Sunday, September 30, 2007
Now I'm one more step closer to my Black Beret. When I was in BMT I was excited to attain the Beret. Now it that I know got my Posting, I feel no honour in the beret anymore. What makes the difference between Armour Infantry of SAR and Infantry from SIR? Actually they are the same. Infantry training. Difference? A.I Hide in the tank and charge out upon reaching destination. We get Black Beret instead of Green just becoz we tompang on a APC tank. WTF man? What pride is there in A.I? Fuck A.I. man!
Monday 24th Sept I booked in at 8am in the morning to know my Posting. I already knew I didnt get Tankee although I fought hard to get it. But still I have to accept that I just aint fit enough... Hahax Well Its ok as long as I dont get A.I. (Armour Infantry). I told all 5 of my Sect. Comm, all my 3SG, PS, and PC that I die also dont wanna be in A.I. But still Platoon 9 took me to be one of their A.I. Trooper... My appointment is SharpShooter and Matatdor Gunner (Man-portable Anti-Tank, Anti-DOoR). Or we call it the LAW (Light Anti-tank Weapon). Didnt get into Tankee nevermind lah. Freaking hell made me an Anti Tank! Besides that my new Platoon cant match my old platoon man. I was from the best platoon and now got into some boring platoon... First day we were introduced to our new weapon. I was introduced to my new SharpShooter weapon, which is a SAR-21 with a scope of 4X Zoom. My objective in missions, Identify and Remove officers in command. Pretty much similar to who Sniper Kills but way different from how Snipers work.
Tuesday we were introduced to the Matador. Firing technique, aiming with it and its features. Quite a cool weapon but its damn heavy. 10kg at least. Its a disposable weapon. In war we fire and throw. But training we use the one which we can reload which we call it the Sub-Calibre. Very simple weapon. No need to strip no need to maintain. No need to pull Feather-Lite through the barrel all. Hahax Fire and Forget.
Wednesday we were tested on what we learn on the day before. Firing technique and Aiming of the tank. Its scope has indication of aiming a tank from 100m to 500m and moving tanks of 20km/h and 40km/h. So I asked my Sergeant... "For tanks like M1 Abrams which can move at speed of 60km/hr. How do we aim?" He replied me "Run a way". Hahax Even if you hit a M1 Abram with one shot, it wouldnt do much damage. The Tank is protected by RHA and Chobham Armour. RHA, Rolled Homogeneous Armour which is a common armour used for military vehicle. As for Chobham Armour... Its what makes the M1 Abram Resistant to cetain anti-tank rounds. Although the construction details of the Chobham Common Armour remain a secret, it has been described as being composed of ceramic tiles encased within a metal matrix and bonded to a backing plate and several elastic layers. Due to the extreme hardness of the ceramics used, they offer superior resistance against shaped charges such as high explosive anti-tank (HEAT) rounds and they shatter kinetic energy penetrators. As for the Matador I use, the anti-tank mode is in HEAT. So as mention above the M1 Abram is highly resistance to HEAR rounds. So it totall makes sense to run when you see a M1 Abrams approaching. Hahax
Thursday was one hell of a slack day. Morning suppose to have physical training. Due to the rain it was cancelled. Had only one lecture on Matador and thats all. Admin whole day so we Matador Gunners sleep the whole day. Hahax
Friday Bookout day!! No lesson today also. Only live run of 3km in the morning. We get to book out at around 7 plus at night. But the poor tankees book out later since their training end late.
Finally I get the Saturaday all to myself! Went for my bike lesson and passed my Pract 1. Easy shit. Then I met Ganesh and Yazeer for dinner at Newton food court. Had long talks of Army life. Hahax Went to Esplanade after dinner to meet Ganesh's friends. Sit down and disturb Ganesh the whole night. Hahax when we were there we ran into Musique Workz's Finalist Sounds of Saviour's Lead singer. No idea whats his name. Bloody hell he havent used the Greendoors voucher yet!! They better use it man or they are screwed!! Aint easy to attain that sponsor man!!
Clemence Chang
