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SECTION TRAINING
183
NINE
I. BELUKAR KWANG
II. KEEPING HIS HEAD
Trainee Kwang Kwok Yeow was in Platoon 4 during the section training phase.
The platoon was doing a blank-firing exercise involving an attack on an enemy
post on an un-named hill identified only as Spot Height 205, abutting Spot
Height 175 in the Lam Kiong Estate area. Hill 205 was densely covered with a
type of fern known locally as ‘belukar’, which grew shoulder high. Farmers had
not cultivated the hill slopes of Pasir Laba and they had no reason to venture
up them, so there were no paths. The trainees of the first intake had to make
their own paths on any feature selected for training. Kwok Yeow, compact and
muscular, had already gained a reputation for bashing through and had picked
up the nickname ‘Belukar’ Kwang.
Among other types of vegetation, hornets in Singapore frequently nest in
ferns. Kwok Yeow has no recollection of seeing anything, but he was suddenly
engulfed in a swarm of hornets. After the initial attack, he instinctively fell to
the ground and tried desperately to crawl away. His rifle was snagged in the
undergrowth and his helmet came off, exposing his head to the swarm that
went for him remorselessly. Platoon 4 Commander, CPT Jagrup Singh, seeing
his plight, sprinted up the hill, lifted him in a fireman’s lift and dashed downhill
away from the swarm. If CPT Singh had sustained any stings, nobody had been
the wiser. But, he got Kwok Yeow to the road and sent him immediately in
the safety Land Rover to the SAFTI Medical Centre. On the way, Kwok Yeow
passed out and he recollects regaining consciousness only at the Medical Centre
where the Medical Officer (MO), CPT (Dr.) Seah Cheng Hock lost count of
the number of stings he had sustained. The MO reckoned that Kwok Yeow was
lucky to have survived, as hornet stings, especially if extensive, can kill. Some
victims are extremely allergic to the venom and can succumb to just one or two.
To this day, Kwok Yeow’s admiration for COL (RET) Jagrup Singh is
undiminished. But as far as the section attack on an enemy post was concerned,
the enemy obviously won that time.
Tony Seng Peng Khoon got it in the neck—as well as on the head and face—
also during section training. He was then in Platoon 6, ‘B’ Company. He was
on patrol training with his section. Ahead of him, Michael Tan Tiok Hong
had unknowingly kicked something beside the path they were advancing along,
only to find he had literally stirred up a hornets’ nest. Hornets, as everybody
should note, do not take kindly to such treatment. Peng Khoon dropped his
HORNET EPISODES