37
years served in the Singapore Artillery
Chapter 10
Early years (1967 - 1990) School of Artillery had about 10 lesson formats,
which were entitled: Arty Board, Director, Displacement Calculator,
Observation, Position, Battle Technique, Survey, Ranging, Air photo,
etc., These were the first batch artillery
officer (1st Basic Arty Officers' Course, BAOC) painstaking efforts.
These lesson formats
were detailed teaching Bible for
all courses in artillery, written steps by steps: pre-class preparation, listed
the requirement of auxiliary people, vehicles, ammunition, rations, tools. These were great books of Masterpieces.
In 1988, the Singapore
Artillery, when celebrated her centennial
anniversary (1888 - 1988), I was an artillery
school instructor, in my office I held a set of these lesson formats with admiration and respect to the 1st BAOC.
I hoped in 2038, when the
Singapore Artillery celebrate her 150th
anniversary (1888--2038), these lesson formats
would still existence for exhibition.
Five officers
conducted all the lessons, with four NCOs’
assistance, for 14 weeks to teach
27 trainees, the instructors and students ratio was 1:3.
In any school, the ratio has
never happened. The instructors
were very kind, the main part of the course was plotting of arty board (firing
chart), we plotted the gun positions’ coordinates and targets’ coordinates on the firing chart, and measure
distances and directions to calculate artillery firing
data.
Only the first two
batches of TASA had the honor of using paper firing charts, the later batches used plastic sheet firing charts.
Jurong factory workers, those girls lived in the
YWCA hostel, at block no 79, when they standing in front of their kitchen window,
across the YWCA barbed wire, a road, then across the army camp fence, from time
to time, they could see young soldiers who were holding a 1.2 m X 1.2 m plywood
board, running circles around block no 80, that was we had often been punished by
our instructors. So if our girlfriends see us, it was so shame. Fortunately, when
we were punished, our girlfriends were not in the hostel but were in Jurong factory
at work.
We were practiced laying Directors at the long-shaped
open space right in front of block no 80. The Director was an instrument to put
the guns in parallel to the targets area.
The TA & SVY course was divided into
two phrases, the first phrase on
technical assistant training, and the subsequent phrase was on survey. Only 25 of us successfully
passed the first phrase. Kechik B.
Parti, and Tan Peng Hong failed, and they were eliminated, they could not be with us for the survey lessons.
Finally, 25 of us
successfully completed the TA & SVY course, and we were awarded with certificates and qualified as
regimental surveyors.
