Unlike other countries with mandatory military service—Korea, Israel or Taiwan, to name a few—all eligible males in Singapore must serve. There is no alternative and no way to get out of it, save a medical exemption. Even then, the exemption must be severe enough to be unshakeable. This leaves young men with three options: military, police, or civil defense.

​

Seah Ying Hang, a 21-year-old freshman living in FroSoCo this year, joined the Singaporean military.

Ying Hang had a back injury before his service. But as noted before, his country’s health system isn’t streamlined, and he was deemed physically fit at his checkup. The woman checking him, in fact, merely said “Take painkillers” and that if he did, he’d be healed in about six months.

​

That didn’t help.

​

Within two weeks, Ying Hang was hurt and “fell out of the system.” He then began to do logistic work, the kind assigned to those who were deemed not physically fit.

 

Training

Enlistments work in a group of three ages: all must be before tertiary education (i.e. a university degree in the U.S.), but entry can happen at 16, 19, or 21. Ying Hang was 19, so he was broken up with the recruits from that category. Splitting up the recruits by their background is done with the intent to minimize conflicts, he says.

​

Three months of Basic Military Training (BMT) are the first requirement. Here, you learn fitness, rifle handling, and regimentation.

 

Regimentation was the toughest part in Ying Hang’s mind. During this time period, he was constantly reminded that he had no rights. In the government’s eyes, a soldier is a pawn. While his commanders never explicitly told him this, it was highly implied.

​

“True regimentation is a stripping of identity,” Ying Hang said, as calmly as if he was talking about what he had for breakfast.

​

Much like Stanford’s Prison Experiment, young Singaporean men during regimentation are called by a number rather than a name. You report by your number. You are assigned a number for your platoon. Your section. Your company.

​

No one calls you by name.

​

Green shirt, black pants. That’s the uniform you wear every day.

​

In the two weeks Ying Hang underwent this training, he was told not to ask questions. Some of his commanders practiced collective punishment: where if one member of the regiment was late, the entire group would be down doing pushups until they arrived.

​

Looking back, Ying Hang considers that it was perhaps a kind of social conditioning. And sometimes, it made life hell for the late recruit.

​

“I came knowing to eliminate critical thinking because I was told it makes things more miserable,” he said. “I guess I was aware of that in this situation.”

 

Work

Once in basic, there are three tracks for the young men to pursue: specialist, officer, or simply, one of the “men.”

​

But Ying Hang never got there. He was sent to logistics.

​

His main job: keep everything running well, particularly in the dining halls. He would see if they had sufficient food, make predictions based on attendance, provide information to the cookhouses, and see that it was all done on time.

​

He also had to make sure general equipment was well-stocked—tables, laundry, and ration boxes all accounted for. His group planned the duty assignments: as someone was on call in operations room, always, and there was certainly a possibility of being deployed at any moment. The duty roster was a tough job as well.

 

People who “sign on,” or volunteer for the military, start off as specialists. But this limits them to climbing the specialist ladder, and only that ladder. So when cadets fresh off cadet school are officers, and forty-year-old specialists have to call them sir…

 

The career specialists might try to wrestle power a little, causing trouble. It’s a problem that Ying Hang saw, and a problem that required a bit of skill to solve.

 

The military culture was also a challenge in Ying Hang’s life. The goal of the leaders was to give a job to someone who would make it the easiest. That meant doing work well resulted in more and more work.

​

After all, it’s easier to give more work to a hard worker than try to shame the lazy into something subpar. It wasn’t a good system, Ying Hang says. There wasn’t a reward for hard work, other than simply, more work.

​

People got jaded easily because of that. They see others, say “he’s doing less work than me, but he has a better life,” and that’s not fair.

​

Knowing this, Ying Hang maintains he kept a basic level of competence, but didn’t try to compete or thrive because it would only mean extra work.

​

“I don’t feel like it affected me too deeply, because I knew it was temporary,” he said. “But…I sent some friends to the hospital, to the mental evaluation, because they were cutting themselves or suicidal and that was tough.”

 

War

Politics is much of the problem in the military in Ying Hang’s opinion. The whole narrative the soldiers are told is if you’re not there, protecting, the enemy will come. Thus, the military serves a deterring purpose.

​

But to Ying Hang and his fellow recruits, it was an invisible enemy. The name of this invisible enemy could have been any of the region’s “neighbors.”

​

And when the purpose is there, but not really explicitly clear, the whole thing becomes a little…useless.

​

If Ying Hang’s purpose wasn’t to occupy something meaningful, it could have been quite a miserable experience, he says. If he would’ve had to been the recruit running through the jungle and sleeping on the ground for no point at all…

​

Well, it creates displeasure, he says simply. Displeased recruits can show a not-so-nice side of them.

​

There’s only so long you can fight an imaginary war all the time.