This has been a short working week. In fact, it was only a day. While many headed out early Tuesday morning for the final navigation exercise (NAVEX), a minority of us had to stay back in camp for regimental guard duty. However, for a short duration of the morning, we were all at Mandai for our ‘impromtu’ graduation parade where we received our berets. As simple as it may have seemed, it was one to remember.

Anyway, guard duty began after flag-lowering that day. Most of us, including the guard commander, was doing guard duty for the first time, so there were many things that we were oblivious to. Ignorance was not an excuse. Of course, we didn’t really had the most wonderful of time for the rest of the night. We had to keep ourselves awake for turn-outs and the rotating shifts meant that we didn’t get much quality sleep.

Fortunately, since it was a weekday, our nightmare only lasted 12 hours. Not a very good first-time experience but who would say they do? Good thing is that we booked out on Wednesday night and off till next Tuesday!