One of a Kind (2nd Edition)

CREATING THE SINGAPORE ARMED FORCES

THREE

Dr. Goh Keng Swee, Singapore’s Finance Minister at separation, had promptly volunteered

to be the Minister of Defence and set up the Ministry of Interior and Defence (MID), which

incorporated Home Affairs, thereby bringing the Singapore Police Force and the Armed Forces

under one ministry.

This was because of the “the geographical size of Singapore and the

fact that questions of external security are very closely interwoven with questions of internal

security.”

Additionally, the Police provided a pool of senior officers who could supplement

the local military officers in staffing the anticipated military organisation, as was evident in

the appointment of Mr. Tan Teck Khim, then Assistant Commissioner of Police, as the first

Director, General Staff of the SAF, as well as the secondment of many Police officers to SAF

positions created over the next several years.

MID had one thing going for it: Konfrontasi had given an unintended kick-start to the creation

of the SAF. It had compelled Singapore to mobilise the Volunteers during the two years of

Malaysia, spruce up the records of local military forces, provide some field experience for

troops and raise a pool of staff officers who segued seamlessly into the routine of the new

defence establishment.

The SMF headquarters at Beach Road Camp was also operational in

the primitive form of the times, while the operational deployment of the Volunteers and the

two SIR battalions also meant the availability of reasonably seasoned troops, some of whom

had been blooded in the Kota Tinggi operations against Indonesian guerrillas. Building on this,

MID extended the Volunteer mobilisation, on a voluntary basis, especially among teachers and

civil servants. The Singapore Year Book, 1965 reports: “The two Regular Infantry Battalions

and the Volunteer Infantry and Artillery have now been brought up to strength and made

operational on a full-time basis.”

Additionally, at the height of Konfrontasi in May 1964, Singapore had, with the agreement of

the Federal Government, set up the Vigilante Corps for volunteer local defence. Headed by

a Commandant, it used non-lethal weapons though trained in weapon handling and received

systematic drilling, training in crowd control, unarmed combat and outdoor living.

The

Vigilante Corps was to prove useful in the coming years to absorb National Servicemen who

were exempted from full time National Service for one reason or another.

Shortly after the formation of MID, HQ Singapore Infantry Brigade was set up at Beach

Road Camp in the SVC premises, which had continued in use throughout the merger, as

headquarters of the two regular infantry battalions and the mobilised Volunteers. It is variously

referred to in some correspondences as HQ 1

Singapore Infantry Brigade

and Army HQ.

As Singapore had not had a defence ministry before, the traditional separation of the forces’

headquarters from the civilian authority was maintained; it also made sense, as the improvised

Empress Place premises of MID could not have accommodated both. But it did touch on

a conceptual issue to be resolved later: whether the Ministry and the military headquarters

should be physically separated or co-located. Within two months of its formation, MID set

up shop in Lower Barracks, Pearl’s Hill, where enough space was initially available to bring

together key uniformed and civilian officials.