7. Drill square test and Attestation

7. Drill square test and Attestation
Next up was drill, we had to be trained to march like real military personnel, well, I used to march at home and all the soldiers in my cartoons used to march, so I guess this wasn’t going to be a big deal, we were told to move to the parade ground and the commands started rolling out ‘attention by number squadddddd one’ and we had to shout ‘ONE’, ‘squad twooooo’ and we had to shout ‘TWO’, (squad one you had to raise your leg up, and by squad two bang it hard on the ground, believe me all those marching you see soldiers doing on TV have a lot of rythms and nitty gritty details to make it look so beautiful), ‘byyyyyyy the right, quick march’, ‘left, right, left, right, left, right’, ‘a paceeeeeee, mark time’, ‘hmmmmm, left, right’, two paces mark time’, ‘hmmmm, left, right, left’, ‘about turn (sounded more like abbatoir)’, ‘hmmmm left, right, left’, ‘abbatoir’, ‘hmmmm left, right, left’, ‘righhhhhhhhhht turn’, ‘righhhhhht turn’, ‘abbatoir’ ‘hmmmmm left, right, left’, ‘abbatoir’ ‘hmmmmm left, right, left’, ‘paraddddddddde, halt’, ‘means one two’, ‘abouuuuuuuut turn’, ‘open orderrrrrrrrrred march’, ‘remain at shun (this basically means you should keep standing at attention), ‘hey, who is that scrashing his nose on my father’s holy ground’, ‘no movement, infact you are not allowed to blink’, wow, seems like the soldiers in my cartoons didn’t know how to march after all, they only knew how to do ‘leeeeft, right, leeeft, right’ and sang songs like ‘holiday is coming, holiday is coming, no more morning bells’.

Well, drill is beautiful; drill practice was one place where we had fun, adding our own songs to the calls by the drill instructors, when you are given a command, there are usually rhymes to go with it to help you get it right, for example when you are asked to do an ‘about turn (a 180degrees turn)’, the usual command you hear is ‘abbatoir’, or ‘aboturn’, there are many variations depending on the instructor, and to follow the rhythm you chant ‘hmmmm, left, right, left’, this helps you know you are supposed to cut your hand sharply and pause on your right leg during the hmmm sound, , bang firstly with the left leg, then right, then left as you do a 180degrees turn, we had fun changing the chant to ‘abbatoir’, ‘hmmmm I want garri to soak’, our drill instructors were funny, and never hesitated to use their dreadful wooden sticks on anybody found to be stepping out of rhythm, drill was interesting and we learnt pretty fast to march like real soldiers, with adequate discipline on the parade ground, no bending, no scratching of your eyes, nose or blokos(arse), obeying the parade commander etc, as the days went by we didn’t need the extra chants of ‘hmmm I want garri to soak’ to know when to pause, or turn, or bang the left leg etc, but we still chanted them for the fun anyway.

After a while we moved to tougher drill instructions, marching past in review order, eyes right salute, switching from covering up in 3 ranks, to covering up in 2 ranks, taking dressing etc and the many commands that came with them. ‘odd number a pace forward, even number a pace backwardddddd march’, ‘Parade we form two ranks, formmmmmm two ranks’, ‘rear rank a pace forward, front rank a pace backward march’, ‘eyes squat your right and take dressing, toesssss on the line’, ‘standdddd stilllllll’, ‘number one guardddddd, left willlllll’, ‘mark timmmmme, left, right, left, right, left right’, ‘halt’, ‘means left right’, ,number one guardddd, eyes right’, ;byyyyy the right, slowwwww march’, ‘eyesssss right’, ‘miss, pauseeeee, salute’ etc etc etc… we were now ready for our drill squared test, which we all passed, meaning we were now fully accustomed to military parade drills, next up was our attestation, the first real use of the new drill skills we just learnt.

Apparently, during these past months, we were still civilians, we had to do an attestation where we swore to serve the Nigerian Air Force, that was the point of becoming real Junior Air Men, it is after the attestation that you can be bamboozled and mishandled anyhow because technically you are now fully government property, your parents have signed you over to the Nigerian Air Force on the day you resumed, and you have now sworn to serve the Nigerian Air Force with your own mouth. The night before attestation we didn’t sleep, we were ironing out our military khaki uniforms, gleaming boots and preparing to appear the best during our attestation. There was a pastor and an imam there during our attestation, and we all swore to serve the Nigerian Air Force, as we were stepping out of the parade ground, the ever ‘job hungry’ JS2 boys were there waiting for us, now you are fully set to serve ‘job’, as you are stepping out of the parade ground ‘sit on your heads’, ‘lead on forward rolls’, ‘get on your hunches’, so many commands running concurrently from the cloud of JS2 boys who were eager to assert their authorities, they had to start patching for JS3 provosts and had to be amongst the toughest JS2 boys to be considered for selection. Well, so finally, we were wearing the military uniforms, hanging our ‘one’ bar proudly, we were now Junior Air Men.