MyStory

It has been a cliche to say that National Service is an institution in Singapore.

I enlisted in March 1987, the last boy in my family. I was the only one of my brothers to wear the camouflage fatigues that was introduced in the 1980s. Being in PES 'C', I was not sent to ITD (Tekong) but to SBMT at Nee Soon Camp.

This motley bunch of PES 'C'-ers came from all walks of life. There were the Siao Ong types, the Hokkien peng, the 'recourse' type, the 'Air' level ones, the Malay soldier, the Sikh turban ones too! So there we were, all thrown together into a hodge podge of boys having to do what Singapore boys have to do!

Getting along was definitely going to be a problem. There was definitely tension and immediate cliques were formed. This was going to be one helluva 3 month BMT. The hokkien peng were really quite slack and totally foul-mouth! But I guess we pretty quickly learnt their language as well. :-)

Somehow, we managed to survive and not 'kill' each other in the process. I remember the PTI taking us back from one run (I think it was week 0: the first confinement weekend) and I almost puked and 'died' from gasping for breath! Corporal of course wasn't sympathetic and just kept scolding (KPKB- for those who understand Hokkien) and forcing us to go on! The remarkable thing was of course by the end of the 3 months, I clocked about 11-12mins for my 2.4km (cannot remember exactly liao!)

This picture is taken during our fieldcamp in Marsiling, and I recall having to crawl through recently-cleared cemeteries with broken pieces of urns scattered around. I can also remember the powder baths after 3 days outfield. And the hard-tack biscuits that we have always joked that if we threw them at the enemies, it would crack the head of the enemies!

After POP, we went out separate ways, never to see each other again. But it was a good 3 months which we managed to somehow look after each other and understood that if we didn't function as a section, a platoon and as a whole, we would just be making life miserable for ourselves.

So, in hindsight, we went in as boys from different socio-economic backgrounds, somehow managed to figure out that the only way to move forward was to put aside our differences and work together to overcome all the training sessions and challenges in BMT. Perhaps in a microscopic way reflecting the story of our little red dot coming together as a nation to face our challenges.

Article migrated from original My Story Portal 2007.
Author. Sweeney1582