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TRAINING THE TRAINERS
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FIVE
I. HIT THE ROAD RUNNING
Looking back to 1966, when the SAF was being launched, one cannot help but feel that
bold and decisive steps were routine to the Singapore Government. The record of newly
independent nations after colonialism was rolled back, tended to show an accelerated
descent into chaos, corruption and cronyism, with little visionary perspective by the ruling
elite left in place by the process of independence. Though the subject of this book is the
collective diary of the first formalised mass training of officers to staff a national military
organisation, similar characteristics—boldness and decisiveness—could be identified in
those days in other fields in Singapore: infrastructure development, housing, education and
legislation. The annual yearbooks of the period immediately following separation reported
an almost obsessive disposition to develop a sound base for self-reliance. The Cabinet was
made up of a highly intellectual group often referred to in somewhat hyperbolic terms as a
‘Cabinet of University Dons’.
The creative process for the SAF was deceptively simple, like the flowcharts of a later
generation: the SAF would mean a massive injection of officers and NCOs into the current
establishment of the SMF, so start recruiting and training; that would in turn require a
TRAINING THE TRAINERS
Classroom session for the First Instructors’ Preparatory Course.
Chief Israeli Advisor standing at the back (right).