I am to write a short piece on the four defining moments in my Basic Military Training phase, and I thought I'd do it here, before extracting it and then giving it to my officer.

Four Defining Moments

My first comment would be that, it is hard to point out/pull out any single sharp moment where I can hold it to be precisely when I felt was most edifying for my person.

I find that the whole process is affecting, and myself at the end of it, is a positive product of what I've gone through.

It has been observed most people appreciate honesty, and so I will first list the instance at "stand two" during evening where I was proning in my shell scrape and feeling like a baby, as one. While trying to keep looking through the scope of my rifle, I felt really lousy then, because out-field, the low levels of comfort were a blow to the bum that I was.

This was the second day of field camp and I was the Platoon I/C. The mud and sand and the wetness, and the hunger and the stress and homesickness had gotten to me, and I realized that my mental strength was insufficient and I was not as tough as I supposed or liked to be.

The responsibility as Platoon I/C anchored me and I gathered the parts of me that were not so weak and pushed on, learning quickly that striving for comfort is foolish, but becoming indifferent to discomfort is key.

I imagine most people would claim that being handed their rifle is a defining moment, but I think for me, firing the rifle was a positive defining moment. I began by being afraid of the rifle, because I was hyper-aware that it could kill, and although this apprehension dimed when I grew familiar with the weapon, live firing called it out again.

It was firing the weapon that made me even more sensitive to the fact that I was a soldier, and that I was to shoot at my enemy and injure or destroy him. All the foolery before was insignificant when lined up next to this. What we were doing was real and serious, and all of it led up to this.

The other moment was being called to use the branches and leaves to adorn ourselves and then lying on the forest floor in field craft. Apart from being pleasantly surprised at the effectiveness of our pixelized uniform, it was a important skill to acquire to boost my survivability in future. It was also extremely fun.

I gleaned that in a team with a mutual end-objective, only joint progress is valid. The moments from which I learned this are numerous and many of them involved my palms supporting my body from the floor.

This was the case in fire drill or any settings where we failed to meet timings given.
Individual responsibilty in addition to contributing to the larger outfit was something precious that would spare us muscle soreness and result in the objective being achieved.