Those old days, no Police cleared bombs or booby traps (IED's), it was the Combat Engineers, only the Combat Engineers did that and no one else, except those who were trained by them, others did not possess the knowledge or skill.

One incident took place in the capital city, Kuala Lumpur. We were happily constructing a booth, for the display of military equipment, beside the Chin Woo stadium near the Tengku Abdul Rahman Park. Happy, because we had entertainment, the adjoining park was providing it, it was also very near to Stadium Merdeka. 

Couples who frequent, did some great performances without them being aware, we used all our trained skills to be completely invisible to them. Of course we had to carry our rifles along. The couples were safe even though during that time they were not aware. We did not tolerate any misfit or mugger in that area.

We roughed up three muggers who tried to prey on the couple who were so deep in their theatrics, that the lady was without a skirt, we four, sprung up and confronted them, it would not have been a mugging by itself but rape. We beat the shit out of them, the unsuspecting couple thanked us profusely. 

The next two weeks we sexual perverts led contented lives being voyeurs, on our turf. Well during that period there was bomb call. It was supposed to be at the Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka. We rushed there with our equipment, led by our team leader, there were hundreds of people standing outside the building looking on. 

We puffed up our chests, as we were the experts, I heard a sweet young thing say, “Gosh, he is so young”. My heart went a fluttering. Felt pride, that at long last, we had a high profile activity. So many people showered us with looks of admiration.

Of course in any crowd there is this natural law that takes over, there have to be arseholes. These arseholes do not smile, they silently hope or wish for you to be blown up. You know that by looking at them. These assholes do not have the privilege of being vocal, as they know their arseholes would be ripped apart by the crowd if they, in any way offended us.

There were policemen guiding us to the main entrance, my team leader asked them if the building was completely evacuated. To which the police officer answered in the affirmative. The bomb that was supposedly there was to be located at the 3rd floor. We used the staircase, the lift we left alone. We carried basically, prodders, a mine detector, markers and other stuff, the world of good it would have done in a building.

At that time, we were the only ones able to handle a bomb that was the best they had at that time and place. The authorities had no choice. We went up to the floors, we moved individually looking for suspicious wires, devices, we actually did not know what to look for. We looked inside cisterns, as we did not want any poor bastard having his balls blown off while taking a leak.

We looked everywhere, failed by not finding anything that even remotely looked like a bomb. After nearly 3 hours of fruitless search, we were gathered in the center of the place of search, there were 5 of us. We were asked to attest and declare that there was no bomb whatsoever. We had to sign documents that stated that there was no bomb there in front of an officer who had come up when my team leader reported that there was no bomb.

We signed, not too confidently, even though we had done a thorough search. I actually, was irresponsible, with thoughts like, who cares if there was a bomb later on, it would be the in-charge who will have to answer, not a low ranking sapper like me. That thought was actually being disloyal to my team leader.

The officer allowed us to leave, after all the documentation was done. We took the lift this time. As we left the building, the crowd that was gathered there started clapping and cheering us, we felt good.