My defining moment in BMT

In a flash, 8 weeks just passed me by. I apologize for being unable to post during my time in the army, but finally as my Basic Military Training period comes to an end, I find myself a little more adjusted to the lifestyle enough to make time to blog online.

I will try to continue posting for as much as possible, especially after I finish my graduation parade next week. But for now, I'd like to share my best moments in the army. This essay was needed by my commanders, but I figure it would make a good blog post, and I would like to share these moments with my readers as well.

My defining moment in BMT

I spent most of my teenage life overseas of which I lost my patriotism for my homeland, Singapore. I was ready to go to a Singapore university, live and work in Singapore for the rest of my life. However after living in another country, I’ve come to realise that the world is so much bigger than Singapore and that there are things that I want to find that I cannot find in my country. As such when I came back, I found National Service quite a burden to my future endeavours. The two years delayed me from going overseas for university studies, and I find no utility of the army teachings in every day civilian life. 

But as I go through National Service, I find myself having more self confidence in myself. I find myself doing chin ups, being able to run faster than I have ever ran before, and have the discipline to not move even in the hot sun. Better yet, I find myself more accustomed to the heat, and I could stand in the sun for hours on end, if the six hour parade march practices didn’t testify to that. In a way, I feel like a superhero. I could do things that I never imagined that I could do before I entered National Service. It made me believe that anything is possible, as long as you put your mind to it. Although this has been repeated to me many times, I never had anything evident to show that it worked. Now I have an improved SOC timing and improved IPPT timing to show for that, the improvement only happening in a week. I find myself surprised when I can do five chin ups in a row, when before enlisting I could only do one. I suppose these are the defining moments in my BMT life. As I realised that there was actually progress in these trainings, I started to enjoy my BMT more. Of course, I never enjoyed the training while I was doing it, but I loved seeing the progress as soon as I realised ‘hey I never could do this before. When did I suddenly learn how to do this? And all in the space of 9 weeks?’.

Another defining moment in my BMT would be the choice of command school. This was something that I was battling in my head during BMT. Should I try and find the smoothest way out? Or should I try and do something that I could be proud of? I asked many of the sergeants around me, and the answer was all the same: SCS training was harder than combat unit training. Of course the me at the beginning of BMT wanted the easy way out. I filled in the wrong answer, and opted out of command school. I never thought that the SAF training would prepare me for the training, and that I would suffer easily and fall out. I suppose this would be a defining moment because I keep thinking of all the factors that would have made me change my mind. Maybe if they gave me a bit more time. Maybe if I hadn’t walked into BMT with such a poor attitude towards my training I would have been able to push myself even harder. But alas what’s done is done, and a simple shade on a small circle defined the rest of my two years, and the memories that I will have for life.