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TRAINING THE TRAINERS
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FIVE
in military courses. WO1 Sng Cheng Chye of 1 SIR, who would become the Regimental
Sergeant Major of SAFTI, was informally the course Sergeant Major.
5
It has been frequently averred by commentators that the training for the first intakes of
SAFTI must have been horrendously tough as they received training from Israeli Advisors.
That assessment is partly based on the stunning successes of the Israeli Defence Forces
in the Six Day and Yom Kippur wars and, is in fact, retrospective. The very first intake in
SAFTI was trained before the Six Day War. It is true that the training was highly demanding.
However, the first intakes at SAFTI were trained primarily by Singaporeans. The Israelis
guided both the preparatory training of the local instructors and the training of the first
intakes. They formulated most of the syllabus and the thematic issues for the syllabus and
laid the doctrinal groundwork. They certainly contributed to the lessons. But, they never
directly conducted lessons during the training of the first intakes in SAFTI. They were also
very few in number, though they made their presence felt in all the establishments they
initiated until they finally left for good in 1974.
The Advisors set the tenor of the First Instructors’ Preparatory Course by insisting that
before they could teach, trainers must personally master their subject, or, at least, have
practical experience of it. The Advisors were also adamant that the preparatory courses
would be the only ones in which they would contribute directly to the instruction (in subjects
they were introducing for the first time, while those that were already part of the knowledge
Captain James Chia briefs his fellow students.