I tamed this part, if this becomes a book it will be in it's original form, complete with expletives, offensive and not very politically correct or sensitive. I have changed the names of the people, so as not to hurt or humiliate them. Any resemblance to the dead or the living is pure coincidence. I hope I have covered myself.

I had a varied experience in jungle bashing, a little in Outward Bound School and some later experience, whilst waiting for my Malaysian Certificate of Education (Cambridge) results in the Cameron Highlands. I was there with the aborigines at a place called Sungai Palas. I learnt much about the jungle, their taboos, tracking and their way of life, I was seventeen years old then. Jungle training in RTC was very basic, endure the torture meted out to you.

We had all under gone rigorous training in immediate action drills, at section level which is the most basic of infantry tactics. Everything is a drill. One does not think, one does not ponder, reason nor indulge, in the luxury of reasoning. One reacts immediately with utmost urgency to counter any threat, it must be done by the book as taught in RTC any other action would be deemed a sacrilege. Of course a boot will be up yours, not figuratively but literally.

A section compromises of ten men, the first guy is known as a 1st Recce, the second guy is the 2nd Recce, 3rd person is the section commander, followed by the first rifleman, 2nd, 3rd and fourth respectively. Immediately behind is the first and second machine gunner, coming up last is the section 2nd in command. As we move in this formation our instructor would have stationed in place some guys from the demo platoon. These guys would fire upon us with blanks and throw thunder flashes at us. We will start conducting the immediate action drills on being fired upon.

We drop, dash, observe and return fire and try to neutralize the “enemy”, we are helped along by our instructors, who will be cursing and swearing as we conduct these drills. These drills are conducted up to a hundred times a day. We are tired, thirsty, soaked to the skin in our sweat, even the webbing gear on us is soaked through.

Just doing the drills isn’t good enough, looking weary or a slow reaction on somebody’s part is a good enough excuse for punishment, in RTC they don’t believe in individual punishment. It had to be Nik Man who blunders, he’s the bane of any Army’s nightmare. He gets lost in an assault. The Malaysian jungle is dense, gloomy, steaming and damp.

Its difficult to observe the next person, on the run, observation is limited to a bare three meters. Nik Man is barely coherent when he speaks in the national language, as it is laced very thickly with a Kelantanese accent; he was born and raised in the state of Kelantan. on the east coast of West Malaysia.

The people there do not speak the language one is taught in school. They are steeped in Islam and it has a very high rate of divorces compared to the rest of Malaysia. To add on to that, for the first time in my life I am meeting a guy from Kelantan, the plus factor was Nik Man could speak English.

The rest of the Kelantanese I avoided, I couldn’t understand them at all, and they were thinking it was normal to refer to ethnic Indians with snide derogatory terms, like Keling or Hindu. Probably gives them a feeling of superiority due to their insecurity being with infidels. Since meeting up with the Kelantanese, at that moment in time I considered them to be foreigners, as they spoke a form of Malay which I found very incoherent. Most of my batch of recruits were educated until Standard 6.

Nik Man’s purpose in joining the army, for the life of me I could not understand. He was slow in everything he did. The big brother thingy, in me decided to care for him. He was not only the target of verbal and physical abuse of instructors, but he was also victim of his own peers, some from his own very state, which is actually rare as the Kelantanese are a close knit community.

Nik Man had natural brownish coloring to his hair, probably his great grandmother was raped by some marauding foreign invader. He was gawky, tall, if someone wanted to shoot him one should not look him in the eye. His eyes were tinged with shades of blue and they always looked sad.

His father abandoned him when he was four years old. Grew up under the care of his grand parents. When his mother remarried, he stayed for awhile with his new father where he was subjected to abuse and ridicule. He went back to his grand parents. From there he made another screw up in his life by joining the army and at that instant screwing up our lives.

Looking for someone in the jungle is not easy, heard a hundred times about looking for a needle in a haystack? Its worst than that, you can’t shout his name out its taboo to shout out someone’s name. It is believed that the spirits of the jungle on hearing one’s name would later call out to entice one to an uncertain future.

The other reason is that there were real live communist terrorists with live rounds compared to our blank bullets, which made noise, at close range the plastic can get embedded in our faces, that is when we bleed. It used to happen when some half baked wannabe soldier did and caused the accidental discharge of a firearm. Recruits could get away with that, we were green horns, unlike trained soldiers. Those days 10% of recruits could be written off during training, due to the ongoing insurgency. Training was realistic.

We spread out in a extended line within visual distance. We advanced slowly sweeping with our eyes. Our rifles, ten and a half pounds tugging at our arms, in an alert position. Any other position would invite the wrath of our beloved instructors. Wriggly creatures making their way up looking for openings to attach themselves on open flesh to feed on our blood.

Slimy and thin, it is not a called a jungle without leeches. Sweat oozing from the pores are a natural source of salt and sugar for tiny bees which buzz around our faces in the dozens. Sometimes stinging when brushed away. Our lips are parched dying for a drink, we had not replenished our water bottles since the afternoon and there was no stream in sight.

We trudge along looking for an asshole known as Nik Man while suppressing our hunger pangs, along with the urge to murder him. We are also accompanied with a litany of what pieces of shit we were, as soldiers, by a half crazed instructor.