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SETTING UP SAFTI
45
FOUR
At SAFTI’s inception, the focus was on Infantry, which was seen to be the core element of the
SAF—where the heart of battle would be—and the foundation of a commission, regardless
of whatever an officer specialised in eventually. Only by appreciating the needs of the Infantry,
would supporting forces be able to direct their efforts effectively.
When the first intake was enlisted, all enlistees assumed that they would be trained from the
beginning for a commission, but the Advisors saw the award of a commission as a process
of sifting out the best through a recruit, section leader and officer cadet training phase,
respectively. Their concept was that an officer cadet was selected from the ground up. It turned
out that MID had kept its options open and somehow neglected to make that known to the
enlistees, as it were, but developments in SAFTI with the first intake suggested that MID had
not subscribed wholeheartedly to this purist approach anyway.
But what was odd was that either MID or SAFTI appeared to have pre-classified the recruits into
potential officer cadets and ‘the rest’ and assigned them to ‘A’ and ‘B’ companies, respectively.
The basis for the pre-classification is now lost and none of the possible criteria pans out.
Assignment to ‘B’ Company could not have been based on performance for the selection test
since the only really quantifiable one was the run and there were many in ‘B’ Company who had
out-run many in ‘A’ Company. In any case, there were several who had had difficulties during
the obstacle course phase of the selection in ‘A’ Company. Interviews with NCO staff of ‘B’
Company confirmed that they were left with no doubt on 1
st
June, 1966 that ‘A’ Company was
an officer cadet company while ‘B’ was initially seen as a pool of future NCOs, from which
some might be creamed off for the first officer cadet course.
10
This was to result in an awkward
development on the first weekend after the first intake was sent to SAFTI.
IV. VITAL GROUND
Pasir Laba Road, between the 16
th
and 17
th
milestone (Singapore was not officially metric then)
Upper Jurong Road, was one of the few metalled roads in the locality and the only one in the
core training area. It ran north for about five miles, twisting and turning along the contours
of the hills and re-entrants. When taken over by MID, it was potholed and overgrown with
irregular borders. Probably, British military engineers constructed it before WWII because
it was the route to the bunkers that housed the 44
th
Indian Brigade, searchlight batteries,
6-inch gun emplacements and the boatshed that was occasionally used by the pre-SAF military
establishments as a training camp. The other metalled roads were Choa Chu Kang Road, Lim
Chu Kang Road, Jalan Bahar, Nanyang Avenue (leading to Nanyang University which was
about three thousand yards east of Pasir Laba) the roads in the campus and the roads serving
a small enclave of quarters at the 15
th
milestone of Upper Jurong Road. The entrance to the
proposed camp was about 150 metres from the intersection of Pasir Laba Road with Upper
Jurong Road. Opposite the entrance, on a spur of Peng Kang Hill (Spot Height 201) was a
large shed on stilts with a corrugated iron roof that had been used to hold Chinese ‘wayangs’
(opera shows) during the Hungry Ghost month of August. It proved a boon as a changing