We had our own problems, communism in Malaysia was becoming active encouraged by the victories of their communist brethren in Vietnam. It had a profound impact on our training. All of us were serving by choice; we tried to excel in training as brutal as it was.

The butt of the SLR (self-loading rifle) was quite often used as club against us by our beloved instructors; those blood thirsty mother fuckers had no qualms about drawing blood. Some scalps were split, my, did they bleed profusely. The first time we went to fire our weapons, we went to a 25-meter range, all of us were excited, at long last we were going to fire a weapon.

We were lined up in details of five, the details were lined up on the firing point, we were like virgins, nervous, breathless wanting to do well. All the weeks of dry runs towards this day when were finally going to use our “wives”. The command rang out, “Detail to the firing point advance, in the lying unsupported position with a five round magazine load, Action! On your own time go on.”

I placed my cheeks firmly against the butt, aligning the sights on the center bottom base of a white patch on the target, I wrapped my fore finger firmly around the trigger and gently squeezed. I felt the bullet leave the muzzle and the quick recoil, I let loose the remaining four rounds. We inspected weapons and approached the targets at a run.

The instructor was staring at a group size measuring about twenty millimeters. The grouping wasn’t in the center of the target. At that time my knowledge on sights was limited to peering through them. The instructor took the weapon from me.

I was already preparing myself for a nasty butt stroke; instead he looked at the sights, made some adjustments and said, “Don’t let anyone call you four eyes ever again You have a very good group size, I have made some adjustments I want you to fire again. Use the same technique, this time you will hit the spot you are aiming at.” “Thanks sarge”. I did, from then on it was plain sailing whenever I was at the rifle range.

The sergeant who was a real ogre, I shit you not, had this weakness, whenever someone does well at the range he tones down the physical abuse, mind you not the verbal abuse. After that we went into sub-machine guns, the only kind available at that time was the Stirling sub-machine gun, 9 millimeters. It was a British weapon, most equipment at that time was British, as they were our colonial masters some time back.

At that time, they traditionally monopolized our Armed Forces equipment, also they exploited maximum our defense spending, and during the old days they used the locals as canon fodder to protect the British Empire against the marauding Japanese during World War 11. Going back to the Sterling. It was a cute looking weapon, it’s butt was foldable and had a thirty round feed magazine.

It was used in the Star War movies, and was depicted as a futuristic looking weapon. Its breech was spring operated, when it’s cocked one has to be careful, as it would go off, if dropped or accidentally hit. Quite a number of unfortunate souls met their end this way, not mentioning the ones maimed or crippled. It was fun training with this weapon, I became adept at using this weapon.

All those guys who were not impressive enough at shooting always used to get the shit clobbered out of them. The other part of training I really hated was foot drill, the instructors loved drilling our arses to the ground. This is where they get to show their stuff, all of our instructors were from the Royal Malay Regiment, only Malays are allowed to join this regiment, other races are not allowed to die for their country fighting in this regiment only Malays are, their motto is Loyalty and Devotion.

The instructors of this calibre believed in their minds that by raising their feet high and stomping them into the ground meant they had great discipline. They liked it here, after work they could go back to their loved ones, one of the perks was they could sell foodstuff to the recruits to supplement their income, they do this by exploitation, the British had taught them well, they bring a big basket filled to the top with packets of food, nominate one blue eyed boy, one who sucks up to the instructors, to distribute the food packets.

He is given orders that the food must all be sold out. Woe betide any recruit who does not buy, it would be worst than hell for him. The problem with this business is the customer, the pitiable recruit earns only US 8 dollars fortnightly, current rate during those times. Some recruits need to send home money to their loved ones, some of them being the sole bread winner.

They managed to save and send by braving the food served at the cook house. All their efforts become undone when confronted with these blood sucking instructors. We who don't have money, need not worry, we are allowed credit! Imagine, one platoon of recruits has an average of 8 instructors, half of them are entrepreneurs, means all the recruits will remain in debt until the end of basic training for a duration of six months. One will observe after a month some of the instructors changing from Lambretta scooters to Italian Vespas, their business acumen paying off.