351 / 409
EPILOGUE
335
SIXTEEN
IV. SAF RISING
despite reservations about the root causes for the offences, had to come down hard on the
perpetrators to prevent the widespread undermining of authority.
But, whereas there had been no preparation for National Service in the training of the First
Batch officers, the curriculum and tenor of their course as a whole seemed to have instilled
a ‘can-do’ spirit and a high degree of justifiable self-esteem among nearly all the graduates.
In particular, they were inclined to lead from the front, work conscientiously and keep a cool
head. What they lacked in intellectual depth, they often made up in situational awareness.
Anecdotally, they managed to pick up the respect of many National Service enlistees who
went on to become prominent citizens.
The SAF had a very steep learning curve in the years following the commissioning of the First
Batch. The battalion attack demonstration of 11
th
July, 1967 by SAFTI was the precursor to
the introduction of battalion level operational training in the Infantry unit training cycle that
commenced with the first National Service intake. At the time, each SIR battalion received
one company-worth of recruits who graduated from basic through section, platoon and
company training, making way every six months to a new intake over the two-year cycle for
enlisted men. By the end of the second year, the battalion would have four rifle companies in
various stages of training, while selected personnel were given training in battalion support
weapons to make up the three platoons of the support company, namely the 81mm Mortar,
the 106mm Recoilless Rifle and the Pioneer Platoon (a kind of “Engineer Lite”). Each rifle
company also had, as part of its establishment, three General Purpose Machine Guns and
an anti-tank rocket launcher section. Other personnel from each intake were absorbed into
the HQ Company establishment as medical orderlies, cooks, storemen, Regimental Police,
Motor Transport (MT) personnel and clerical staff. The full-time National Service cycle in
the Infantry ended with a battalion level exercise in which the current recruit company would
not participate. With the creation of Armour, Artillery, Engineers and Signals battalions,
National Servicemen began to be sent for recruit training to these units as well.
1
Armour,
being an assault arm like the Infantry, compared to a support arm, eventually developed
its own unit training cycle. The support arms and in time, the logistics services, developed
their own training cycles, which were incorporated into formation-level exercises where they
attained their full application. The first battalion-level exercises began by the time the first
National Servicemen were due to complete their full-time training in August 1969 and by
1971, the SAF was already embarking on brigade-level exercises. In effect, the land forces
training cycle was translating into routine annual and bi-annual large scale exercises which
provided the template for the development of operational systems and procedures. As the
other services came online, they were integrated to upgrade the scope to joint operations.