Commissioned to photograph Professor Florian Kohlbacher for Swissquote Magazine around two years ago.
Stumbled across the magazine spread with the portrait used recently. Quite a fascinating experience to witness how a photograph is used in a magazine for print.
In an old photograph of his young 21-year-old self handling a bulky General Purpose Machine Gun (GPMG), Lock Hong Meng was quick to say that keeping these photographs is an accident rather than choice.
The four albums he kept were neatly arranged and captioned by his men during his time as an officer.
“Yesterday is meaningless, tomorrow is meaningful,” the 64-year-old said. “Today is the only constant that matters.”
Towering at almost two metres and bestowed with a deep, assuring voice, one’s attention is easily magnetised by his wit and frank snippets on the subtleties of life.
It was April 15, 1969 when Lock was called on to pay his dues as a Singaporean son.
Accompanied by his eldest brother, Lock made his way up to the reporting point located near the mouth of Teck Chai Terrace, an hour’s bus ride away from his house.
Sling bag in tow, his innards were churning with the same sense of uneasiness that was gallivanting its way through the thousand-strong crowd of fresh faced enlistees.
Little did he expect the administrative faux-pas that was to ensue.
“My turn came and the clerk told me to complete my medical and go home,” he said.
He made his way back home half happy that he had a week’s reprieve left, and half sad that it couldn’t come any sooner.
The day eventually came and Lock was sent off to the 6thSingapore Infantry Regiment located at Taman Jurong Camp. He would eventually serve six months of Basic Military Training before being handpicked to attend the Specialist Leader Course.
“Who says the Army doesn’t listen to you? “ he questions with a firm tone.
“I once asked my Platoon Commander why the morning run was 3 miles long.”
As fate would have it, his commander altered the training regime – just not in a manner that Lock had hoped for.
“The next day, it became 6 miles.”
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Text by Prabhu Silvam
This was part of a feature on Esquire Singapore on national service veterans.
Water parades took on a whole new meaning in 1972, as Fong Hoe Fang remembers it to be.
“We had a full bottle of water each when we went outfield,” he said. “That was it.”
Every sip of water was a calculated risk at quenching one’s thirst he adds – especially when faced with the merciless tropical heat.
The sprightly 60-year-old was, like most Singaporeans, the age of 18, when he was conscripted into the Singapore Army in 1972. He would continue to serve for three years where he graduated with the rank of Captain(NS).
As a young recruit part of the sixth batch of National Servicemen to don the Temasek green, Fong recalls the idiot-proof strategy of rationing water – not stopping short of praising its ingenious approach.
With bottle caps doubling up as measuring units, the tried and tested readings are as follow : 15 caps – half bottle empty, 30 caps – full bottle empty.
The MacGyver like intuition does not stop there.
With the inner linings removed, helmets were transformed as tools to boil water in the event where mess tins were unavailable.
“We made do with what we had, there were no two ways about it,” he adds.
Towards his fortieth birthday, he received a letter: He was discharged from his national service commitments. No thank you. Nothing.
Not one to take things lying down, Fong wrote back in jest: “They had a ball of a time punishing us when we joined.”
“A simple show of gratitude wouldn't have hurt, you know."
He also wrote to the authorities suggesting that a farewell party was well overdue.
“Obviously, no reply ever came.”
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Text by Prabhu Silvam
This was part of a feature on Esquire Singapore on national service veterans.
The Kallang Roar of the 70’s once captured the attention of a nation, winning over the hearts and minds of thousands who were fortunate enough to witness our own footballing spectacle.
Touted as the Golden Age of Singapore football, these players would go on to achieve regional and international feats that would go unsurpassed for decades to come.
Paramasivam Packirisamy knows firsthand what it feels like to share a bunk with the Kallang Roar.
The reverberations still feel as raw as it did 50 years ago.
“Allapitchay and Eric – gentlemen both on and off the field,” a stout and well spoken Packirisamy said, referring to Samad Allapitchay and Eric Paine – two of Singapore’s fabled footballing sons.
They were usually excused most days to go for football trainings the 70-year-old adds.
Having joined the Public Utilities Board as a senior technician in 1966, Packirisamy was conscripted into the army at the age of 24 on 27th September 1968. His first child was less than a year when he was asked to report for service.
“I had no choice – this was my only way to get a promotion at work.”
An injury a few months after his Basic Military Training changed the course of his NS life. Unfit for regular training, he got transferred and reported to Pearl’s Hill daily.
Here, he would be out-stationed across the island for crow culling – a job outsourced to the army in the early 70’s.
His new vocation granted him the chance to go home daily – something he looked forward to as the sole bread winner of a young family.
“Crow culling was not something I fancied doing, but I couldn't complain,” he said. “I got to see my family everyday.”
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Text by Prabhu Silvam
This was part of a feature on Esquire Singapore on national service veterans.
Duty-free alcohol and the promise of faraway shores were too good a deal to pass up for the then 18-year-old Sardar in 1958—as it would be for any 18-year-old in any year, for that matter. He served for over three decades.
Dissatisfied with the humdrum of civilian life and brimming with brazen vigour, he enlisted with the MRNVR voluntary core—a British-based naval unit located at the Telok Ayer Basin. Assigned to the RSS Panglima, which served mainly as a training ship for the volunteers, the fundamental duties of the core were to safeguard key installations, among other responsibilities. The Raffles Institution old boy has the honour of being part of a force that predates the current national service conscription—the existence of which isn’t known to many.
“The beauty of the group was how different we all were,” he adds. Fate couldn’t have dealt a more unexpected card than the uncanny assortment of professionals who formed the core strength of the corps. Naval architects, dentists, specialist doctors and lawyers were just some of the many characters in the MRNVR, serving alongside a young Sardar. Divided by professions, they found themselves united by a common ideology to defend their city-state, one that would achieve independence in a few years’ time.
Weekends meant touch-and-go trips to places like Malacca, Penang or Langkawi—a welcome reprieve from the daily regime of training and soldiering classes. “Good times,” he says, as he flips through a weathered scrapbook with neatly arranged black and white photos where a single photograph of a man in full naval gear stares back. He looks somewhat different these days, but the searing gaze remains the same.
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Text by Prabhu Silvam
This was part of a feature on Esquire Singapore on national service veterans.
