Corporal Raja

One month has passed and we are now bona-fide recruits. We are comfortable with our hair, ill-fitting shorts and have mastered the art of going to the toilet and sleeping anywhere. And we have begun to look forward to weekends when life and the food wasn't as tough to swallow. But booking out for the weekend wasn't that straightforward. We often had to mill around until everything was given the all clear before we could even attempt to march to the gate. One time, it was a false alarm, and we had to "ke blakang pusing" back to the barracks, all because someone had forgotten to return a blank attachment to the armskote. Some "blur sotong" left his in the cupboard. A blank attachment is what you attach to an M16 rifle barrel in order to fire blanks with. It's basically a screw-knob with a pin-hole. Very insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but not on this occasion. You really only know you have left camp when your backside finally kisses the main gate goodbye. In that month, my section also got to know our commando corporal pretty well. ('Well' is relative because corporals don't get very close to their recruits in BMT. It's normal that masters typically don't hang out with their slaves unless it is to beat them up or sell them to the next highest bidder. I know because I had watched Kunta Kinte in each episode of Roots.) But Cpl Raja was rather different. The other two corporals were Chinese. One was particularly mean (let's call him Wong). Wong was very "kwai lan", someone who would be tops on everybody's blanket party list. The other fella (Tan) was ok; he was just a follower. In time, my section was glad to have Cpl Raja over the other two. That saying about commandos being a bit "saio" in the head is true. Cpl Raja couldn't care less about going by the book. He often scratched his head about our training syllabus and taught us "off the cuff". And he would spice things up with his jokes. Cpl Raja indeed provided us much relief amidst all that tough training demanded by our Mad Dog PC. He also knew how to play-act along whenever ranking staff were around. He didn't want to spoil things for us. At first we thought he, being a commando, would be "siao on" but he behaved more like the retired soldier. I think it had something to do with his knees - why he couldn't be an active commando anymore. Maybe that gave him a new perspective on life. Many of his stories were shared while leading us out on field craft, which after the main lecture, the sections would usually pan out on their own to practice. That's when we would have private time with him. During a session on camouflage, I remember him telling us about those deadly concealed Panji traps that wounded a lot of US servicemen during the Vietnam War. Another culprit was claymore mines. He said in jungle warfare, you had to be alert at all times or else nasty things would happen to you. We started to take his word seriously and would walk with great care. Being novices, we walked more like we were doing Tai Chi, which was quite hilarious. On another occasion, he taught us or rather related to us, how the special forces survived in the jungle. Cpl Raja liked to carry a small buck knife with him on his SBO (I think it's a habit with all commandos) which he would use to whittle twigs, etc whilst waiting for us to complete our tasks. He would also wear a camouflage netted scarf, something the other corporals copied. Besides being cosmetic, that scarf was actually rather useful for dipping into streams and as a mosquito netting (for the face). Or just to look Ranger gung-ho! A major part of field craft lesson was The Art of Camouflage - how to blend into your jungle or forest surroundings using readily available means. It is a very simple concept, but the army liked to spend a lot of time on it. I don't know why. I don't know how many jungle ferns we destroyed in the process. But it was a lot. It's probably good that Mandai jungle was full of them; but not so in Marsiling. There, we sometimes had to recycle our camouflage. One time, it was quite hilarious. I think it happened to Blur King (his last name was actually Keng). Instead of using ferns (an everywhere plant) he went and decorated his helmet with large CB leaves. CB leaves are actually fig tree leaves. They are large, very suitable if Adam and Eve were to go underwear shopping. But for camouflage, no. In any case CB stood for the Hokkien expletive "chee bye", which is slang for a woman's privates. Cpl Raja asked Blur King why he was wearing CB leaves. Did he have a "chee bye"? It was funny because Cpl Raja spoke Hokkien. He 'crotched' him for good measure. We all had a good laugh that day, and Keng was rather sporting. I think he was so blur that even shame eluded him. Or more likely he just wanted to survive BMT. We enjoyed our time with Cpl Raja because he spoke with sense. He did not insist on strict adherence to one idea because he knew in combat, there is not just one way to defeat an enemy - a lot depended on the situation. In that aspect, we better understood why we were learning the stuff taught to us. We learned also there were other ways (not covered by our BMT syllabus then). On another occasion, he taught us to scavenge from our dead enemies. He asked a very pertinent question: If you ran out of bullets, and your dead enemy has a rifle, would you still know how to use one? Up till that point the M16 was our lifeline in combat. What other weapon was out there? His comment gave us pause. We knew next to nothing except that most of our enemies preferred to use the Russian-made AK-47. As for enemy grenades, we knew next to nothing. My knowledge then was still the stick grenades the Germans used in WWII - knowledge gleaned from the popular Combat! TV series. It made us realise at that point in time how pathetic our military knowledge was. I made sure think more when in OCS. Cpl Raja wasn't with us throughout our BMT. Somehow we knew his place was at some other higher calling, one where he wasn't so bored and maybe better suited his talents. But we were real glad for that period he was able to be with us.