During my BMT, recruits were supposed to do as they were told. No buts about it. It did not matter if you were ready or not, you either do it or get punished. One such instance happened during Pool Training. When we trained at the pool, we swam laps, practiced water treading and learned simple survival skills like turning pants into air-holding floats. The pool in ITD belonged to the Navy's Midshipmen School. It had an old-fashioned three-level diving platform that reached the sky. I think the top-most level was some 4 or 5 storeys tall. To train our courage, we all had to leap from the highest level and jack-knife feet-first into the pool. I tell you, there is nothing scarier than standing on a narrow platform that high up in the sky. The pool suddenly shrinks into a thimble of water. Your knees become involuntarily weak, you buckle over. I think that platform did not even have a railing for holding on to. So you can imagine the sheer terror on everyone's faces. Mine included. At least for me, I had some boyhood experience jumping off an old jetty into open sea. This was right next to the Johor-Singapore Causeway, right where the Shell Refinery is. For many of my platoon mates, diving off that platform was their first time. That high height simply compounded their fear many times over. As I've mentioned earlier, you had to do whatever your NCOs told you to, else there would be consequences if their orders were not obeyed. And so we jumped. There were a couple of guys who were particularly terrified. But they were coerced into jumping as well. I remember holding my breath, hoping that nothing untoward would happen. In swimming I've learnt that the surface tension of unbroken water can be as hard as concrete if you happened to land smack squarely on it. Sport divers in the past have become paralysed because they miscalculated their entry. This is the reason why at platform diving events today, pool water directly below is sprinkled with jets of water. It breaks the surface tension and helps prevent serious injury. Looking at my platoon mate up on that diving platform, I am praying that he will keep his composure. If you did not jump, you were "chicken", and they would taunt you the rest of your BMT days. In the end, we did what we would do at any jetty. We volunteered to jump together. That's how some of us got through that scary phase. And you had to jump in order to pass the Watermanship Test. I think this particular high-dive exercise was made obsolete when ITD moved to Pulau Tekong. It was just too dangerous and risky a thing to do. In any event, it is better to jump into the sea than into a pool of static water. Another dangerous exercise was grenade training. Each infantry soldier then was expected to carry four grenades on his SBO, so learning to throw one was essential, and in war time, life-saving. Throwing a grenade looks simple. You see it all the time in those Longest Day-type war movies. For me, my tuition came from watching Vic Morrow in that 70s Combat! TV series. Vic could often be seen pulling the grenade ring tab with his teeth and thereafter artfully lob the grenade in his hand over to his enemies. Usually it is aimed at an enemy's sandbagged position after his men have done a flanking movement. Vic always hits the target every time. I sometimes wonder why he didn't throw it like in "hamtum bola". In reality, throwing a grenade is not that simple. Sure, it is like throwing a rock, but it has a spring lever attached to it. This lever gives a kick in your palm as it springs away. If you do not adjust for that, your grenade will veer off target. It's even worse throwing it like in hamtum bola. The grenade will probably just land a few feet in front. This was precisely what happened at a Live Firing session when one of my platoon mates (Keng, a rather 'blur' fella) was chosen to throw his maiden grenade. Instead of it flying forward and outward, it went straight up, knocked itself on the edge of the protective barrier and fell (thankfully) on the other side. Mad Dog Wee quickly grabbed Keng and threw him down on the ground. The rest of us braced ourselves. The grenade exploded louder than usual but none of the shrapnel came our way. Mad Dog Wee was so furious he rapped Meng a few times on his helmet. "You bloody idiot!" he shouted. You could see veins in his neck popping. It is a demeaning act to knock someone on the helmet: it's like scolding a child. It's also the reason why the corporals and sergeant always carried a stick around. Never mind if that stick is an unpolished twig picked from the ground. As an officer, I would later revisit the grenade throwing range. Not just to teach cadets about the art of throwing a lobbed bomb but to defuse any that might have been duds. It is one of the more dangerous tasks of a Demolition man. The reason is that each grenade is timed to a 4.5-second fuse. If it did not explode, it could be due to a couple of reasons: (1) The firing pin inside got stuck; (2) The fuse itself is faulty due to poor manufacture or storage. In most cases, it is best not to handle a misfired grenade. The better option is to blow it up with another block of explosive from where it lay. Besides, a grenade-throwing range is often steep-sloped and sandy making any defusing action dangerous and risky. Oh, another thing about grenade throwing: That pin which holds the lever in place and that which prevents the grenade from firing is not that easy to pull out. In the movies, heroes are always seen pulling them out with their teeth (the latest scene was in that movie Inception). Try that in real life and they'll be using dentures for the rest of their lives! If these pins were that easy to pull out, you won't want so many grenades hanging off your SBO. One false move (like crawling on the ground) and the safety pins will come off easily. Certainly not the kind of situation to find yourself in. Therefore, for the sake of smiling with a set of nice pearlies for the rest of your life, don't try pulling the grenade pin out with your teeth. Ask your buddy to do it. That's what friends are for. (Contributed as part of the NS45 campaign which commemorates the 45th anniversary of Singapore's National Service, with the theme of "From Fathers to Sons")