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OFFICER CADET TRAINING
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ELEVEN
kampong grocery was around. What the farmers thought about all this as the cadets walked
through their market gardens is anybody’s guess, but in all likelihood, many resented it
though the intruders were particularly careful to respect their property and livelihood. After
all, several of the cadets had come from farms.
Administration.
Several subjects were bundled together under the heading ‘Administration’
for which some 50 periods including night lessons were allocated. Based on infantry
units, there were lessons on the duties of a Platoon Commander in ‘peace and war’ and
administration in relation to an ‘independent mission’ which stressed welfare, morale, the
need to keep training and maintaining equipment. Some simple scenarios were devised.
Practical work involved making an ‘administrative plan’. From there, it went on to planning
a training schedule, life in a military camp with the duties and chores of officers, rations and
petrol checks, looking after unit guardrooms where minor offenders were often in detention,
handling and maintenance of ammunition, health discipline and inspection of quarters and
other facilities in camp.
One subject, ‘Administration In The Line’ sounded portentous, if somewhat archaic.
It seemed to suggest a mindset that went back to the experiences of WWII and earlier,
implying a slower pace of war, requiring rear HQs to plan for troop rotations, leave, postal
services and long term medical and personnel administration. Of course, it could also apply
to occupation forces or peacetime deployment such as United Nations missions away from
permanent HQs. It did not sound too odd at the time as Confrontation with Indonesia
had been a recent experience and it had involved Malaysian and Singaporean troops being
deployed in distant field bases. No doubt, there will always be the need to administer troops
‘in the line’ as for example for a United Nations deployment, but given the communications
capabilities of the new millennium, the pace at which operations will be conducted and most
of all, the progress made in management ‘science,’ the approaches applicable in the 1960s
were rapidly on the way out. At the time, administration was the purview of a personage with
the grand title of Deputy Assistant Adjutant Quarter Master General (DAAQMG) at the
Division level, if there had been one and his line manager in the Brigade HQ and unit, the
much feared Adjutant. In the SAF, the appointment of Adjutant itself, with awesome powers
of discipline over subalterns, did not last beyond 1969, when the office of Manpower Officer
or S1, replaced it, with only a pale shadow of the Adjutant’s authority. The administration as
a whole was divided among the S1, S2 (Intelligence), S3 (Operations Officer/General Staff
Officer) and the S4 (Logistics), with the S3 being primus inter pares.
There was a considerable emphasis on unit transportation and the planning of roadmovements
in convoys. These were all pretty relevant but there was no sense that the processes were
set in concrete and a general perception among the cadets was that they would have to pick
up these things with hands-on experience when they were posted to units. There was also
another factor that came between the cadets and the conviction that they were listening to
the gold standard: what they experienced in SAFTI in those early days militated against the