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BASIC TRAINING
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EIGHT
I. PHASES OF TRAINING
The abiding impressions of training in the first few days at SAFTI were about 5 BX nearly
every morning, learning to use the rifle, the standard obstacle course, drill and route marches,
interspersed with field training. These coincided with the core objectives— physical fitness,
trainfire and fieldcraft—that the SAF adopted for many years thereafter for the Basic
Military Training (BMT) of National Servicemen, except that the pace for the first intake
was relentless and many of the safety precautions, such as avoiding the noonday heat for
runs, were not addressed. In fact, perhaps in pursuit of the Spartan lifestyle advocated for
Singaporeans, the ethos in SAFTI at the time was to raise the level of tolerance to what
was seen as the stresses of operating in the unforgiving conditions of tropical humidity.
Moreover, the knowledge of safety precautions in military training, currently based on the
experience of several hundred thousand operationally ready national servicemen, was pretty
superficial in 1966.
Unlike civilian organisations, as a standing operating procedure, the military rosters servicemen
for essential daily duties and notifies all personnel of all key activities in camp, in advance.
There is no excuse for any serviceman or servicewoman not to have read, comprehended
and acted upon the Routine Orders (RO), or any other notice that has been put up on the
BASIC TRAINING
A group portrait that shows the size of a typical section during the Basic and Section Training phases.