My journey through National Service
Singapore commemorated 50 years of national service (NS) in 2017 (1967 - 2017). Since my enlistment at a young age of 18 years old in 1975, I had been a part of NS for 42 years. My group of friends from the Officer Cadets School (OCS), SAFTI met for a get-together to celebrate 40 years after being commissioned as officers of NS. The strong bonds among us kept us together after all these years. We met on several occasions since 1980. August 2017 was our 4th major get-together. I served two and a half years after taking my GCE “A” Level examinations in 1975. My university education was put on hold until my completion of full-time NS liability in 1978. We used the term run-out-date (ROD) to mark the end of full-time NS. Now it is called operationally ready date (ORD). We then went on to serve 13 years of reservist trainings starting from 1979. These were short stints of trainings and exercises during our university breaks and when we had to take leave from our work places. National Service is one way for us to show and exercise our loyalty towards Singapore. While we were going through the trainings, we might dislike them and felt that it was disruptive to our lives. But on looking back, I was a better person for it. I can laugh at many silly things we did. NS taught me to be independent and to be able to do things on my own. From sweeping the fallen leaves on the road to keeping our living quarters and toilets clean. I was taught housekeeping unknowingly, to shine my boots, iron my uniforms, and mend my clothes. We had to stand-by-our-beds for morning inspections. My commander would throw a coin on the bedspread over my bed and see whether the coin bounced up (it must be that taut). He would look into the barrel of my rifle and pronounced that there was an “elephant” in my barrel. I had not cleaned the barrel well enough to be free of explosive powder dust. Those were the days. They left an impression on me.
