Rules of engagement and other things reservists have to worry about

My Army unit is on Mobil­i­sa­tion Man­ning this week, right after 17 days of in-camp train­ing! If they mobilise us this Sat­ur­day just to prac­tice, we will be very, very upset. Watch your tv screens for the flash­ing green man with our code­words: Fly­ing Oys­ter Omelette, Soiled San­i­tary Pad & Deep Fried Tofu. If they mobilise us because some Al-Qaeda affil­i­ate tries to bash through the impen­e­tra­ble bar­ri­ers at Hol­land Vil­lage, we will still be very, very upset. Woe betide the Al-Qaeda affil­i­ate. You joined the wrong club. Me and me mates wiw kew you dead, because we haven’t had the chance to watch a mid­night movie in a while.

Speak­ing of angry reservists, so, no one wet their beds last, last Sun­day night, and the IPPT was con­ducted on Mon­day morn­ing with­out inci­dent. Later on, we went for our the­ory lessons in Laws of Armed Con­flict and Rules of Engage­ment. At the lec­ture, they showed us slides with some basic point­ers on Inter­na­tional Human­i­tar­ian Law accom­pa­nied by some grue­some pic­tures. Then they showed us clips from Pla­toon (“My Lai” vil­lage scene), and Rules of Engage­ment.

Coin­ci­den­tally, my pla­toon mate Dil­bert Chua lent me a book called “Tell Me No Lies”, which has a chap­ter on My Lai. So, in between naps, I read the chap­ter and won­dered if Tuesday’s prac­ti­cal por­tion of the LOAC and ROE (the SAF, they lurve them acronyms) could be effec­tively taught at the FIBUA (Fight­ing In Built Up Area) “vil­lage” near the ATC (Armour Train­ing Centre).

The les­son mod­ule was such that we were not told what exactly to expect, and how exactly to react, and we were to see if our mil­i­tary objec­tives could be effec­tively met while observ­ing LOAC and ROE. So, we were shot at by ‘civil­ian sim­u­la­tors’ from the sec­ond floors (thank good­ness only sec­ond floor. No lift leh!) of the HDB blocks, shot at from an ambu­lance, shot at from out­side a check­point, grenaded by a ‘sim­u­lated preg­nant woman’, delayed by a ‘sim­u­lated hostage taker’ tak­ing ‘sim­u­lated hostages’, delayed by a ‘sim­u­lated civil­ian ask­ing for food and water and get­ting in the line of fire’ etc, etc.

It all went accord­ing to the train­ers’ expec­ta­tions. We didn’t know how to react. And because this was just a sim­u­la­tion, and not some­where in Fal­lu­jah, the fun­ni­est sce­nario was when one sec­tion from my tac­ti­cal team stormed a build­ing only to find that two civil­ians had been taken hostage, and so we couldn’t lob grenades into all three rooms of the three room flat from which we were fired upon.

Tired and frus­trated from climb­ing the stairs, and per­haps also from hav­ing prob­lems at home, the ‘hostage nego­ti­a­tions’ were opened by a mem­ber of the sec­tion and it went some­thing like this:

What the fuck you want, nin­abehchee­bye motherfucker?

Fuck you! Kan­inabu­chow­chee­bye­moth­er­fucker! Limpehshootjitliaphorliseeeee!

And then there was a burst of auto­matic gun­fire. After which, the slack-jawed trainer declared the sim­u­lated hostages and their sim­u­lated cap­tor dead.

Then we broke for lunch, the troop­ers and sim­u­lated civil­ians and ter­ror­ists, though we could’ve eaten ear­lier if we had just lobbed grenades into the flat and saved some time. Some of us spoke up and said they were glad we weren’t in a real war zone, because we might end up doing the same things the Amer­i­cans are doing in Iraq, or the Israelis in the occu­pied territories.

But would we, me and me mates, be as indis­crim­i­nately mur­der­ous if say, an Al-Qaeda affil­i­ate tried to bash through the bar­ri­ers at Hol­land Vil­lage? I’d say no. Because ear­lier, my sec­tion came under sim­u­lated sniper fire from a sim­u­lated two-room flat, and my sec­tion com­man­der led us upstairs to the door of the flat, knocked on the door and said, “Open up, I count to three, you bet­ter open up, or else… or else.… we come in! ONE, TWO, THREE! Open lah, cheebye!”

At our debrief, we were asked what else we could have done to meet our objec­tive (which was to secure the junc­tion down­stairs). We could have lobbed two sim­u­lated M203 grenades into the win­dows where the sniper fire was com­ing from, and we’d be happy as larry, junc­tion secured. But we didn’t.

So all youse civil­ians, ang mohs and chow-keng-never-do-reservist-because-downgradeds, if an Al-Qaeda affil­i­ate tries to bash through the bar­ri­ers at Hol­land Vil­lage, and me and me mates are mobilised, you can still sip your Cof­fee Bean & Tea Leaf lattes while we think twice before frag­ging the whole place. And you have our Army and their LOAC/ROE les­son pack­age to thank.

We also learned that Sin­ga­pore is not a sig­na­tory to the 1st (Pro­tec­tion of Vic­tims of Inter­na­tional Armed Con­flicts) and 2nd (Pro­tec­tion of Vic­tims of Non-International Armed Con­flicts) addi­tional pro­to­cols of the Geneva Con­ven­tions of 1949. Any­one know why?

Mr Tan’s neigh­bour­hood res­i­dents’ com­mit­tee tended to go over the top when deal­ing with com­plaints of noisy neighbours