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V. SCORING POINTS WITH MILITARY BULL
if an instructor decided to make the punishment collective. Collective punishment included
short-and-sharp drill, stand-by-bed and change parades, additional area cleaning and delayed
release from camp on Saturdays or long weekends.
In a similar vein, there were rules—applied with varying degrees of strictness—that were
undeniably based on infusing good personal habits and accountability among the officers
and gentlemen-to-be. This included prompt obedience, situational awareness, punctuality,
taking responsibility, thinking through and seeing beyond the immediate problem, keeping
personal equipment in good repair and inspection-ready, military 4x2 haircut, smart turn-out
and ‘regimental’ locker and bed layout.
Interestingly, it was in this last area that some first intake trainees tended to be competitive
with one another. They would go to elaborate lengths to completely line their personal
lockers—which were medium sized two-door wardrobes—with brown paper. Layouts would
be immaculate, with each fatigue tunic and trouser ironed razor sharp and precisely stacked,
civvies buttoned up on hangers, personal possessions laid out symmetrically and the whole
wardrobe strewn with copious amounts of mothballs. Many also developed a fetish about
shining things: brass shoulder-titles, leather boots, mess tins and water bottles. A seasoned
yellow dust cloth was worth its weight in gold. Given the limited feedback on personal
performance, perhaps the first intake yearned for some creative control over their fates
and the opportunity to demonstrate their earnestness. Probably those who went to extreme
lengths to be squeaky-clean in this area hoped to score Brownie points with the instructors
which would weigh in if they fouled up elsewhere.
If, indeed, it was a chink in the armour of the instructors’ objectivity, it was a trap they
set for themselves. When the trainees first reported, they came from many backgrounds.
Fastidiousness in turnout, personal administration and even personal hygiene were, to say
the least, varied. After setting the right tone initially, the instructors may have been wise
to leave well enough alone, but they kept niggling the cadets on the fine details of these
preoccupations throughout the course. In fact, a practice which made the whole exercise of
caring and instantly accounting for personal issue items a counter-productive ritual among
later batches of trainees, raised its insidious head from among the first intake: acquiring a
spare set of those items required for display during the infamous stand-by-bed parades.
Mess tins and water bottles were chromed, boots were polished to mirror brilliance, the
rubber toecaps of jungle boots were heavily blacked and the jockey cap would be lined with
stiffeners for a creaseless look. The issued sets of these items that were actually used on a
day-to-day basis were dumped into a personal bag and left in the wardrobe and usually not
inspected. Somehow, the instructors overlooked the pointlessness of the exercise at the
time. On the contrary, the practice raised the expectations of the instructors and set off