ITD Camp

The place where I spent my first three months of NS training is not Pulau Tekong. It was ITD or the Infantry Training Depot in Sembawang. Me and my classmates had heard of it moving to Pulau Tekong but I was secretly hoping to attend the one at Sembawang still. Partly out of nostalgia (it was an institution!) and partly because my brother did his BMT there. (When ITD was finally moved to Tekong, the camp was turned over to the Navy (where before my brother had done his midshipman training). It is now home to the SAF Yacht Club amongst other things. But a road that circumscribed the camp was chopped off near the entrance due to public road expansion. The old Admiralty Road West was a single two-lane road, not the dual carriage way we travel on today. You can see the truncated road (closed off with a peach-coloured gate) in the picture on the left. The guardhouse was much smaller (leftover from colonial times) and nearer to the road on the right. An old giant metal swing-gate was the barrier that stood between recruit camp life and outside civi life. I think my batch was the second last to have their BMT training at ITD Sembawang. It turned out great for me because I lived in Marsiling then. The camp was just 12 minutes by bus to my home. I used to joke that by the time my soldier uniform was washed, starched and dried, my fellow recruits would still making their way home to some ulu part of Singapore. It felt good to be so near home even though I spent most of my weekends resting and savouring home-cooked food. Oh yes, we had to starch our uniforms back then, especially the No. 3, which was for formal occasions. The No. 4 was the one you wore out to the field to rub shoulders with trees and mud. At the time, we were still wearing the all-green cotton uniform that became a favourite with construction workers later, after the army went camouflage with their fatigues (a fancy word for army field clothing). At first we hand-starched our uniforms but started using spray-on ones later. It was so much more convenient! And to iron the hardened uniforms properly, we had to use the heavier China-made irons, the one with the simple arrow-knob, black bakelite handle and shiny stainless steel body. Each bunk had one such iron. They were pretty hot and reliable. At times, we would use candle wax to 'smoothen' the iron face if it got sticky from careless use. The candle also came in handy when polishing our boots. We would use a heated upturned spoon to apply melted kiwi to the toe caps. It was easier after that to polish with a felt cloth. Those were the "tools of the trade" so to speak. I was in NPCC so I was already familiar with the art of polishing leather capped boots to a mirror finish. Back in school, my classmate Bay Swee Lak was the best at this. He made it look so effortless. Now, looking at my hapless fellow recruits who were never in the uniform groups, it became my turn (and those who had been in NCC) to teach them. Knowing how to polish your boots quickly and well took a lot of stress off your BMT. The corporals and sergeants often used that as an excuse to exact punishment. The toe cap of the boots, they'd tell you, had to reflect their pearly whites when they smiled. If not, you would instead suffer the wrath of their frowns. Still, when these 'slave owners' wanted to punish someone, they always found ample ways to find fault. Especially during Area Cleaning inspection. An overlooked window ledge, a cupboard shelf or window louvre, a crinkle on a bed sheet, some spilled foot powder, etc, etc. And if your face was a countenance they didn't like (for some reason), they would punish you more. My section had its fair share of unlucky faces. The guy whose eyes forever looked sleepy; the fella with the 'blur sotong' look; and the one with the 'kwai-lan' face (Hokkien for obnoxious) The last was probably the worst off. No matter what you do, the corporal or sergeant would think you were being rebellious or had an attitude to something that was said - whether implied or not. We had a guy like that who was picked on by our section heads and platoon sergeant. It didn't help that he also came from a rich family. He was often asked to drop extra or do additional cleaning jobs. That's how some folks got more "tekkaned" than the rest. Another fella suffered at company-level (three platoons make a company in military organisation), meaning he was picked on by the company commander himself. He was rather slow and blur and was treated like the village idiot. Sometimes meeting officers like that make my blood boil. So, in some sense, it helped to be born with a face that blended in. (For me, my army pals would later tell me that I looked serious or fierce on first encounter, like some gangster. Maybe the corporals or sergeant thought better than to fool around with me! In any case, I was very fit and a fast worker and they usually couldn't find fault with me.) The first few days at BMT was spent trying to get all our army stuff drawn from the quarter master (army term for head of stores) and learning how to put them on. The first was the SBO or the "soldier's bra organiser". They were leftovers from WWII and their straps were not not easy to adjust. As they were held tightly by brass clips, we had to us our bayonets to pry them loose and then hammer them tight again. The pouches where we put our magazines (not the girly Playboy/Hustler mags but the springloaded metal cases that held a rifle's bullets) and grenades were stiff and hard to close, not like the velcroed ones we have today. The helmets (with their inner liners and straps) were also ex-WWII - not as secure and fitting as the present day ones either. They tended to rock about on our smaller Asian heads when we ran about in them. That funny scene of Frodo and Sam emerging from Cirith Ungol in The Return of the King movie dressed as orcs best describes how we felt (as 18 year olds) in those old army field wear. They were oversized, clunky and ancient. I do not know the history of ITD camp very well. As a camp, it was huge. As mentioned above, the parade square was large and surrounded by colonial style low-rise. They reminded me of those on Sentosa island. My Echo Company block was not too far from the cookhouse, which was nice when it came time for night snack. We didn't have to walk far. We could also get back to our bunks faster after lunch for a quick siesta. Elsewhere, the camp had a field, an obstacle course, and a section with a pool occupied by the Navy. It belonged to their Midshipmen School. The camp also had its vehicular pool (garage, basically) of three tonners and WWII Landrover jeeps. I learnt to drive one of these later as an officer. It was quite the experience steering such a relic. Anybody who had been to ITD Sembawang would tell you two things: The Gift Shop and the ITD Circuit. I laughed when I first heard of the gift shop. We weren't tourists and certainly had no money to buy gifts! As a recruit, that gift shop was the lifeline to many things. Things you needed for the army (i.e. black tape, black marker, green mug, featherlite (a cloth for cleaning the rifle), cleaning brushes, epaulettes (rank insignia), buttons, socks, shoelaces, disposal underwear, soap, etc, etc) - things that the army did not give you enough of or that you had lost (i.e. signed 1206 for); things that civi-life offered: sweets, snacks, magazines, etc; things that connected you to civi-life: e.g. that all-important telephone. The ITD Circuit was that road that ran round the camp. Everybody used it for evening jogs and exercise. The 2.4km run. Platoons and sections would come and go on it, same with vehicular traffic. With my platoon, it had added significance. That circuitous road was meant as a tortuous road to build up our endurance. I am not sure if this circuitous road had a name, but to us in Platoon 17, that road might as well have been The Thai-Burma Railway.