Green. Brown. Green. More green. And then some more green. An endless sea of green lay before me as I stared into the depths of the jungle in which I have been inserted for my navigation course in my 9-day long survival training package.
I am an infantry officer cadet of the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF), and as a part of our training program, all prospective infantry officers are shipped off to Brunei for jungle survival and close terrain warfare training during our time in Officer Cadet School. In an attempt to prepare us for survival-centered situation, we have to spend 9 days in the Bruneian jungle navigating and surviving with slightly less than 48 hours’ worth of rations to go on in a test known as the Jungle Confidence Course.
Brunei is a small-ish country on the island of Borneo, densely covered in layers and layers of pristine primary jungle terrain. When I was in Kentucky, the greenery of the forest was a warm, comforting color. It was a sort of lush, gentle green that welcomed you into its depths.
As I stood at my entry point, the green that surrounded me was a harsh, unforgiving emerald. It was a regal color of mystery and power, a color that inspired fear and respect. The Bruneian jungle is an untamed, mysterious entity that allowed little room for mistake when trying to navigate through its depths. The first 3 days of the course were spent navigating without any sort of electronic guidance, during which my team found us hopelessly lost for an entire day. The main problem about navigating with map and compass is the general inaccuracy of the map itself and the terrain that didn’t allow us to follow the compass to the exact degree. Maps are general representations, and when navigating in an enclosed-terrain context, general representations make it extremely difficult to know your location with an error margin of less than 50 meters.
The fact that my team made it out of the first phase was nothing short of a miracle. The navigation course was graded based on the number of checkpoints you found, sort of like a treasure hunt with the enjoyment sucked out by extreme fatigue. To pass, we had to find at least one checkpoint, a midpoint, and reach the endpoint before the time limit. We found our first checkpoint within the first 6 hours, and we were lost for the next 24. On the last day, we found the midpoint and the endpoint within three hours, barely scraping a pass.
The second course was a 2-day navigation course with electronic guidance. We were allowed to use the GPS, but here are two major catches: the error margin and the terrain. The GPS gives only a range, a radius that you are in, not a pinpointed location. The denser the canopy you stand under, the bigger the radius, meaning the radius is usually not small enough to give us a good reading of where we actually are. The unpredictable terrain puts barriers upon barriers between you and the objective shown on the GPS, meaning that if you think you only need to walk 300 feet to reach a checkpoint, it usually meant you ended up walking over half a mile to get there. This particular course sent us over two mountains, one around 1000 feet and the other around 1200 feet in elevation. Just a tip: if you ever want to go rock-climbing, I advise that you do it with a harness and without a 40lb pack strapped to your back.
Navigating on the mountain is technically easier because of the obvious ridgelines to follow. Physically, however, it pushed me to my limits, especially since 1) I have been eating nothing but a pack of hard tack a day for the past 3 days, 2) I had the team’s radio set in my pack, and 3) mountains, even small ones, are not easy to climb. But if we ignored all that, the second course was considerably easier.
Three days following five days of navigation was an assessment of survival ability. We were all taken onto boats and ferried along the river into swamplands to build living structures and such. We had to build an elevated sleeping surface, a fireplace attached to it, a monitor lizard trap, and do other things. Actually, I’m pretty sure a video of it was released to the public: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AcjQX7wHeE. There is nothing in the video that was staged. Having a film crew with you there means you can’t screw it up because it is likely that your instructors are the ones filming you and whoever was filming you probably brought snacks along and could care less about eating in front of you.
One point on killing the quail, though: unless you are as desperate as we were, the quail is too cute to kill. I tried to be nice about killing mine by calming it before I killed it, but it’s still one of those things that make you die a little inside when you see its big black eyes burning their special place in your mind that gets recalled every time you take a bite. That being said, quail is excellent meat.
The last day was a short trek back to base camp, and again, time limits. My team was the last one to make it back to camp, and we were 15 minutes away from missing maximum possible score, which we desperately needed since we botched the first two navigation courses. The feeling was walking on concrete again after 9 days’ worth of rolling down ravines and spur lines was… heavenly. Most of us had our feet completely destroyed due to the inability to dry them at night (it rained for most of the nights) and the wrinkles you get on your feet when they are wet create extra surface area begging for abrasions and fungal infestations. Needless to say, we were limping around for the next 3 days.
Before going to Brunei, the 800 meter race was the toughest thing I have ever done. Training in Brunei took me on a journey as much spiritual as it was physical, because without constantly looking to God for strength, I would not have made it out in one piece. There are times when things just go to crap and I have no idea why, and it is in those times when I realize that outside of God, I am nothing. In the jungle, I learned to be humble before the forces of nature, to realize how limited I am and I experienced how limitless God was. "Footprints in the Sand" by Stevenson resounded in my head throughout the 9-day duration:
One night I dreamed a dream.
As I was walking along the beach with my Lord.
Across the dark sky flashed scenes from my life.
For each scene, I noticed two sets of footprints in the sand,
One belonging to me and one to my Lord.
After the last scene of my life flashed before me,
I looked back at the footprints in the sand.
I noticed that at many times along the path of my life,
Especially at the very lowest and saddest times,
there was only one set of footprints.
This really troubled me, so I asked the Lord about it.
"Lord, you said once I decided to follow you,
You'd walk with me all the way.
But I noticed that during the saddest and most troublesome times of my life,
there was only one set of footprints.
I don't understand why, when I needed You the most, You would leave me."
He whispered, "My precious child, I love you and will never leave you
Never, ever, during your trials and testings.
When you saw only one set of footprints,
It was then that I carried you."
