Graduation from SOCC

At last, after a long and gruelling 21 weeks of Signals officer course, the day had finally arrived. But without the completion of 70km Ex-Spitfire on Thu morning. The walk start on a Tue from Stagmont camp to Kranji Dam. Our team start off at 10pm and reach Kranji Dam at 2am. Next we walked to Bukit Batok before heading back to camp by 7am. By then, we had already completed around 30Km. But it was still not the end, we still have 40 km to walk where we will head off to Lim Chu Kang area via the Lum Sum Flyover. The route to Tehnah air base was already horrible as it seems like an endless route. Breaks become frequent along the way.

The worse phase of the 70km was the route from Lim Chu Kang Cementry onwards to the police coast guard. The route was boring and i was counting the number of lamp posts towards the next checkpoint...in total there was 300 plus lamp post. By then i was very very exhaustion. We had not had any proper rest for the past 18 odds hours. After we reached there, we were ferried to the Kranji Dam where we will walked towards Mandi area for our second last checkpoint. The day soon turn into nightness as we made our way slowly due to out multiple blisters and leg muscle ache. Just before i reached Mandi, i was having signs of heat exhaustion but with water being poured very rest stop, i was able to carry on. I had to complete this to regain the pride lost during the 1st Spitfire. By 12am, we reached back camp with our SOCC mates waiting and cheering for us. At last the ordeal is over.

Yesterday, was the day where all the cadets will look forward as we were officially graduated from the SOCC. Our parents and guests witnessed the grand event and had a buffet dinner at the multi purpose hall. It was the last day i step into Stagmont camp as a trainee and off we go to OCS for our commisioning parade.

Out