hi all..just survived another field camp-and by far it was probably the most physically demanding. well, okay, to be honest it was mainly the last of the 3 days that was the killer: we walked about 16km in full gear under the blazing sun (cos we set off at 10+ and walked till almost four) up hills and other killer terrain, skirting around an entire resevoir in the process. by the time we had reached our objective- yes, after the little afternoon stroll we still had to attack an enemy, i think about 10% of our batallion had succumbed to the weather..mainly casualities of heat exhaustion.

my own section was not spared: although my MG team didn't fall out (i ended up carrying the 13.4 kilo weapon half the distance "p) our platoon signaller did eventually 'concuss' at the knoll-codenamed ".42"- we were assaulting, but it was a brave effort on his part to have shouldered on despite carrying a knee injury. at nearly ten kilos, on top of his own standard full-pack load, it's hardly the kind of weight one would want to be carrying in punishing weather..

but all in all i think it was a good outing for most of us (although due to a lack of coordination at the "upper levels"-eh hem-we ended up at the wrong slope of our objective..we were supposed to be asaulting from the northern slope, but ended up attacking, or rather attempting to attack, from the densely vegetated SE slope. yes, it wasn't anything one couldn't get through with a parang, but it made progress much slower..) and especially important as it's our final conditioning before heading to the even harsher conditions in oil-rich brunei. from what i've heard, it's harder navigating there cos of the mountainous terrain plus leeches to go with the standard compliment of mosquitos, sandflies, and all the other bugs in a typical tropical rainforest.

but looking on the bright side, at least we get to train somewhere with hills exceeding 300m..not that i'm dying for a greater challenge, but singapore with it's comparatively flat terrain is like (okay, i know i'm gonna get flak for this) chasing a local pre-teenage girl while one could liken brunei's terrain to scaling a european model's peaks.. okay, u get the idea. the latter's surely more appealing, right?

yup, that's all for this post..until something more worthy of mention crops up, i'm signing off here.

raneth hopped off at 6:09 am