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A NEW BEGINNING
307
FIFTEEN
Commanders and departed SAFTI the weekend prior to that of the Commissioning Parade.
Three weeks before the Commissioning Parade, Officer Cadet Chan Seck Sung had left for
Ranger training at the US Army Infantry School, Fort Georgia, United States, as a Second
Lieutenant. He was accompanying CPT Clarence Tan, who was tipped to head the SAF’s
Commando Battalion. A week after that, Officer Cadets Gurcharan Singh and Chng Teow
Hua left for a Field Engineer course in Fort Belvoir, in the United States.
During the last three months of the course, CPT Daljeet Singh had put together an editorial
board of cadets headed by Managing Editor, Hwee Man Lok to produce ‘
THE SAFTIRIAN’
,
the first journal of SAFTI. It would only be 36 pages and funded solely by advertisements,
of which those of Mr. Kartar Singh, housing and furnishing supplier and the legendary
Mr. Teng Chai Foo, the principal caterer for SAFTI and numerous other SAF camps in
later years, comprised the bulk. It covered a range of subjects of no particular theme from
“Athenian Military Organisation in Perspective” to “Some Thoughts on Political Evolution”,
the Editorial Board having to settle for anything it could wring out of cadets who would
rather fight than write. The best piece in the ‘journal’ was Man Lok’s editorial, which reads
as fresh today as it did in 1967.
The main contribution, despite Man Lok’s hope that
‘THE SAFTIRIAN’
would develop into
a permanent medium for the free exchange of views and ideas, was the launch within the
SAF of WO1 Hong Seng Mak’s famous sobriquet of ‘Tiger’, with a full page photograph
of the dreaded, but admired, Company Warrant Officer in a place of honour facing the
Foreword by Director, SAFTI, LTC Vij. To Man Lok and the Secretary of the Editorial
Board, the publication was memorable also because they were excused from participating
in the battalion attack demonstration on the grounds that the deadline for printing was
long overdue. Regrettably, there is no evidence that the subsequent batches in ‘A’ Company
continued the idea of a journal. But in 1968, SAFTI produced what also appears to have
been a single edition attempt at an institute annual with the name
THE SCIMITAR
.
There was a noticeable change in the atmosphere of ‘A’ Company during the last two weeks
of the course. It was probably a bewildering experience for the pre-First Batch regulars of the
SAF to be in charge of a cohort of 117 men, who had been given the most comprehensive
and rugged training in commanding troops that they had ever seen, on the threshold of
their graduation to the coveted commission. In a matter of days, these graduates would
outrank their NCO instructors and be on par with the subalterns, with the prospect, as
already indicated by the departure of Chan Seck Sung, Gurcharan Singh and Chng Teow
Hua for prestigious training courses overseas, of overtaking many of them. Moreover,
there already was in the works, plans for groups among the graduates to attend specialist
training on a large scale in Artillery, Signals and Armour, which would open new avenues for
rapid advancement in the ranks, but be mostly closed to those without such training. Some
uncomfortable turbulence was about to upset the current hierarchy in the SAF.