Experience: Unit Drill Instructor Course

Table of contents

Introduction

The UDI Course can only be attended by cadets who received more than 80% in the foot drill gold assessment. This is a very prestigious course, and it gives the cadet a red-(or orange)-and-white striped lanyard that can be worn as part of the uniform, upon passing.

It is a 3 day course that can take place at either Home Team Academy (HTA), or Civil Defence Academy (CDA). My course took place at CDA, and was run primarily by CLTs and HOs (Honorary Officers; adults who continue to volunteer in NCDCC even after NS, and are assigned to some schools).

I’ll condense the experience where possible. This isn’t an autobiography, after all.

📌 NOTE: Your course may take place at HTA, and it’s content may differ.

General information

The 3 days’ agenda is as follows:

• Day 1: Learn all the things for the assessments
• Day 2: Assessments
• Day 3: Reassessment (if you failed any part), learning of advanced drills (FYI only, not graded), and the Passing-out Ceremony

💡 TIP: Always be early. The reporting time was noted as 8am, but I usually arrived at around 7.20am. The earlier the better.

⚠️ IMPORTANT: Wear your beret upon entering. Put your phone, wallet, watches and any other stuff in your pockets in your bag.

⚠️ IMPORTANT: Brush up your footdrills. If you make a mistake, it could cost your entire squad to SAMULAH. Since this is the UDI Course, you are expected to be very, very good at your footdrills.

Day 1

In the morning

We formed a contingent at the carpark; someone (not me) was picked to be the IC to march the squad (because no one volunteered); and we marched to the roundabout/drop-off point, where we walked to the Auditorium on Level 2. This would be where we put our bags and had most of our meals, as well has the passing-out ceremony [on the 3rd day], on the 3 days I was there.

📌 NOTE: 2 meals are provided: breakfast and lunch. Dinner was provided on the 3rd day.

Muster Parade

The good ol’ Muster Parade that I have little experience with. We had this on all 3 days, twice a day (once at the start, once at the end). Led my the day’s OIC (overall in-charge; a cadet who is responsible for everyone, and the total strength of the day) and the DyOIC (Deputy OIC), who just assists the OIC.

There are 3 ROTAs, and I was in Rota 1. To my eternal dread, I was picked as ROTA IC for the second day (more of that later).

Rotational modules

In these modules, we learnt the practical [P] (footdrills) and theory [T] elements for UDI. These are:

• [P] Water Mist Gun (WMG) Drills
• [T] Method-of-Instruction (MOI)
• [P] Footdrill Gold commanding and execution

There may have been others, but I can’t exactly recall them.

WMG Drills

This is a key component of the course. In this lesson, you will learn the different parts of the WMG (e.g. spine, nozzle head, foregrip etc) and the different drills:

• KALEH SENJA-TA (change arms)
• HORMAT SENJA-TA (present arms)
• RUSOK SENJA-TA (shoulder arms)
• JULANG SENJA-TA (high-port arms)

MOI

This is the part where you really need to study. In this lesson, you’ll learn about how to teach a footdrill to new cadets. There are multiple different areas and steps that you need to adhere to, so take down notes and revise them when you get home. As the 2nd day is the assessments, be sure to stuff them when you reach home.

⚠️ IMPORTANT: This is the part most people are the most not confident in, and I believe more people failed this section than the others.

Footdrill commanding and execution

As long as you can execute all the FD Gold drills, and can project your voice (very) loudly, this should be no problem. Please, please, please revise your FD Gold drills’ commands and execution before coming for UDI. There were some cadets who were unsure of the drill they were supposed to teach for the MOI practice.

I can’t really remember…

I’m writing this 10 days after the 1st day, so my memory is not as fresh. I don’t think there was anything in between the FD Gold practice and the Muster Parade…

Muster Parade (again)

This was a less hectic Muster Parade than the first (I ran out of adjectives to describe it so I scrolled through the keyboard suggestions until I came across ‘hectic’).

End of Day 1

After being BERSURAI-ed at the end of Muster Parade, we fell in at the roundabout/drop-off point and marched to the carpark, where we had a quick 1-2 minute debrief on staying safe, then we were KELUAR BARIS-ed and were done for the day.

Day 2

In the morning

Ditto. See Day 1’s description.

Muster Parade

See Day 1’s description.

Assessments (!!!)

We started with the WMG assessment where we did them as a contingent and marched back and forth, doing static drills etc. I do remember the AFI grading my column (these are different AFIs than the ones in charge of your ROTA) of 3 people being surprised that I (and the cadet in front of me) had never learnt gun drills in our school units.

It then went on to the theory assessment, if I remember correctly. This was in the form of a Google Form. This wasn’t too difficult, although I remember the question that I took a guess, about spotting and rectifying 2 errors in a parade. I do remember saying that 5 contingents next to each other will have not enough space, so they should bring 2 in front. Till now, I still have no idea what the correct answer is 🤷‍♂️.

After that, if my memory of the sequence of events is correct, was the dreaded MOI test. We split within our ROTAS into groups of about 4-5 people. Then, we would take turns to “teach” the small group the drill we were assigned to.

📌 NOTE: Don’t worry, you get to know the drill you’ll teach the day before, so that you have time to prepare.

It went fairly alright for me, being the 4th person, as I also had valuable feedback given to the previous 3 people that I could use. Just a quick note to say I didn’t fail this section, if you were wondering.

Footdrill Gold assessment

As Rota IC, I marched my Rota to the grandstand (if you know where that is; it’s next to the National EMS Traing Centre [NETC] building). There, we split into a few groups (of 3-4 cadets) and were graded by CLTs and SCLTs. Mine went fairly okay.

💡 TIP: Project your voice and be LOUD. This is one of the key aspects they will grade you upon. Also, know all your footdrill commands (yes, even sizing) and know the timing and execution process for all of them (even FD Bronze drills!).

Afterwards, I marched my Rota back and had a minor hiccup when I BERHENTI-ed my Rota too early. Read below for more details.

My minor mistake (alliteration intended)

So when I marched my Rota up a small slope to stop in this ‘drop-off point’ kind of thing (not too sure what it was), I stopped my Rota because there was a big truck already parked there. I was promptly informed by the helpful SCLTs and the AFIs that there was still space. One SCLT told me to “IMPIT KIRI” them. Now, I was extremely surprised and inwardly grinning when I heard that. Why? Because I had read about this command in other UG’s footdrill manual (yes, I am a tryhard - I thought that should have been obvious from my making of this whole site), and it’s use is to get the contingent to avoid an obstacle, moving slightly to the left/right. I had never thought, or expected, to hear this being used in NCDCC, ever. Never mind, I was longing to use the drill on someone and see what happened next ¹. Well, I got my Rota marching again, and promptly IMPIT KIRI-ed them. Needless to say, the cadets in the front row probably didn’t knwo what that drill was, so they continued moving right towards the truck, about to hit it. The SCLT had to quickly steer them away, lest they hit the truck.

Back to the auditorium, end of day 2

See Day 1’s ending for more details (Muster Parade II, dismissal). Luckily for me, the Muster Parade passed without much of a problem.

Day 3 (a long day)

We would split into our Rotas and do the activities on a rotational basis.

📌 NOTE: This day ended later than the other 2 days. We had dinner provided, as the Passing-out Ceremony ended later.

In the morning

See the above 2 days’ description. This time though, there was a surpirse uniform check.

Muster Parade

Muster Parade passed without an issue.

Rotational activity: Flag drills

Yes, the drill that I have been longing to learn. We learnt how to raise the flag, put it down (fro SEDIA and SENANG DIRI), as well as the different postions one can hold the flag. A very interesting lesson.

Rotational activity: Slow march

This drill is typically used in the GOH contingent inspections. This was not that easy (you have to land on your toes, not your heels), especially keeping one’s balance - that was one of the main struggles for me.

Rotational activity: Pace stick

This is typically held by the SMs (and I *think” by the Warrant Officers in SCDF). We learnt the different positions to hold it.

We also learnt about the uses of the different notches and lengths of the pace sticks (e.g. the length of each step one must take in the inner/middle/outer column in a contingent: they all have different measurements).

Parade planning

After lunch, if I remember correctly, in the Auditorium, we had a lesson on planning a parade, conducted by WO Kalai. Here, we learnt who the different people were in a parade, like the RSM, or the Conducting Warrants ². This was really interesting, and I do remember that we had to write very fast or we’ll miss the content on the slide.

Passing-out Ceremony preparation

Here, AFI Kenji announced the top-scoring cadets in the areas of theory, practical, and amongst other things, the overall best cadet. Sadly, I didn’t clinch any of them.

We also practiced the order of events for the ceremony. I remember we were explicitly told not to do a beret toss. The only time I have ever heard that you are allowed to do a beret toss is at the Passing-out Ceremony of the CLT course ³.

Passing-out Ceremony

Yes, time for the actual thing. The adults present (TOs, AFIs, CLTs/SCLTs) would come to each cadet and put the UDI lanyard on each of us.

Dinner

Just another meal. I still can’t get over the fact that water came in cans.

End of Day 3

At the last Muster Parade of the day, everyone was in high spirits (naturally). When timing the BERSURAI command, everyone was literally shouting the timing.

When at the roundabout/drop-off point, our Rota fell in and our Rota AFI asked us if there was anything else to ask him. I remember one of the cadets in my Rota said, ‘on the count of 2, tell Sir xxxx that we will miss him. 1-2’. Our AFI stopped him before he could finish. This was hilarious - I couldn’t stop laughing.

When marching to the carpark to be KELUAR BARIS-ed, our whole Rota was literally shouting ‘left-left-left-right-left’. I’ll bet people from the other side of the building could have heard us.

At the carpark, our Rota AFI said their goodbyes. Our Rota wanted our Rota IC to BERSURAI us one more time (but our AFI said no, only KELUAR BARIS, since we BERSURAI-ed earlier). We were shouting the timing for KELUAR BARIS anyway.

Conclusion

So with that, I was done! Done with those 3 tiring days of UDI!

Here’s my UDI lanyard:

All in all, it was really fun, though also fairly exhausting. Now that I’ve checked that off, time to look to the next NCDCC event - the SCDF Day Parade, if I do manage to pass the trials.