hormat senjata
I've been steadily getting sicker and sicker since Thursday. Woke up with a headache on Thurs morning and ended up with a fever by night. Friday morning the fever was still there but now my stomach started protesting like hell and I ended up having to bugger off to the toilet every now and then. Today was both combined in full force, so you can imagine it wasn't exactly the most fun thing for me to go for a history field trip covering open patches of swamp and jungle that used to be the battlefields that Japanese and Allied soldiers shot each other to pieces on.
The subject might have actually been quite interesting if I didn't keep being distracted by the odd growlings in my tummy and the hyperactive triceratops in my head, but one particular battle area really really took my attention. One thing about having been in the army, when you're at the actual ground and being told how the fighting progressed, you actually have a pretty good mental picture of just what those troops went through about 64 years ago. This was especially so when we reached a point near Bukit Chandu, the place where Lt. Adnan and C Comapny of the Malay Regiment made a last stand against the Japanese so everybody else could bugger off to the fall back line. They gave their lives so that everybody else might have them. They sat on that hill, outnumbered, outgunned and totally cut off. And still they sat there and did their jobs without flinching. Watching their entire company, 120-150 men, get slowly but systematically wiped out. Only 4 men survived that final battle. And they watched Lt. Adnan get slowly tortured to death by Japanese soldiers who were completely infuriated at the huge price they had to pay to finally get the better of a mere company of Malay soldiers.
It takes courage to go into battle. It takes a HERO to go into battle knowing it will be your last. It takes Heroes.
The subject might have actually been quite interesting if I didn't keep being distracted by the odd growlings in my tummy and the hyperactive triceratops in my head, but one particular battle area really really took my attention. One thing about having been in the army, when you're at the actual ground and being told how the fighting progressed, you actually have a pretty good mental picture of just what those troops went through about 64 years ago. This was especially so when we reached a point near Bukit Chandu, the place where Lt. Adnan and C Comapny of the Malay Regiment made a last stand against the Japanese so everybody else could bugger off to the fall back line. They gave their lives so that everybody else might have them. They sat on that hill, outnumbered, outgunned and totally cut off. And still they sat there and did their jobs without flinching. Watching their entire company, 120-150 men, get slowly but systematically wiped out. Only 4 men survived that final battle. And they watched Lt. Adnan get slowly tortured to death by Japanese soldiers who were completely infuriated at the huge price they had to pay to finally get the better of a mere company of Malay soldiers.
It takes courage to go into battle. It takes a HERO to go into battle knowing it will be your last. It takes Heroes.
posted by isaac! at 1:00 AM
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