🪖 WATCH: TODAY journalist Loraine Lee gets a taste of military life at the 2023 Women's Boot Camp — a two-day experience at Maju Camp in Clementi.
We were tasked to"fall in" outside the Maju Camp cookhouse at 6.30am. But with just two minutes shy of our deadline, I knew my section of women and I would not make it in time.
So when we finally left our room at 6.32am, I had a sense of impending doom. But in the name of camaraderie, I figured I might as well be late too and suffer the penalty that would surely come. Most participants were aged 18 to 20, having voluntarily signed up through their respective junior colleges and polytechnics.
As we did not have the army boots a typical recruit would be required to wear, we could only do nine of the obstacles. For one, I never expected weapons to be this heavy, having seen people wield them with ease at the National Day Parade. I was expecting a corporate rah-rah response about how women in NS went through it exactly like other men do, or some motivational line about how women can do it too.
Another recalled how he could barely think after a gruelling route march. When asked to recite the SAF's eight core values during their"water parade", he gave an incorrect answer and ended up having to do push-ups.I had a spoon to eat my rations and didn't need to wolf down a meal by squeezing food out of a bag. I also somehow could get away with my bad jokes with my commanders during the water parade, such as when they asked us to drink"beyond the point of thirst".
As camp organiser Joanna Portilla said, it is easy to take peace time for granted. It is also just as easy to stay ignorant about what NS men and regulars do on a daily basis to keep our country safe.
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