Most of of male Singaporeans served National Service. During my time, most of us end up in the army. Some served 2 years and others like me served 2.5 years.
It was still a paid role although the pay back then was really miserable.
My first 3 months of basic military training was at Pulua Tekong. My 'wife' then was the M16 (Now, it's this SAR 21). You guarded it with your life because in camp and during field camp because if the section commander, platoon sergeant, or someone stole your rifle, you would be in big trouble.
So, we learned to love and hate it. We learned to strip it and assemble back quickly, clean it and the rifle went with us everywhere. Yes, the toilet too or you trust your buddy with it.
We shot blanks and live rounds at shooting range. Shooting was fun but the not so fun was the butt party duty. Back then, the target were manually raised from the trend for the firer and butt party was us when it was our turn to raise and pop up the target for shooters. So, that wasn't fun.
The other we are taught about rifle is bayonet fighting where the bayonet is attached to the gun barrel and we do all the movements to fight the enemy without shooting a round. The worst thing we can hear from the instructor is "Thrust and hold it there."
Eventually, most people pass out (that does not mean fainted) although we really have what we called a passing out parade at the end of 3 months of basic military training we mostly referred to as BMT.
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