SINGAPORE: When Health Minister Ong Ye Kung was a scrawny 18-year-old in 1987, he was not looking forward to National Service (NS) enlistment.For one thing, his brother who was three years older than him “didn’t quite enjoy” NS after being “punished a lot”, which gave him the impression that NS was very “siong” (tough).Not that the younger Ong was unfit. “I was an athlete back in school,” he said, “so I could do most of the exercises.”But he did have a “slight” medical condition: eczema. So he struggled with some aspects of training, especially the field camp during Basic Military Training (BMT).
A screenshot of recruits in the 1984 documentary, Marching As One.
“That wasn’t very comfortable,” he said, citing having to shower with “only three or four mugs full of water” and the powder baths in lieu of a shower.What he “really couldn’t get used to”, however, was the swearing. “The Hokkien swear words always involve your family — your mother, your father,” he said. “Psychologically, I couldn’t adapt to it that well (and) probably took it too (personally).”Still, it was not all hardship for him as a recruit preparing for military life and learning essential soldiering skills. There were parts of BMT he enjoyed, such as assembling and stripping his rifle and cleaning its components.“I was quite good at that. … My weapons tended to be quite clean,” he recalled. “I never told my wife that actually I’ve got two wives: My NS weapon and her. And we take good care of our weapons.”
