My Heart Never Left Naval Base Singapore

 

My heart has never left Naval Base, Singapore
(by: Chan Peew Wan, 14 August, 2020)

When I was able to read the English language, I learnt from my birth certificate that I was born in Block 14 room 12, Kowloon Road, H. M. Naval Base, Singapore, one August morn in 1946.
According to history, I was one among the post World War II (WWII) babies!

By then, I had already three (3) older brothers and subsequently, the family was blessed with another four (4) girls, all younger than me. Including mom and dad we were a large family by any comparison! Almost a football team.

I only knew the Naval Base was geographically located in the North-North-East (NNE) part of the Singapore island after attending my primary school education at Canberra School. A neighbourhood school of sort.

Mom, dad and my older brothers used to reminisce about dad working in the Hong Kong British Dockyard and shorty before the outbreak of WWII, was posted to Singapore Naval Dockyard.

I also heard about the horrors of war. Like how they would all make a dash to the air-raid shelter/bunker, each time they heard the siren. They also gathered the few chickens they were rearing to safety.
They recalled seeing shrapnel and bomb shells flying all over when a bomb exploded. We could tell that the bombs narrowly missed us as there were bomb holes close to where we resided. I was very terrified hearing their stories.
I guess I was 4 or 5 years old then.

Like most children growing up in the Naval Base, I spent a lot of time in the outdoors playing together with girls and boys - hop-scotch, rounders, (modified baseball) skipping, top-spinning, marbles, five-stones, cowboys and Indians, gambling with real money (largely one-cent coins), rubber-bands, bottle-caps, empty cigarette boxes, comic pictures, playing in washed drains during heavy downpour.

When we were playing, many of us were not spared of cuts and injuries. Very often, we fell and picked ourselves up again. I remember I had a few injuries. My head was cracked by the batsman while playing as a catcher in one rounders game. The blood was just oozing out. I was helped to a nearby outpatient clinic opposite the Labour/Asian Accommodation Office for dressing. Another injury was I almost severed one of my toes when I stepped onto a broken bottle while playing football at the JAA ground. The bleeding did not stop and an ambulance was called to take me to the Asian Hospital for treatment. On another occasion, I missed a step running down a slope while playing “police-and-thief”. I took a tumble nearly breaking my neck!!

I think my parents felt that I was spending too much time playing and recall one day, my mother dressed me up and took me to a tuition centre near our home. Mom and dad thought it was good idea to keep me out of mischief and playing all day long with my friends. I was not old enough to be registered in the English stream school, so I was forced to learn the Chinese language in Cantonese (our dialect). This elderly lady was the teacher, principal, “mother” and all-encompassing when we were under her tuition and care. I attended her classes first at Block 8 and then the class shifted to Block 9. When the student numbers grew, she rented a bigger place under a block which had a high void deck (can’t remember the block number). I only studied there for a little over a year and then enrolled at Canberra School, a mixed school, which was a short distant from my home.

I completed my Primary School Leaving Education (PSLE) there in 1959. Made numerous friends, boys and girls of all races and ethnicities.
Today, (year 2020) I still have a small Whatsapp chat group (CS Class of ’59) It is sad that a few of them have since passed away.

I was transferred Tanjong Katong Secondary Technical School the following year. The large majority of my other primary school classmates enrolled into Naval Base Secondary School.
After one year in the secondary school, I suddenly felt that I needed to grow up! My immediate older brother found an apprenticeship scheme with the British Royal Air Force based in RAF Tengah. He was enjoying study, work and earning a few dollars. I had no ambition then.
Midway through my Sec 2 year, my dad suggested I joined the H. M. Dockyard apprenticeship to learn a trade in order to equip me for the future. I did not fancy the proposal. I saw no real prospects of advancement. Everyone in our neighbourhood working in the Dockyard was a fitter or mechanic with a salary bar. Unless one was competent enough, there was no promotion to the next level…a person could be stuck in that position till his retirement at age 55 years old!
Nevertheless, in order to please my dad I applied to partake in the apprenticeship examination. I failed that exam.
However, a good number of my friends, including school mates passed the examination and were recruited as apprentices.
👍👍
(….to be continued)