Tekong has many tales of the extraordinary, being a platoon commander of bmtc for sometime, i have heard of countless encounters with the third kind from my fellow collegues and soldiers under my care. Here are some of those…

1: Bmtc school 2 SOC ground, the one that is directly behind bravo company. At nite, those recruits who are not sleeping yet in those companies nearby to that soc ground would claim to see a woman crying and sitting on top of the jacobs ladder (an obstacle made of wooden logs shaped like a pyramid).

2: All recruits have to go for their range test, and the usual test venue would be the tekong 100m range which is situated further down SISPEC. The funny thing is recruits are not supposed to bring their m16 rifles with them to the toilet when they pee, they are supposed to pass them to their buddies before they go ease their call of nature. In the past, the bringing of rifles into the washroom was allowed but the idea was phased when something tragic happened. Once a recruit stole 2 5.56mm bullets and killed his platoon commander and then followed to shoot himself under the chin in one of the cubicles in the toilet. This resulted in a hole in the zinc roof which covers the toilet from above. From that incident onwards, no one is allowed to carry their rifles with them to the loo, the gaping hole has also since been patched back.

3: Before reaching the 100m range in pulau tekong, we have to travel along a track which is very long and surrounded by dense vegetation on both sides, where one side is the live hand grenade throwing bay. I was told this story by tekong tonner drivers. They told me that at night when they are shelduled to pick up recruits from the 100m range due to night range, they would have to speed up their vechicles to the maximum, because if they don’t do so and travel at a causal speed they would see heads flying and floating in front of the vechicles’ window.

4: There is one part in tekong which is reclaimed from the sea, where most soldiers go for trench digging because the soil there is softer and more loose. There is a a bridge separating the reclaimed land and the original tekong, it’s called DOGRA bridge. Whenever a vechicle passes by that bridge, the commuters must never look back because if they do they would have seen old headless soldiers searching for something on the ground, this even happens in broad daylight.

5: Everytime we are on the graduation 24km route march round the island, we would walk pass a certain area called PERMANTANG, this place is surrounded by countless rubber trees and oil palms, i remembered reminding recruits not to take photos of any of the tress, telling them that they will be charged if they do. But the actual truth is, if you take photos in that area, you will also see some pictures of the third kind in it.

6: There is this white room in the camp beside the present SISPEC. It was said that before tekong was declared a military zone by the government, many ncc groups used to visit the island. There was once this female ncc cadet loitered into this room in the morning, and she spent the whole day walking and walking to find her way out of the white room. She managed to come out only when it’s near 12 midnight that night. This was told my company’s storeman and he knew the girl personally.