A medical personnel and an infantryman during a peacekeeping mission in Timor Leste
Metalized asked in his blog if an ustaz from the Kor Agama Angkatan Tentera (KAGAT) is purely an ustaz, or is he a soldier with an ustaz qualification? Metalized was in his AOO (area of operaations) recently with the usual attachments-under-command of personnel from KAGAT, UBAT (medics) and the KPA (Kor Perkhidmatan Am) drivers. When he made them do guarding duties, the medical personnel complained to their Battalion Commanding Officer (Bn CO) about having to do duties beyond what they specialise in…which to them seemed an ultra vires act by Metalized to order them so.
If you look at the photo above, you can see a medic going about doing his duty as a medical personnel during a peacekeeping mission in Timor Leste. If you notice, he even has a Steyr AUG assault rifle slung from his right shoulder. That shows that in a combat situation, he is first and foremost, a soldier.
A soldier is always trained as a soldier first – breaking his/her mould as a civilian and turning him/her into an effective, albeit second-line, soldier. Whether he is a soldier-turned-driver 2nd class (or 1st class), or an qualified ustaz turned into a soldier later. He/she is a soldier first, and other things later.
Let us look at it this way. Back in the early 1990s when at 11pm some sadist bastard decided that the whole Air Force had to go on PERSOPS (Persediaan Operasi – Operational Readiness Test), we had to make sure that the airbase strength is at 98% readiness, all aircraft prepped, armed and refueled in less than an hour. During the ‘O’ Group for all Officers Commanding (OC) the various departments, I, as the person in charge of total security and defence of the base, put up a roster of guards to be made out of non-critical officers and personnel from each department. Clerks, medic admin, second-line engineers, off-duty cooks – all to dig foxholes and man the general purpose machineguns emplacements. The very senior OC of the Engineering protested saying his men are not meant for combat. I replied something to this effect:
“Tuan, your men are soldiers. When all the aircraft from this base have been shot down, they will have nothing to tinker their tools with. They will be required to defend their lives and this base from an enemy attack. If you insist that they are engineers and not soldiers, get them out of their uniforms and become just like those sissy civilian bastards who sleep while we weep. I have a war to handle and unless the Panglima (GOC – General Officer Commanding) says otherwise, your ass and that of your men, are mine, Tuan.”
The CO (Commanding Officer) concured (although he said later that I could have worded my statement in a nicer way to an old man).
As Ebenezer Scrooge would say, “Bah! Humbug!” Nice words, my foot!
So, Metalized, you did the right thing.
A soldier is a soldier first.
SeaDemon Says 