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TRAINING THE TRAINERS
69
FIVE
VI. GRADUATION CEREMONY
Be that as it may, after the initial contratemps, there were few hiccups. There were the typical
frictions between the trainees and trainers that are characteristic of every peer training
programme, with the added incongruity of the trainers being strangers to the local terrain
and weather conditions, compared to those who had already had considerable exposure to
operations during the Indonesian confrontation and even some anti-terrorist operations during
the communist terrorist insurgency days of Malaya. Some unhappiness also surfaced after the
course when the Advisors determined the assignments of those trainees who were to staff
SAFTI, especially where the plum appointments such as Company Commanders and Platoon
Commanders were concerned. In theory, however, performance during the course was the
selection criteria. Those who were strong in military knowledge and staff work, for example,
would be Doctrine Officers or man the Chief Instructor’s offices. Those who showed a bent
for fieldwork would be the Platoon Commanders and Section Instructors, with the more senior
of them becoming the Company Commanders and Company Seconds-in-Command.
The course ended with a graduation ceremony in one of the completed auditoriums in the
future SAFTI on Saturday, 7
th
May, 1966. A camp quarter guard greeted Dr. Goh Keng Swee,
who officiated the ceremony. The course had been an eye-opener to all and a novel experience
to the trainees who had hitherto been trained in a far more casual British style. The culture
shock had generated some antipathy towards the implacable Advisors and there had been a
tendency to make wry remarks about their methodology, or snipe at their inexperience with
the close and marshy local terrain. Bazaar Malay, which was a Singaporean patois in those
Dr. Goh addressing the graduation ceremony of the First Instructors’ Preparatory Course.