ONE HELL OF A CRAWL

PIONEER journalist Teo Jing Ting bites the dust when she attempts the Battle Inoculation Course (BIC).

I felt like a komodo dragon. Or an oversized and extremely clumsy monitor lizard.

Even after my male colleagues warned me against doing the BIC, I was still very game for it. Honestly, how hard could it be? A lot of it was just crawling. I mean, come on, we all did that as babies.

But I forgot I had to wear a helmet and an Integrated Body Armour (iBA) vest as well as carry my rifle throughout the course.

The Singapore Assault Rifle (SAR) 21 weighed a ton to me, and the helmet was squeezing my head in a most uncomfortable way.

A slow start

As I was new to the BIC, 3rd Sergeant (3SG) Li Mingzhou, a weapons instructor from the Basic Military Training Centre, was assigned as my buddy and trainer to take me through the course. To my horror, I had to start by lifting myself up from a trench, which was up to my neck.

Did I mention that I'm bottom heavy and have no arm strength? With the additional weight from the iBA and the rifle, I could barely lift myself up from the ditch.

After three miserable tries, my photographer took pity on me (or maybe he just wanted me to move on to the next station). He jumped into the ditch and told me to use his thigh as a stepping stone to climb out of the trench.

Mortified but realising I had no choice, I did that and finally managed to hoist myself out of that darn ditch.

Once out, I was faced with a rather short lane of sand and was told to start leopard crawling. "So short only? Can lah!" I said aloud. Or so I thought.

The moment I sprawled onto the sand and started moving my arms and legs, I had to humbly eat my words. Leopard crawling in Skeletal Battle Order was no joke. Barely 5m in, I was already panting. Hard.

But I pressed on and managed to make it to the tunnel somehow. Crawling through it was a welcome respite before the next round of leopard crawling. This time, the distance I had to crawl was longer than the first. I found out afterwards that it was 25m.

By then, I was drenched in sweat. Every few movements forward, I had to stop and catch my breath. My arms were aching as I also had to hold my rifle while crawling. I felt like I had been leopard crawling for a mile.

Can I give up now?

Finally, I hit a grass patch. 3SG Li told me to get up, run towards a room and hide behind a wall. Following his signal, I rushed into the room to "shoot" at the enemy.

After that, I ran out of the room and did a count of "1,000, 2,000, 3,000" while running, before hitting the ground for another dreaded round of leopard crawling.

I leopard crawled towards an abandoned car and "fired" at a target some distance away. Once the target was down, I started crawling across the final and longest sand lane ever.

By this time, I was so exhausted I just wanted it to end. I could not even comprehend the instructions from 3SG Li anymore. Every sentence he said was met with a stupid "Huh?", and a dazed expression.

In the end, 3SG Li felt sorry for me and told me to run to the end of the lane where I had to slide down into another trench. This was where I had to reload my rifle before taking aim and firing at another target.

At the final station, I got out of the trench (thank goodness this ditch had a step), and walked slowly towards the end, on high alert with my rifle butt firmly pressed against my shoulder. And then, IT WAS OVER!

I was so exhausted that I could not even lift my arms to unsling the rifle and my photographer had to help me to do so.

Despite the many "battle scars" on my forearms and kneecaps, I was very proud that I had accomplished the BIC. And I even convinced the female recruits who were about to go through it that it was very tiring.

But after they completed it, they told me that the BIC was "very manageable and not tiring at all"!

Oh well, I guess I'm just not cut out to be a soldier. Looking back, it was fun (if slightly torturous) trying out the BIC, but clearly, I should stick to my day job.

Battle Inoculation Course

1) Release Point
Use the techniques for clearing the Low Wall of the standard obstacle course to climb out from the trench to start the BIC.

2) Tunnel
Leopard crawl across the sand path before entering the tunnel.

3) Concrete Cylinders
From the tunnel, crawl along the sand path to an earth mound to fire at a target.

4) Urban Ops Room
From the concrete cylinder, run across the grass to enter the room to fire at a target.

5) Damaged Vehicle
After exiting the room, leopard crawl to a damaged vehicle to fire at another target.

6) Ditch
Leopard crawl across another sand path before sliding into a ditch to reload weapon and fire at targets.

7) End Point
Climb out of the ditch and walk towards the fence (end point), with rifles pointing at the targets.