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APPENDIX I
359
APPENDIX I
Altogether, there were 74 Officers and 1,000 other ranks.
50
However, Singapore’s first National
Service Ordinance (part-time, limited by ballot and effective July 1954) was passed in 1952. As
the Ordinance vested the SVC with the responsibility of training the recruits, the Volunteer
title became an anomaly. The National Service Ordinance accordingly provided for the Corps
to be known as the Singapore Military Forces (SMF) from July 1954 when the first 400 National
Service recruits reported for training. The Infantry battalion undertook the basic training
conducted over two hours on two evenings a week for five months, which was reinforced
by monthly weekend camps. The servicemen were then posted to various units in the SMF.
The National Service scheme proved totally unpopular as it amounted to conscription by a
colonial power. It was abandoned in 1956, leading in 1957 to the creation of Singapore’s first
indigenous regular military unit, 1
st
Battalion, Singapore Infantry Regiment, which co-existed
with the Volunteer Corps as a part of the SMF.
When Singapore merged with Malaysia on 16
th
September, 1963, the Volunteer Corps and the
Singapore Infantry Regiment, now including 2 SIR, which had been formed in 1962, came
under command of the Malaysian Ministry of Defence.
Naval Forces
In April 1947, after the Singapore Division of the MRNVR was re-formed, regular parades
were held at Beach Road. In September 1948, a 90-foot motor vessel built for the Royal Navy
in 1944 for fisheries patrol was presented to the Singapore Government to replace the first
Panglima as a training ship. It was armed only with a 20mm gun forward and it was phased
out in the early 1950s. It was replaced by a third Panglima, a 35.7 metre Ford Class large patrol
Singapore Naval Volunteer Force, then known as PDF (Sea).