One of a Kind (2nd Edition)

SETTING UP SAFTI

FOUR

room from military uniform to civilian (or civvies) on the outbound and vice versa on the

inbound as soldiers had to be in uniform with jockey cap when leaving or entering the camp.

After SAFTI opened, it sprouted a makeshift soft-drinks stall as well. Throughout the training

of the first intake and several years thereafter, there was private property across the road

from the entrance to SAFTI going down to Upper Jurong Road. At the main gate, a modest

guardroom was installed at the start of training, beside what had been a pigsty. The pigs were

gone but when it rained in the morning, their legacy would waft through the guardroom and

greet the trainees as the Duty Officer led them out to the main road for the 5 BX (basic

exercises) jogs. Running this gauntlet lent wings to their feet in either direction. Neither guard

duty nor detention in the guardroom for minor offences was a happy prospect. To everyone’s

relief, during the second phase of SAFTI’s development, the whole area was built over into

what became the School of Section Leaders, which also incorporated SAFTI’s main parade

square, and SAFTI’s new main entrance and guardroom.

Brigadier Kirpa Ram Vij, the first Director, SAFTI, recounted in the SAFTI Silver Jubilee

commemorative publication that the initial appreciation of the situation (a term which would

prove the bane of many a first intake cadet) had tended to favour the boatshed end of Pasir

Laba for the SAFTI campsite.

Notions of yachting, fishing and seaside sunsets with a

‘stengah’ may have induced this fantasy among the more anglophile SMF representatives, but

the Advisors, who knew a thing or two about installation security, pointed out that it would be

a good idea to control the training area from the front end and train inward.

It was not that

they did not appreciate the finer things in life. For the first intake, they did not discourage

the spit and polish associated with British military training and especially the grooming of

gentlemen-to-be by Act of Parliament. These were luxuries that Singapore need not yet

abandon. But, on operational matters there was this about them: the ability to cut through

the waffle and clobber the nail on the head.

SAFTI in June 1966, showing ‘A’ Company at the extreme right.

‘A’ Company