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SIXTEEN
the First Permanent Secretary and other senior officers in MINDEF. Novel schemes began
to turn up. One was to assign a tree to each soldier with dire threats of what would happen
to him if the tree died. There were night visits to the trees in the belief that a good dose of
uric acid would aid growth. Another was to replace ailing trees with new ones from farmers
in Lim Chu Kang. The farmers quickly caught on and began to grow papaya trees of varying
generations to cater to MINDEF’s record of the rate of growth, as well as numbers and
productivity. Eventually, it became evident to MINDEF that the whole exercise was seriously
counterproductive as far as the Commanders’ focus was concerned and it was abandoned.
The second campaign was more relevant, if equally distracting. Units were subjected to an
overall annual inspection covering operational readiness, training, manpower and logistics
management. The results would count towards a unit’s grading for the annual Best Unit
Competition, but in any case, an underperforming unit would have to answer to MINDEF
for its deficiencies. It was found that even among good units, hygiene was a serious weak
spot: dirty toilets, messy barrack rooms, filthy kitchens and swill areas, stagnant water and
choked drainage, etc. Nobody thought to reflect on the undermining of the RSM’s authority
with the introduction of National Service, as the general state of a camp was one of his direct
responsibilities to the Unit Commander. In fact, RSMs had become a subdued lot after Tiger
Hong was court-martialled for prodding a National Serviceman with his pace-stick. Such was
his standing and professionalism in the SAF that he was only fined and reprimanded. But the
outcome of the hygiene problem was to employ a middle-aged battleaxe from the Medical
Service and give her the notional rank of Captain to terrorize units on a range of issues
thought to represent good hygiene. The very idea of a visit from her team was enough to
send Unit Commanders and OCs HQ Company into a frenzy of house-keeping. Fortunately,
the good lady-Captain’s strength (it will not do to call it a weakness) was in her fondness for
a well-timed gin and tonic, which if served shaken but not stirred in the Officers’ Mess, did
wonders to dilute the Clorox in her reports. That campaign too eventually fizzled out.
There were four operations during the watch of the First Batch. The first was the spill
over into Singapore of the racial riots in Malaysia that began on 13
th
May, 1969. Within
two days, the SAF was sent out with the police for patrolling and deployed at road control
points, preempting any deterioration of the situation. Even SAFTI officer cadets were
deployed and the Internal Security Operations training included in the officer cadet syllabus
was fully vindicated. The second was the outcome of the hijack of the PSA ferry “Laju”
by representatives of the Red Brigade in 1974. Though it ended without casualties, SAF
Infantry units were stationed a month at a time to protect vital installations in Singapore for
several months thereafter. The third operation, code-named ‘Thunderstorm’ involved the
deployment, again of land units, to secure points of entry along Singapore’s coastline by
refugees from Vietnam, who came en masse in boats to seek a home in Singapore after the
fall of Saigon and the withdrawal of the United States. The last was the hijack of Singapore
Airlines Flight SQ 117 in 1991 when Ng Jui Ping was Chief of Army.