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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: $140 per month for possession of the School Certifi cate or its equivalent. $210 per month for possession of the full General Certifi cate of Education at Advanced Level or its equivalent. $240 per month for possession of the full Higher School Certifi cate or its equivalent. $430 per month for possession of an acceptable (sic) Diploma from Singapore Polytechnic, a degree from Nanyang University or a General Degree from a recognised University or its equivalent. $540 per month for possession of an Honours Degree from a recognised University. *delete whichever does not apply JUMPING IN WITH BOTH FEET 75 Content.indd 75 18/6/15 4:32 PM SIX The plot is hatched! 76 JUMPING IN WITH BOTH FEET Content.indd 76 18/6/15 4:32 PM SIX II. HATCHING THE PLOT The plot had been hatched in a couple of rooms in Empress Place, where the Ministry of Interior and Defence had been squatting. After the separation of Singapore from Malaysia Dr. Goh Keng Swee, the Singapore Minister of Finance under Malaysia, had promptly offered his services as the Minister of Defence to the Prime Minister, Mr. Lee Kuan Yew. Dr. Goh had been a Volunteer NCO Stretcher Bearer during WWII and behind his back, was frequently referred to as ‘The Corporal’ in his capacity of Minister, the reference being to Napoleon’s sobriquet on account of his strategic vision. As Singapore’s inheritance of military assets comprised two battalion’s worth of Volunteer Infantry, a Volunteer Artillery company and a motley collection of Armoured Car troopers, Volunteer Signallers, medics, transport elements and camp followers, plus two full-time regular Infantry battalions depleted by the exodus of Malaysian personnel (who had been absorbed when they came under the Federal Government), it was decided to incorporate the Police Force and the Vigilante Corps under the Ministry. Therefore, it was named the Ministry of Interior and Defence (which lives on to this day as the prefix “MID” of MINDEF registered vehicles). Besides, the most urgent security threats Singapore faced in those days were politically motivated riots, the primary purview of the Police Riot Squad. There was also some vague notion of a Police Field Force like that of Malaysia. Captain Albert Tan and the promise of a happy, fulfilling and rewarding career. JUMPING IN WITH BOTH FEET 77 Content.indd 77 18/6/15 4:32 PM SIX Clarence and his Midget, supported by a glowing invitation signed by no less a personage than Mr. G. E. Bogaars, Permanent Secretary, MID, to school-leavers, university graduates, Government and statutory boards’ employees and staff of quasi-Government organisations like the People’s Association, corralled between 2,500 and 3,000 unsuspecting juveniles and young adults. ‘Unsuspecting’ is a fair description of the state of mind of the applicants because even MID did not, at that point, know exactly what the applicants would have to go through: the training programme was being formulated with foreign advisors even as the recruitment proceeded. But times were hard and Government jobs offered some security. Singapore was mostly low-rise and slum and backbreaking labour, hawking and daily-rated employment. Two hundred dollars plus keep was big money and if an MG Midget was thrown in, what more could one ask? Not that it was assumed by all to be an army issue, mind you—just the possibility of being able to afford one, like young Clarence. But, something else was in the air. Hitherto, Singapore’s military security had been either a British affair or, after 16th September, 1963, the Malaysian Federal Government’s. In both circumstances, the military had been highly visible, too visible perhaps. About 15% of Singapore’s land area comprised military installations occupied by the British, even after 9th August, 1965, and whose activities accounted for between 20-40% of Singapore’s GDP. The first local military unit had been the Singapore Volunteer Rifle Corps, formed in 1854, an expatriate force created to safeguard the expatriate community against the ‘native’ population. In WWI, the Volunteers had played a big part in routing mutineers from the Indian Army garrison stationed in Singapore who had been misled into believing that they were being shipped out to fight their fellow Muslims in Asia Minor and executing 22 of the 41 through a court martial by firing squad with considerable relish. After WWI, as relations with defence treaty partner Japan soured irrevocably, the British Government undertook, though in fits and starts, a massive build-up of Singapore as a bastion of the Empire, with special emphasis on the Naval Base in Woodlands. It was ultimately to little avail. The defence of Singapore against the Japanese in WWII had been a British/Dominions (British Indian Army/Australia and New Zealand) business, while after the war, some of the British troops garrisoned in Singapore had been deployed to suppress local rioting, in between operations against the communist terrorists in peninsular Malaya. Even the two regular Singapore Infantry Regiment battalions, the 1st and 2nd, made up of Singaporeans, had been commanded by the British before Malaysia. Under Malaysia, the two battalions and the significantly indigenised Singapore Volunteer Corps had been subsumed under the Malaysian Armed Forces and, they too had been deployed to suppress Singaporean rioters. Now, Singapore was a separate state: booted out, yes, but to those who responded to the call to join the SAF, Singapore was truly their own now. Sovereign independence; no foreign allegiance; national military forces; not a Malaysian or British supreme headquarters; motherland under threat; manning the ramparts; protecting their homes; paths of glory, etc. 78 JUMPING IN WITH BOTH FEET Content.indd 78 18/6/15 4:32 PM SIX III. ALL AND SUNDRY No one recalls now if there had been an advertisement in the English and vernacular papers, but the brochure was widely distributed in Government offices, secondary schools, the two universities and the Singapore Polytechnic. Hwee Man Lok, a poetry-spouting Arts graduate of 23 and mini-Godfather from Ah Hood Road, duly reported to Inspector Lim Choon Mong sometime in early March 1966 at the Lower Barracks of the Police Headquarters in Pearl’s Hill, to which MID had moved by now.

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