Yes, I am a lao jiao who used to wear Temasek green. In fact I
was in the last BMT batch to be issued it in 1982. The BMT intake
after me got the original camo which had a rubber lining inside
(meant to make it a bit waterproof) -- and was hot and itchy as
hell -- not to mention the rubber degraded quickly -- it was like
wearing a pair of rubber gloves without the powder inside.
My batch wore Temasek green and were permitted to exchange only
Temasek green for the same (SAF was trying to use up inventory and
our CSMs insisted if one had temasek green we all had temasek
green) from BMT until we passed out from OCS. Man, were we jealous
of the OCS batch behind us in camo -- looked so sloppy marching
around in unstarched uniforms -- and lucky pricks didn't have all
the work involved in maintaining them -- scholar batch somemore!
Still the Encik's in those days tried to make some standards
persist but it just didn't look right so they dropped any pretense
after a while.
The Temasek green was no joke. Yes the pants and shirt scould stand
up by themselves due to starch -- but just for parade uniforms --
you walked up and down stairs like a robot with no joints to
prevent any creases prior to parade inspection -- of course once
you drilled on the road/square for even 15 mins the perfect look
was gone. Most had to book in early every Sunday afternoon/evening
just to spray starch and iron uniforms as well as polish combat and
leather drill boots with the metal studs in them -- in those days
the rich ones could send extra uniforms (bought at Beach road, I
think we were only issued with 6 sets of no 4, 2 had to be in the
full pack at all times for standard exercise and turnout) to
special laundry for starching -- some of those uncle/aunty shops
in-camp would even do it.
You always maintained at least one drill set heavily starched (most
people had two) cos the tekan for having a bad uniform was not
worth the price of buying an extra one. Drilling in those uniforms
with sweat running into the starch led to skin problems for many.
On top of that all the formation insignia etc, were cloth/cardboard
and pinned to the uniform with metal studs or pins either on the
collar or the sleeves, plus the plastic name tag -- had to remove
and clean them separately or keep buying new ones...bascially
designed to limit your downtime to meaningless hours keeping your
uniform to stand-by and drill standards. The field no 4 was only
lightly starched or just well ironed at the start, by the time you
put on your sbo or fbo and fell-in or loaded the 3-tonners it
didn't matter. I do remember some unfortunate souls who ran out of
clean uniforms in camp and were forced to wear parade no 4's into
the field -- especially in weeks when weekends were burnt and no
time to wash uniforms in-camp. Our recruit pay was $90 a month and
our junior cadet pay was $110, maybe $150 as senior cadets.
I was probably the last SAFTI instructor to wear temasek green
until I ROD'd (ORD now). In fact I wore it to my first ICT years
later and my RSM almost fainted -- good thing i was the S2 so he
could only complain to CO, hehe. I still have two sets of original
temasek green in my "collection", along with my tin pot helmet, sbo
and all other fbo items minus M16 of course. My webbing is also the
original khaki cloth webbing and not the nylon webbing/pouches
which were introduced around 1984. But I just had to trade in the
old khaki fullpack for the nylon one which was much more waterproof
and lighter when wet.
Looking at the pictures of us in temasek green makes me and my
batch mates feel very old now, haha, but we were the batch that
bridged the old ways and the new ways in terms of uniforms anyway
-- well that, the introduction of the SAW, LAW, SAR80, and the
change in SAF philosophy from being "rugged" to "people oriented"
-- but those are other stories.
