That's me conducting a grenade throw for ROTU students on a weapons course in PLAW, at the Police Field Force Grenade throwing range in Ulu Kinta

Each of us had 5 magazines that’s 150 rounds of 5.56mm, 6 live grenades. This was serious business, this training. There will be two leaders for a team, one for the advance and one for the withdrawal. The start would be the firing of the GPMG’s, the order was given, “30 round magazine load”. We were managed by 17 instructors, so that none of us accidentally shot each other.

Then it started. The Mag 58’s (GPMG’s) opened up, dum, dum, deep sounds and a reassuring sound of a backup. We started paper potting, 6 of us nervous kids of fantastic parents. No parent would allow their kids to be in harm’s way. We dashed forward, 3 of us, the other three opened up with their M16’s. One of us forward, when were behind a slightly raised ground, looked around, to judge if everyone would be safe, which was per-arranged, took out a M73 hand grenade, pulled out the pin, shouting “grenade” threw it forward of our group.

The very live grenade, which can kill you blew up barely 30 meters in front of us. The casualty radius of a grenade is between 5 and 20 meters; with a minimum of 50% of exposed personnel becoming casualties within a radius of around 15 metres from the blast. A single grenade can kill an individual up to 10 metres away and can cause serious injuries up to 20 metres away (extracted infor from Google).

We hugged dirt, trying our best to burrow into the earth. Never trust novices with grenades when they are given a free reign of 6 grenades each. Well, that was our daily recreation and fun. Our life of challenges without thinking of material gain, only serving with our lives and soul. We got our rocks of that way, hey it was a macho way, our life was not that of pussies and mama’s boys.

Which was the norm of over protected and pampered guys, who never had an inkling of hardship or camaraderie. After the grenade throw the other 3 moved forward of us, while we fired, it was aimed fire, no firing from the hip or swinging our rifles left to right. It was a sacred commandment to only fire aimed shots. So as not to kill our buddies. This is not like in the movies. There is no director to say, “cut” and then say “re-shoot”, once you are dead you are dead. We keep on repeating this drill, sweat will be pouring out of our pores.

The other group will be observing and learning so as not to screw up. We did this very well. The instructors were very pleased with us. We definitely had to run a few miles to the truck that was waiting for us at least 5 miles away. They are always very good at toying with you and get their rocks off by seeing us sweating and puffing. By the time we have our dinner and put up our bashas, sleeping place with hammock. We had to do that quickly before the tide comes in, as our accommodation was in a swamp by the sea.  In an area called Betutu Laut in Sungei Udang.

So being exhausted we hauled our very tired arses to sleep, that was at 2200hrs. Suddenly at 0100hrs, there was that hateful sound of the whistle being blown, which meant that we had to assemble, we quickly put on our boots and jumped off the hammock, forgetting that the tide was in, we waded in knee deep water in the dark, to the assembly point, which was a volleyball court.

Mr. Nightmare the CSMI was waiting for us, wearing a T shirt and a volleyball tucked under his armpit! He announced gleefully, “Sirs, I hope you all have been well rested”. That was at 0100hrs, meaning at 1 o’clock am! Every other sane person on planet earth would be fast asleep. Well, this was with the Commandos, crazy bastards. “We are going to play volleyball, under this dim bulbs, the yellowy bulbs.