The Initial Days Recollection

The posting from the SAF to the police force did not proceed smoothly. We all had to lots of push-ups & crunches as a parting gift. I remember dekitting & sauntering across the parade square. Why? Because that was the only time I could do it & get away with it. In any case, I was less than impressed with the NCOs in-charge of me. I suffered from that particular affliction of young Eurasians - hubris. I left BMT with several dozen confinements & innumerable extras. Until today, I love giving orders, hate taking them.

In any case, I had never heard of Police OCT before. It never occurred to me that there was a place where commissioned officers from the Police Force serving their NS came from. Now I was going to be one of them. Nevertheless, I was less than impressed when they introduced the bus driver as the Company Commander! (He was a staff sergeant)

I believe that Daryl, Aziz, Asri, Mark were the best of friends because we got along really well & we had mutual distaste for the ah-beng clique. You will hear more about these jokers & our misadventures later on.

In any case, we all thought that Tracom (SPF) was going to be a holiday camp. It was, but only for the JOs. Not us. They got up at 0800h; we were out for a several click run by 0630h. They swam laps in the pool; we were training for the Bronze Medallion. They did basic self-defense, we did full-contact sparring. You get the idea. Our FI, Hassan was crazy. But on hindsight, all that log PT, full-pack rundowns at the SOC & physical punishment paid off.

We had the most black belts, we had the highest number of IPPT Golds, the most number of Bronze Medallion swimmers, the most number of marksmen. The other squads hated us. They would scream when we were running, “Go back to the Army!” I think we thrived on hate.

The only time we legally got even was when we played games. We thrashed them in soccer & basically any game we played. Except rugby. I got ejected for punching an opponent. Daryl almost dislocated a knee. It was more Aussie Rules than touch rugby.

I would like to mention the Young Azman saga but that deserves a posting all of its own.

Terence Nunis