Ah, a skeptic.
Can't directly help you since I wasn't a first-hand eyewitness.
What I can say that there were enough dubious scholar-officers
around in the 1980s to make the WOs yearn for the first-generation
highfliers (deemed to be more personable). One of them -- who was
quite famous actually; his nickname is a Hokkien play on 'nail' --
used to insist that LHL only learnt to connect with the commoner
when he was a junior officer.
The SAF fast-track system is obviously still in place; all I'm
saying here is the social differentiation was more acute in my time
(when a A-Level cert or Poly diploma was quite respected). I mean,
these guys got posted in as CPTs, sometimes already with acquired
MBAs & SCSC courses under their belt, clearly serving time
before moving up higher. The dubiety thus becomes where so-&-so
will simply treat his time as a mere stepping-stone -- with the
Hokien peng on the receiving end accordingly. Of the 3 Battery
Commanders during my active time (each staying about 6-9 months),
one was bookish, another completely snobbish, & the last one
super gung-ho. Projecting back from his present mannerisms &
communicative style, I'll say LHL was probably a cross between the
first & the last. The scholar-officer environ wasn't that
dissimilar from my time either, since I read online that he was an
Arty BN CO only in 1980 -- 9 years after getting the
scholarship!
The controversy, if you want to call it that, was how fast he shot
up the staff-officer ranks. The latter is a different world
altogether, even in those days. He was already ("suddenly") a COL
when the media spotlight shone on him during the Cable Car rescue
in 1982 &, more "astonishingly", made B-G a year later.
