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JUMPING IN WITH BOTH FEET
94
SIX
By the fourth week of April 1966, letters were sent out by Captain C. M. Cardoza for Director,
Manpower, for the short-listed applicants to report, again in batches, over a number of days,
to the Police Training School at Thomson Road for a medical examination and interview,
with the originals of their educational certificates, birth certificate, citizenship certificate
and NRIC. Stripped to their under-shorts, with one Second Lieutenant Moorthy from the
People’s Defence Force (Medical Corps) presiding, they went through the British model
PULHEEMS test (Physical characteristics; Upper limbs; Lower limbs; Hearing; right Eye;
left Eye; Mental status; emotional Stability) all of which could presumably be discerned from
the medical examination, which included pulling down the under-shorts while coughing to
demonstrate a satisfactory jiggle of manhood (or whatever) and supplying a container of
urine. Properly dressed once more, they appeared before one of several panels of officers
including LTC Kirpa Ram Vij, to answer simple questions mostly centred on the motivation
to join the military as a career and the determination to stay the course.
It must be presumed that those who did not make it were duly notified by MID and that
they were for the most part disappointed. On the other hand, some may have made it and
had second thoughts, opting in the end to reject the offer. For these two groups, as the word
got around about what was happening in SAFTI when the course started, there must surely
have been a moment of gratification, eventually perhaps turning to a little envy when the
commissioning of the First Batch was splashed in the newspapers thirteen months later.
Some—had they been less than comfortable with military life—were luckier than they knew,
because if they had been selected and failed, they would automatically have been liable, in
theory until age 50, for reserve service in the SAF under the National Service Act passed in
March 1967.
But, slightly more than 300, with possibly as many as 500, received a letter dated 9
th
May,
1966, signed by Mr. Lim Choon Mong for the Officer-in-Charge, Procedure & Selection,
Manpower Division, MID, informing them that they had been “selected to undergo an
officers’ training course” whereby they would be required to enlist in the SAF for an initial
period of 12 years with effect from 1
st
June, 1966. Again, recipients must have experienced
mixed emotions, but those who had seen no prospects in their current jobs, or had no jobs
to talk of, or had nursed romantic notions of soldiering with a red MG Midget in the offing,
must have seen that letter as a new lease of life.
Little did they suspect how that lease would begin.
Endnotes
1. Abdul Samad’s SIR regimental number was changed from 600740 to 10547 as a trainee in SAFTI, so a
decision must have been made at MID to introduce a new series starting with the enlistees of the first intake.
Several years later, regimental numbers were replaced by National Registration Identity Card numbers and
servicemen were given a (green) military version of the NRIC which were exchanged for their civilian
versions at the end of their service.