Kenny Chen

KENNY CHEN

“I, Kenny Chen KangYi, having entered the service of the Republic of Singapore under the Enlistment Act, do solemnly and sincerely swear that I will always bear true faith and allegiance to the Republic of Singapore. I will be ready, at the order of the Government, to rise up to the defence of the Republic of Singapore. I will obey the laws of the Republic of Singapore and the orders of my commanders. I will carry out my duties with integrity, courage and commitment at all times, and I will preserve and protect the honour and independence of the Republic of Singapore. With my life.”

Danielle Goodland

I still remember that day, the day I was conscripted. It was the first day of basic training, it was the first thing I did as I surrendered my identity as a citizen and became a soldier in the Singapore Army. I was ordered to take the 11:40 ferry to Pulau Tekong, an island military base off the coast of Singapore specially built for Basic Military Training. A stout middle-aged Chinese man with arms the size of my head walked in and introduced himself: “My name is Master Warrant Officer Jerry Lim. I’m your Chief Master Trainer. From now on, you will only address me as sir. You address me as anything else?! There will be f*cking consequences. Do you all understand?” His thundering voice echoed throughout the auditorium. “Yes, sir”, we shouted. “The army is where you boys and gu-niangs (Chinese dialect for ‘feminine men’) become men”, he continued. It was the first day of two years of hell. We weren’t allowed to be scared, we weren’t allowed to complain or show weakness. Those were the traits of gu-niangs and pussys, we had to be men, but how could we? We’re just a bunch of 18 to 20-year-old kids who lived comfortable lives in Singapore. The only AR-15s we fired were from Call of Duty, the only hardships we had to go through were the ass-whoopings from our parents when we were young. We all knew that we would be conscripted, it was one of the pillars of Singaporean national education, and we were constantly told that National Service would turn us into real men. It was going to be tough, it was going to be hard, but we were all determined to become true men, we just didn’t realize that it would hurt so damn much.

Military service is not for everybody, it requires a special breed of men and women. It puts you through absolute physical, mental and psychological hell, designed to break you, designed to destroy whatever social conditioning you had built up. It’s designed to reveal the person that you truly are. Not the person you’re projecting, but the person you are deep down inside, and turn that person into a soldier. None of us had a choice, you pay your debt to society; the alternative would be imprisonment in a military prison for up to nine months before being forcibly conscripted and they would escort you into your assigned base upon completion of your sentence.

“Don’t be a pussy” and “Man up” were what we heard every day for the next four months while we were doing basic training in an island the size of Falmouth and Penryn combined. We were constantly hammered by our instructor during physical training, even for minor infractions. I’ve had everything I ever owned thrown out the window of my bunk because the photo of my family wasn’t regulation sized. We were forced to do so many push-ups that our arms just gave way, but even then we weren’t allowed to lift our bodies away from the scalding parade square. We were forced to run three kilometres every morning at a dictated pace or face punishment. Every time our mind or bodies gave way, we were told that we shouldn’t be “pussy ass bitches” and we should “man up”. We could never show weakness or pain, most of my weaker-willed peers developed mild forms of post-traumatic stress disorder and depression. All of which would be dismissed by the military doctors as “military adjustment disorder”, which is considered the common cold of mental disorders for those in the services. Those that talked of, or contemplated, suicide, were given a pep talk by the army counsellors, which was basically a softer version of the same narrative fed to us, “Man up and suck it up”. If you tried to talk to your fellow recruits about your crippling depression, you’d be met with, “Bro, we’re in the sh*t as well. Suck it the f*ck up”. To be honest, I was like that; we drank so much of the army’s Kool-Aid that we expected everybody to be just like us. But what could we do? We were a practical bunch; sugar-coated words of affirmation would not solve our issue. Bruce Lee once said, “Don’t wish for an easy life, I wish for the strength to live through a hard one.” We could only rely on ourselves. Don’t get us wrong, we absolutely sympathized with our fellow recruits, we just weren’t equipped to help them. So we did it the only way we knew how: with toxic masculinity. “Don’t be a pussy, man the f*ck up.”

the pain was too much for me

After four months of absolute hell, I graduated from basic training, but what came next broke me both mentally and physically. The only thing that brought me back from the brink was masculinity and a maverick of a shrink. I had graduated basic training in the top 90 percentile and was shipped off to Specialist Cadet School, where I would be trained to lead my fellow soldiers into combat. Not only would my fellow cadets and I be faced with an elevated training tempo and curriculum, but we also had to bear the burden of command. I held the lives of six young men in the palm of my hand, six other young men who were in the same situation as I was. One wrong command and they might suffer lifelong injuries, or even death. My platoon was under the tutelage of ex-Special Forces commanders, and probably the manliest men in the entirety of Singapore. It was them who explained to me the origins and rationale behind the machismo of the military.

“Regardless of race, religion or sexual orientation, a man’s job is to protect his country, his brothers in arms, and those who could not protect themselves. If we don’t make men out of all of you, you will not be able to handle the horrors of war, you will drop your rifles and run, you will kill yourselves before even firing a single round, you will abandon your home and flee instead of bleeding your enemies dry. Your generation is not like the older generation, your generation might be better problem solvers but you are not as resilient, and in warfare it’s about how much you can bleed and make your enemies bleed. So why do we push you to the brink and tell you to man up? Because we want to turn you into better men. When this cruel world strikes you down, we do not wish for you to crumble, give up and whine like so many of your generation. We want you to have the strength to get back up and fight! Fight for what you love, fight for what you want and fight for every inch of happiness in your life.” This came from my company commander, an 18-year veteran of my country’s Special Forces, who had trained with the US Army Rangers and Army Special Forces, who, in short, was a badass. He was the very definition of Asian masculinity; he was physically strong, well spoken, well educated and respectful. He would regularly push us to the brink, both physically and mentally. All of us understood that the pain would make us better, the pain would make us… men.

But the pain was too much for me. In the final months of my training, I suffered a crippling spinal injury. My body wasn’t able to handle the physical tempo and stress of leader’s training; three sections of my spine collapsed into each other, crushing my spinal nerves and I lost sensation in my legs in the process. I had essentially lost my ability to walk. The first week at the hospital was one of the lowest points in my life, I truly wanted to die. I was prepped for surgery to insert metal plates into my spine, but the road to recovery would be physically and mentally painful. Post-surgery physio was painful beyond measure. I felt weak, I felt useless and I felt like dying, but my trainer would send me essays encouraging me. His letters would always end with this particular quote, “The measure of a man is his ability to stand up after getting knocked down. Be a man and go 12 rounds in the fight against life.” I would regularly read his letters before my physio sessions. It helped me push past the pain because I was determined to be a man.

After three months of intensive physio, I recovered and regained my motor skills, but the psychological scars still remained. I was diagnosed with severe depression by the Army Medical Board and was referred to an army psychiatrist. Little did I know that this particular army psychiatrist was a known maverick in the world of psychiatric care; he had a particularly unique way of dealing with depression and I had a front-row seat. “Kenny, your mind is f*cked from your ordeal, I understand that. You are a shadow of your old self, you’re no longer the gung-ho special forces wannabe that first walked into Leader’s Square with his perfect weapon’s score. I can prescribe you the usual cocktail of antidepressants that would help you immensely. But, in my opinion, drugs are not ideal as a long-term strategy. You’d become a slave to the effects of the drugs, you’ll never truly recover, you’ll only be merely delaying the inevitable. As your body acclimatizes to your current dosage, you’ll need something stronger, which will snowball into a serious drug habit. You might even seek out illegal drugs and alcohol to self-medicate, which is a slippery slope that you’ll never climb out of. I want you to man up and fight your demons. If you want to, you can always request another doctor and he’ll give you the usual cocktail. But if you work with me, I can help you fight this monster. I’ll help you become a man.” That was Dr Cheong, who had gotten his PhD from Harvard Medical School. His ‘treatment’ was a combination of life planning and exercise. It was like being at a fight camp. We formed a game plan and trained for the fight. We simply started out by making small goals and a regular exercise. He knew I used to do MMA before I enlisted, so he paid for my membership to one of the most expensive MMA gyms in Singapore (around £750 per year). Slowly but surely, I punched and kicked the demon inside me to submission. He would tell me, “The only way to beat depression is to man up and fight it headon, not with drugs or alcohol, but as your beaten self. Mind-altering substances mask the person that you truly are inside, and you’ll never win the fight unless the real you is the one doing the fighting.” According to the Army Medical Board, I was officially ‘cured’ of depression, but Dr Cheong reminded me during our last session, “If the demon comes back again, he’d not be facing the Kenny that first came to see me, he’d be fighting Kenny the man.” I still hold his quotes dearly to this day. I managed to beat my demons by manning up and facing the demon as my true self.