SIX
JUMPING IN WITH BOTH FEET
I. APPLYING FOR THE COURSE
600740 Lance Corporal Abdul Samad s/o Athambava, Signals Platoon, HQ Coy, 2nd Battalion, Singapore Infantry Regiment proactively wrote through his Commanding Officer, LTC J.P. Durken to the Ministry of the Interior and Defence on 3rd February to be considered as a candidate in the course. Samad, as he has always been known, had joined the army against his father’s wishes to begin with. His father had come to Tanah Merah Camp, then home of 2 SIR, with his hard-earned savings of $150 to buy out Samad. In the meantime, Samad had approached his company 2 I/C Lieutenant Henry Velge and begged him to persuade his father that the army was okay, and at worst, turn his father away. Samad may have also been seriously affected by the picture of handsome Lieutenant Clarence Tan, lately Malaysian Special Service Unit (psst! commando, paratrooper, stealth fighter, etc.) inside his shiny red MG Midget (Registration Number SP 7008) in the enlistment promotional brochure SERVE WITH PRIDE widely distributed by the MID.
Swee Boon Chai had also been in the Army before applying for the course. Having enjoyed his school cadet corps, he had enlisted earlier as a Volunteer with the 14th Malaysian Signal Squadron. He had been mobilised as a Lance Corporal to work with then MAJ Seah Peng Yong (later Lieutenant-Colonel (Ret)), Commanding Officer HQ PDF, in Pearl’s Hill where he was assigned to the office of Director, Manpower to help with the recruitment of the first intake. MAJ Seah had strongly urged Boon Chai to apply. Boon Chai had by now seriously begun to think of the army as a career anyway, and so he readily complied.
The plotters behind the misgivings experienced by the hapless trainees who were all but shanghaied to SAFTI on 1st June, 1966, were Boon Chai’s boss, Inspector of Police, Lim Choon Mong and his boss Herman Hochstadt, then Director, Manpower, MID. They were tasked with recruiting at least 300 male Singaporeans for regular service for 12 years (10 years Colour Service and 2 years Reserve in the jargon of those by-gone days). Notifications of acceptance in early May 1966 made reference to Section 86 of the Singapore Army Act, 1965, which provided that if a recruit was prepared to cough up “not more than $150” within 3 months after the date of his attestation, he could be discharged “with all convenient speed” provided that the President of Singapore, then Inche Yusof Ishak, had not proclaimed a national mobilisation. For those who were already in service and wished to upgrade themselves to officer status, the reference was to Part VI of the Singapore Army Act 1965 which highlighted that “if (an enlistee was) already a serving regular member of the Singapore Armed Forces (he would) continue to serve the remainder of the un-expired portion of (his) present period of enlistment” (which was presumably the 10 years of Colour Service plus 2 years of Reserve).
JUMPING IN WITH BOTH FEET 73
Content.indd 73 18/6/15 4:32 PM SIX
The fateful document that carried Abdul Samad s life-changing decision.
74 JUMPING IN WITH BOTH FEET
Content.indd 74 18/6/15 4:32 PM SIX
Mr. Herman Hochstadt, Mr. Ong Kah Kok and Mr. Lim Choon Mong.
For the period of training, according to the promotion brochure, the basic salary was a lordly $60.00 a month, plus an educational allowance of: