I’ve never been to an Army Open House because I don’t have kids to bring them to, and my family would scream if I asked them “hey you wanna go to the Army Open House and see Army gear and stuff?” and they’d scream, “We wash your Army gear every time you come back from reservist”, and they’d scream, “if that’s your idea of a joke, it’s not funny”.

So I’ve never been to an Army Open House.

This post has been rather long in brewing; I originally intended for it to be written on the 1st of July, but I left it to stew and simmer for a couple of weeks.

I first took my Oath of Allegiance to the SAF on the 8th of January, enlistment day. It seemed monumentous, for the bright and cheery optimism I had about serving the nation I love so dear.

Six months later, I renewed my commitment on SAF Day. Somehow things were different yet the same. The weather was gloomy, it threatened to rain and push the parade forward. And it seemed apt that I was standing in a contingent where half the men were ill-disciplined and couldn't care less for the solemnity of the event. It seemed such a far cry from the discipline and regimentation back in Tekong and 39 SCE; it was a side of the army I'd never expected or imagined. I wouldn't want to depend on the ragtag bunch of men who served only because they had no choice and yet couldn't be bothered to at least try.

But that is the reality of it, the fact that few of us would be serving if we weren't obligated. With a conscript army, one must ask if the Oath taken really was meant from the heart, or just shouted out because the order was given to recite it. I felt disillusioned, in a way.

Yet it struck me that I do not serve for mere obligation, I serve to pay the price of male citizenship in my nation. I still believe in it, as an essential institution. I may not enjoy what I do, nor always put in my very best all the time. But I recognize the pride I have to serve and why I must discharge my duty.

I would very much want to be in university now, enjoying the various Freshmen Orientation Camps instead of donning my No. 4 and falling in at some unholy hour. It's harder to serve now, when all the girls are flying off, or enjoying their camps. I didn't feel my loss so strongly when I first enlisted, when it seemed like everyone else just had an extended holiday that I didn't. But it is still an unchangeable reality that I have to serve.

I serve not because I enjoy it, nor because I truly want to fight. I serve because it is my obligation and duty. But duty is a strange thing, because it sinks in and pushes you past all the envy, if that is the word. I am bound by my nation to bear arms in its defence and for that I give my two years. I might groan and moan about the inefficiencies of the SAF, but I am still proud to serve.

As I prepare to finish off this entry, a bunch of NDU divers are running past in a cadence run, singing together the same tune we sang while doubling into the parade square at the end of BMT. I see a column of men in Skeletal Battle Order on a route march around the camp, it's probably one of their first few of the many to come. The divers are in high spirits, eagerly anticipating the book out that comes tomorrow. They shout it to each other in between stanzas of "Training To Be Soldiers". The men are tired and it reflects in their forlorn faces. I think it captures what National Service is in Singapore: a balance between the duty that calls and the cry for our freedom.

We are citizen-soldiers of the Singapore Armed Forces. We serve to defend our land, our families and friends; whose pictures and photos reside in our iPods, our wallets, our notebooks or the insides of our lockers. They are snapshots of another life, another time, serving to motivate us, each mass of pixels helping to dull the feelings of loneliness each night we spend in bunk, away from our civilian lives. But we serve nonetheless, because we must. Even if defending Singapore in any war is futile, we still must try, as have the generations before us for the 44 years of our nation's existence.

And so we serve.