The day I joined the army as a private soldier. Nobody in the family was happy about this decision but me being the stubborn one refused to change my mind. My mum she cried, because she was afraid of me ending up in a body bag (the Malaysian Army then did not have body bags at that moment in time), so one can imagine how one’s very deceased body was handled.

I carried a bag of my worldly possessions as I took the first big steps of my life into the real world. To see me off were my mother, dad and my siblings. Mum of course was teary eyed; mums all over the world get teary eyed when their offspring want to go out into the world to play soldier boy, in her case, the second offspring to join the army. Her first born my elder brother had answered the call to arms when the Indonesians started attacking us, when I was very young in the sixties.

My Dad being my dad, said this,” I want you to become an Officer”. He gave me RM100 (USD$27.39) for expenses, that was a lot of money those days. The bus came and I was soon off with a heavy heart to the railway station in Teluk Intan. I loved them very much. It was difficult moment for an 18 year old to go away on his own. I have done it but this time it was for keeps, this was the defining moment of how life will turn out for me.

The very first day at the railway station in Seremban was chaotic with hundreds of potential soldiers from a multi ethnic background. The senior NCO’s were yelling away trying to bring order to a very chaotic situation. There was this gentleman who was moving along all pumped up with self importance he was making the situation worse by barking out to the already harassed NCO’ s.

That action brought out the meanness in the NCO’ s who started abusing everyone in the language most foul, mentioning mothers and sisters, private parts, copulation, a bit on what to do with male parts and all of it brought about shocked stares from us. These reference to body parts were interspersed with derogatory terms in reference to Indians, Sikhs and Chinese . The strutting gentleman we later found out was the Commanding Officer of the Recruit Training Center in Port Dickson named Major Aarof. That guy we realized later in training was a cross between Gomer Pyle and Gilligan.

All of us were rounded up like the sheep we were onto trucks .It was twenty guys to a truck, of course we were warned, not to wave or yell to the public on the way to Port Dickson which was an hour away. As though we were the guys who created the bad image, imagine all the curses and abuse at a public railway station in full hearing range of the public, especially on the matter that somebody’s mother’s private parts was diseased.

These NCO’s who were going to be our instructors were the most sadistic bunch of people I ever had the privilege of meeting. They would put the drill sergeant in the movie Full Metal Jacket to shame.. Not to soon we reached the great big square. This is where you get to see the great military bullshit of being yelled at repeatedly. You get sorted out, which platoon you going into, under which company; you are repeatedly shuffled from place to place under the blistering sun. The realization hits you then, what the fuck are doing in hell on earth.

After all the pathetic souls have been sorted out many times and some semblance of order has been retrieved, we are issued with plastic cups and plates to go for lunch. We are made to form in lines of three and herded to lunch. In most armies the place soldiers eat is known as a mess hall, here it is known as a cook house.

The guys were all famished, after a long journey many of us did not have much money on us, we were the poor middle class, to get rid of the hunger pangs we were always filling our bellies with water. Now when we were finally at the cook house imagine we had to line up, in four lines that snaked around the building 1500 of recruits!

It’s mind boggling, in the US Army it would not be a problem, they are used to aircraft carriers, starving populations and they feed their army in style. The Malaysian Army does not believe in good logistics, don’t pamper your soldiers or they will become spoiled. That mentality has not been eradicated until now, I am already a pensioner. I managed to reach the food line, the rice is slopped down into your plate mind you not the white rice you normally get, it’s grayish ,on again no time to choose, it’s beef, never eaten beef before you say no, a sarcastic remark is passed with a sneer, can consume milk but can’t take beef. That happened often throughout training.

There’s one Indian Army cook who sympathetically with an encouraging smile plunks down a big drumstick with a bit of gravy.