – ‘scholars’; and those whose career path is less blessed, usually Chinese or Malay native speakers, who have polytechnic or local university degrees – ‘farmers’ – whose career advancement is guaranteed only through sheer effort and merit. Col S is a farmer of the extreme variety: moving up through the ranks in the hard way – blood, sweat and effort – in what is probably the toughest unit in the SAF. Why is Col S commanding an infantry battalion? My OC later provides me the answer – because there is only one commando battalion, commando officers such as Col S requiring to do a tour of duty as battalion commander need to go outside the formation.

Col S is not the only special forces type in the battalion – for some strange reason there are a number of them in this seemingly ordinary infantry battalion – one of the company sergeant majors is a Navy Seal and rumored to be a member of the special ops branch of the Naval Diving Unit; the regiment sergeant major is a decorated commando, and one of the OCs is US ranger / special forces trained.

I am impressed with the mental tenacity and physical prowess of these individuals – having experienced the Jungle Confidence Course, I can appreciate an inkling of the extremes in conditions they must have been through in their training: weeks in the jungle without food, route marches without end, drown-proofing, POW treatment, to name a few. One of the sergeants tells me an urban legend of some guy who refused to drop out during a Ranger course even though his fourth toe had become gangrenous – eventually passing the course but losing a toe in the process.

For a flavor, this is an example of Hell Week – probably the most gruelling component of Navy Seal selection:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zK56q4gZCSE&feature=related

The variety of cross-training involved in the making of a special operations soldier is amazing – jumping out of planes with full battle gear, sniper training, rappelling, diving, proficiency with weapons, explosives, hand-to-hand combat, long-range reconnaissance, etc. The degree to which they are attuned to their bodies is comparable to that of professional athletes – able to react instinctively and precisely to a given signal under stressful situations, while constantly pushing the body beyond its limits.

The commando influence is hard to break – the battalion picks up some strange habits – we do PT (Physical Training) in t-shirts, shorts and boots. During runs – Col S orders – all t-shirts off! Instead of the bronze, sculpted muscle of an elite fighting force ready to raise hell and thunder upon the enemy – it’s flabby, white pasty skin dying for a 100-plus (a local isotonic drink) under the shade. Commandos are a healthy bunch, taking good care of their bodies – under the charge of Col S, it is decreed: there is to be no alcohol in the officer’s mess. The beverage of choice? Iced Milo.

One time I spot Navy Seal CSM in the mess with a dozen bottles of vitamins and supplements laid out on a table in front of him – Ginseng, Mega-vitamins, Cod Liver Oil, Ginko, Royal Honey – you name it. He pops the entire handful of pills down the hatch in one go. Col S doesn’t like smoking: there is an unspoken rule that all cigarettes have to be put out as soon as he is in visual range. I don’t have an issue with this – I can’t stand cigarette smoke either – I think it’s a great rule. Col S is a man of less talk and more action – he has a pithy motto: Make it happen. (read: I don’t care how you do it – just get it done)

There are 3 classes in the battalion: the common foot soldiers (just referred to as ‘men’, eg. ‘the men’, ‘my men’, ‘your men’), the sergeants (NCOs), and the officers. The men are the backbone of the battalion – they make up 80% of the total headcount. Education (along with the associated socio-economic factors) is the main criteria that separates the men and the commanders, especially for NSFs (conscripts) – the men usually come from ITEs (Institute for Technical Education) or Polytechnics, whereas the commanders usually come from Junior Colleges (2 years finishing with ‘A’ Levels).

The men are from a mono intake – they will spend their entire 2.5 years in the unit. Mainly because there are more regulars in an active battalion, the in-house BMT conducted by the unit can be tougher than in BMTC (where most people go to). x SIR is famous for tough training in the old days – the platoon sergeants tell me of cases of men attempting suicide by drinking detergent. Apparently there also used to be a regular suicide watch duty – sergeants stationed outside the company line overnight, making sure that no men tried to jump from the buildings.

I am allocated to a rifle company and a rifle platoon – this is as ‘vanilla’ a role as it gets to being a newly commissioned 2nd Lieutenant. I am to be the platoon’s second PC, due to the NSF cycle – their first PC who saw them through their first year is soon to ORD. (Operationally Ready Date – also a verb, newspeak for the end of the 2.5 year National Service period.) I am understudy to him for a couple of weeks – he is a good talker but strikes me as a bit soft – in general and also on the men, although it is perhaps a suitable management style for the platoon, which seems to be generally quite well-behaved.

For our handover, we all gather into one of the men’s bunks – to give his final speech and for me to give a prep talk. For all my self-confidence, I’m terrified of public speaking – especially when I have nothing really to say. I don’t believe in what we do, how do you expect me to motivate people? Part of me really wants to say ‘Geez man, it’s freaking NS – none of us really want to be here, you do your part and I’ll do mine, and hopefully we’ll get our pink ICs (civilian identity cards) back with all our limbs intact.’ Instead – feeling pressured after his flowery speech and not wanting to look like a total dick – I end up saying something more palatable.

Being in the battalion is my first taste of working life with the typical themes – you are somewhere in the food chain, you try to satisfy your boss, you try to manage your subordinates as well as you can, you keep your nose out of trouble while doing the bare minimum. Unlike in a school like BMTC or OCS where your only responsibility is to teach, in unit life getting things done means the tricky business of motivating people (love or fear?) and earning the respect of your men.

As far as my nascent leadership style is concerned – I am laissez-faire until my boundaries are crossed – at which point I turn into an autocrat. I am extremely liberal with giving off-days for good performers, but have zero-tolerance for the troublemakers and those who make my life difficult. Some of the PCs are good friends with their sergeants – I find it very difficult to be in a position to punish a friend – for this reason I keep my relationship with my sergeants strictly professional.

The platoon is divided into 3 rifle sections of 7 men each and a machine gun section – each headed by a two sergeants. Other than the standard issue SAR21 rifle (A Singaporean replacement for the M16), the men carry additional weapons – M203 grenade launcher, SAW gun (a light machine gun) and a LAW gunner (anti-vehicular rockets). I have a runner – a personal assistant of sorts – he aids me outfield by carrying a communication set, digging my shellscrape, getting my meals. The runner is a unique role in the platoon – he is often in an enviable (or unenviable) position of being the PC’s favourite.

Naturally, there are informal divisions between the men – the Chinese ‘Ah Bengs’, the Malay ‘Mats’, the English speaking bunch, the smokers. There are a fair share of characters – the jokers, the ‘keng’ (skive) masters, the medic that can never pass his IPPT test. But overall, I am lucky to get a platoon which have few troublemakers – the last thing you want as a PC is dealing with an unsavory character, stealing from platoon mates, going AWOL, etc – involving months of headache and paperwork. There is a character that is transferred into the Company – an ex-drug addict, triad member who’s done time in jail for rape ie. about as unsavory as it gets – not surprisingly none of the PCs want him in their platoon. OC finally decides to give him a role as a storeman.

Among the glamorous roles as an officer is the supervision of on-going drug testing for declared drug users – this means making sure the testees don’t cheat – we have to supervise them urinating into little plastic cups, which get locked up in a metal box to be sent to the labs for analysis. For some reason, the plastic cups are not quite military spec – they don’t seal properly, which makes the whole affair rather disgusting.

If the PC is the good cop, the Platoon Sergeant is surely the bad cop – the role of the PS is to control the men, the one with the loud voice barking orders, the one with the most amount of real combat experience. My Platoon Sergeant, H, is quite the character – a loud, quick-tempered, small, skinny, chain-smoking ‘hokkien peng’ whose back is covered with tattoos. H is one of the few regulars (ie. non-conscripts) in the platoon, and a rarity for a ‘hokkien peng’ in that his English is excellent – he is able to manage his English speaking superiors very well while being able to identify with the men. Also, H likes sex. A lot. He makes no secret of the fact that he is a regular patron at Geylang (the red-light district) – one time he spends his entire salary (not a small sum) within two weeks – I don’t quite know what to say.

A couple of months into the role, I make an investment which will pay me off in spades – I decide to buy a handheld GPS unit, a Garmin etrex Venture. Before the days of ubiquitous GPS on iPhones and Blackberries, this was cutting edge technology – during missions, I become one of the few people in the battalion who actually know where they are with a good amount of accuracy, at any given time. It also leads to me being point PC for many missions.

I have a fair amount of time to myself – I think a lot about my future, post-army. An Indian friend asks me later in University why Singaporean guys seem to be so certain on studies, internships and careers – I tell him it’s because we’ve spent 2 years fantasizing about civilian life, and have a mentality of wanting to catch up for lost time.

With the camp being near my home and being an officer now, I have more flexibility with booking out of camp. Things aren’t getting better at home – my family still fights over little things, or more accurately, little things are easy triggers for personalities to clash. My dad is shut-in in his own world, playing out his deeply-rooted inner fears of survival and inadequacy – his first chakra issues inherited from his childhood growing up in a large family in a small flat in post-war Singapore. My mum, overloaded with work at school, feels a responsibility to see my brother and myself through our education until we are on our own two feet. Coming home, she feels overwhelmed by the family situation – she overreacts and nags – pushing everybody even more on edge. My brother, struggling with pursuing an unconventional and spiritual path in cookie-cutter Singapore, has his self-esteem constantly eroded in bearing the brunt of dad’s nagging and mum’s worrying. Voices are raised, threats made, doors slammed, things are thrown around. There are karmic debts to be paid off, things to be worked out on a soul-level. I’m still speaking in monosyllables.

‘How’s Army?’
‘It’s OK.’
‘How’s your new camp?’
‘It’s OK.’
‘Eating dinner?’
‘ Yah.’

Hoarding is an insidious disease. An attachment to things, pushing relationships out of importance. It works subtly – item by item, room by room, day by day, encroaching steadily on the mental, emotional and physical space of its hosts. A string of annoyances soon turn into a grey static of unease – tripping over a loose wire, 3 half-broken televisions and 5 remote controls to work them with, nowhere to put fresh milk in a fridge full of  expired items. A disease that is not quite a disease – a non-life threatening situation, a low level crisis compounded by the inability of proper description.

I have so much anger towards my dad. I struggle to contain it when it possesses me, but yet I am in awe of its power. One time during a heated argument – he slaps me hard across the cheek. It stings like crazy on the inside and outside. I am mad with rage – I respond by shoving the entire contents of his desk on the floor. He has never supported me, emotionally or financially, leaving my mum to bear the burden. He has never been interested in my life – he doesn’t know what subjects I study, what I do in the Army, what I want to do with my future. He’s never been a father figure. Injustice, incomprehension, and indignation. What kind of a father are you?

My dad has become in my mind, an anti-role model. I want to be everything that (I think) he is not. Looking back – it’s funny – in striving not to become like him – I get caught in the other side of the coin, the duality in the money game, the game of the ego – in fighting against being miserly, I become greedy and selfish. I am merely perpetuating the scarcity mentality, albeit in a different form.

They know nothing about the things I’ve done in the Army – that I’ve been through hell and high water. Why bother? I don’t need them. Anger gives me incredible drive and energy – but it drains me emotionally. It’s hard to overstate how much I rely on J for emotional support throughout JC and Army – without her I would have been a hollow shell of a human being. By this time, J has left for Oxford for her undergraduate studies – we try to talk on the phone as much as we can.

Meanwhile, I am devouring books about personal development and self-improvement – they are fascinating, and more importantly – they work. I personally experience breakthroughs in using mnemonics, speed reading, NLP and visualisation. The potential of the human mind is truly incredible – why isn’t everybody into it? Why aren’t these things taught at school? One notable book is ‘The Einstein Factor’ by Win Wenger – he suggests holding your breath underwater, image-streaming, listening to Mozart to increase your IQ.

By this time, I am sure I want to do something finance / investment related – it is obvious to me that The Game of Life is about money. If you want to be on top in a capitalist world, clearly you have to do something finance related. I read Liar’s Poker by Michael Lewis, Pit Bull by Martin Schwartz: the (best) traders have a mythical ability to produce money out of thin air – they are quite literally demi-gods. What separates the 1 from the 100? It doesn’t seem like it’s all about intellectual ability. I take a visit down to the pit of the Singapore Stock Exchange – people in bright jackets are screaming, shouting, making odd gestures, waving pieces of paper around. Millions of dollars are transacted in milliseconds. I have big, big dreams. I want to get out of this little island and see the world. I want to be filthy rich. In Wall Street Speak, not just ‘fuck you money’ – ‘fuck everybody money’.

I am exhibiting the unhealthy levels of the type 8 personality according to the Enneagram model:

Level 6: Become highly combative and intimidating to get their way: confrontational, belligerent, creating adversarial relationships. Everything a test of wills, and they will not back down. Use threats and reprisals to get obedience from others, to keep others off balance and insecure. However, unjust treatment makes others fear and resent them, possibly also band together against them.

Level 7: Defying any attempt to control them, become completely ruthless, dictatorial, “might makes right.” The criminal and outlaw, renegade, and con-artist. Hard-hearted, immoral and potentially violent.

Level 8: Develop delusional ideas about their power, invincibility, and ability to prevail: megalomania, feeling omnipotent, invulnerable. Recklessly over-extending self.

Level 9: If they get in danger, they may brutally destroy everything that has not conformed to their will rather than surrender to anyone else. Vengeful, barbaric, murderous. Sociopathic tendencies. Generally corresponds to the Antisocial Personality Disorder.

The military teaches me a lot about the importance of doing your homework. It boils down to getting the simple things right before the action starts – knowing as much as you can, getting your equipment ready, marking your maps properly, applying little hacks here and there.

The outfield exercises are the key part of training, and also the most dreaded: being out in the jungle in full battle gear for days don’t make for comfortable conditions. But they make for the most memorable moments.

One time I am the point PC of the battalion at the very start of the mission. Having gotten the instruction to finally move out after hours of prep, my point guys encounter a swampy-looking stream about 30 meters in. Its very hard to tell how deep it is – it could be knee-deep, or man-deep. I’m still finding a way to cross, or a stick to probe how deep it is, when OC comes over, all huffed and puffed up – he must have gotten an earful from Col S about why we are not moving. I say, ‘Sir, I don’t know how deep this is.’

He yells, ‘JUST GO LA!’

He stares at me. The men are just watching. I resign to my fate as lead guinea pig – I take a step into the black mass. I slip. With a sickening ‘plop!’, my entire body goes into the swamp. I am neck deep, rifle, backpack and all, in gooey, fetid decaying vegetable matter. My men just look – half wanting to laugh, half horrified by the spectacle. I think I hear a snicker. OC doesn’t say a word and walks off – apparently he has decided it is too deep – what a genius.

It takes a while for me to be pulled out by my runner, and in the meantime, the battalion has moved off. My runner and me walk double-speed to catch up, and I fume all the way to the front, passing half the battalion, man by man, dripping swamp matter on the hot, dusty path. I am pissed beyond imagination – that I have a baboon of an OC, and that I have to start a mission in the worse state possible. I smell of swamp for days.

For another assignment, we are sent to protect a particular installation in Singapore – there is a sizable US military presence here. I witness the global projection of US military power first hand – there is an entire American supermarket here, carved out and airlifted halfway around the world from American suburbia, where one can buy Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, Gatorade and Lucky Charms, and pay the blond checkout girl in greenbacks. There is a TV channel entirely dedicated to the US military. The scale of the entire operation is mind-boggling.

We go to Thailand for our final combat evaluation – a big deal as far as Col S and the other senior officers are concerned – this will go on their career report card. Thailand is hot and dusty, with temperatures rising in excess of 40 degrees Celsius in the day.

For our final mission, we do a dawn attack: it involves walking to the objective, about 20km away, throughout the night, and storming the objective just as the sun rises. Light and sound discipline is strictly kept to avoid detection. I am point PC of the battalion again. At one stage, we are walking across a paddy field. Although we are supposed to follow markers left by the BRT (Battalion Reconnaissance Team), they are nowhere to be seen – it falls on me to do the navigation and I go all way to the front. (I am not supposed to be in front – the point man usually gets killed first in an ambush – but its not a war time situation and far more efficient for me to be leading) As I walk, my runner is laying illum sticks (homemade glow-in-the-dark markers made from felt dipped in light stick solution) behind to mark the path. I’m slightly stressed – I have to manage my platoon, talk to OC on the comms, do a link-up with the scouts, and navigate at the same time – if I take a wrong turn, 500 men are going to follow.

We’ve walked a bit too fast and pause for the rest to catch up. It’s about 2 am. The air is cool and filled with the sounds of crickets; the night deep and black; the sky full of hundreds of pin-sharp stars. I just realise how peaceful it actually is. Behind, a string of silhouettes as far as I can see: hundreds of soldiers, lumbering silently in full battle order, carrying backpacks, rifles, machine guns, rocket launchers, jerry cans, ammunition and communication sets, following the path I made. I am unusually struck by a sense of responsibility and pride – I think to myself – ‘surely this can’t be a normal experience for a 21 year old?’

After Thailand, the rest of my unit life is low-key. Most of the battalion, comprising of conscripts like myself, are a month or two away from finishing our military service. We are all packing up and acclimatising for civilian life.

Finally, the day that every NSF dreams of – the three sacred letters – ORD. The light at the end of the tunnel. Oxygen for a drowning man. The Great Emancipation. I write on the platoon whiteboard: ‘ORD LOH!!!’ My manpower officer gives me back my pink civilian identity card, last seen 2 years 4 months ago, on that fateful day at BMTC on Pulau Tekong. It still has my 12-year old face on it. I give myself a big kiss and walk out of the camp gates, hoping not to be back for a long time…

Back to My Story – Part 3b: Army – Officer Cadet School

Continue to My Story – Part 4a – University Year 1 / 2

Leave a Reply Cancel reply