One of a Kind (2nd Edition)

OFFICER CADET TRAINING

245

ELEVEN

harbouring, base-camp security, protecting installations, contact drills, quick and deliberate

attacks against guerrilla camps, a variety of ambush techniques (area, chain, and linear), and

cordon-and-thrust operations.

The anti-guerrilla operations were on the whole enjoyable. It was not far removed from the

childhood days of playing soldiers. Blanks, thunderflashes, trip-flares and smoke grenades

were used liberally and while the instructors were strict about fieldcraft, movement was more

free than when doing live-firing exercises. Mosquitoes and inclement weather were problems,

but a sneak smoke in ambush was always possible, as was a quick shut-eye while waiting for

the ambush to be sprung.

For one anti-vehicle ambush, a fougas was used, a combination of petrol and lubricating oil

in a 44-gallon drum activated by a detonator, primer and demolition block. Laid on its side

in the direction of the approaching enemy, it provides a spectacular incendiary effect like a

napalm bomb and sets fire to anything in its path, leaving a huge smoke ring over the site.

One of the linear ambush exercises was with live-firing. Arcs of fire were strictly designated

by sticks and stout branches buried on either side of the firers. HE and phosphorous grenades

were used. One platoon’s ambush ended in near disaster as an instructor accidentally set off

a trip flare and suddenly found himself almost inside the killing area, just feet away from a

hail of M16 fire. His fieldcraft was in good shape because he practically buried himself into

the ground lengthwise until other instructors, screamed orders over the melee for the firing

to stop. At that point, he coolly got up, halted the withdrawal, asked the cadets to collect

targets and other stores after clearing their weapons and return to camp. The incident was

kept a secret for many years.

The grand finale of the anti-guerrilla package was a three-sided field camp exercise called

‘Tahan Lama’ like the one at the end of the section training phase in which spontaneous

ambushes, patrol operations and the other drills were practised against one another’s platoons.

‘Enemy’ infiltrators were captured and ‘interrogated’, and finally, each platoon mounted an

attack on another platoon’s camp. A good time was clearly had by all, except perhaps by the

captured ‘enemy’, because the interrogation was not uniformly restrained.

Endnotes

1. From the beginning of the officer cadet phase, all cadets were required to start a bank account with a

local bank to which pay was credited monthly. This did away with the fortnightly pay parades, and

provided more security.

2. Minutes of the General Staff Fortnightly Conference held on 21

November, 1966, sum up the situation:

“The Director (General Staff) will appoint a committee to study the Safety Regulations some time next week,

before sending it up to P.S. These Safety Regulations are provisional and shall come under review once every

six months. They will continue to be so for 2 or 3 years.”