SAF (public) training areas – Where is Hill 265? (by Peter Chan)

Hill 265 was used as a site for Company and Platoon-level defense exercises for “active infantry units” or those attending OCS and SATO courses. For trainees after a hard day’s work of “grave digging”, they retreated to the bunkers to chat about our future after NS or to look to the Johore skies at night. Duck-walk and kissing a single tall tree that grew at one end of Hill 265 remained in the memories of the very unfortunate soldiers who were often punished for breaches of field training safety.

Photo 1: Impressions of the Mandai forest area taken 40 years ago. Hill 265 is at the top right corner and Lorong Asrama is at the bottom right corner. Tracts of cultivated vegetable plots are found north of Hill 255. South of Hill 251 are the ponds.

It was a big challenge to “rediscover” the origins of former SAF camps and training areas but I can tell you the immense satisfaction and surprises after finding one. To begin with, I had very little intelligence on Hill 265. Through the years, I was told the following;

a) Has a good view of the Sultan of Johore’s palace whose tower resembles very much like our St Andrew’s School tower,

b) Former SAF regulars pointed out that Hill 265 is still around and was in the Singapore Sports School” compound,

c) Another hill from the era of Hill 265 - Hamburger Hill - is still used by the SAF, and

d) Hill 265 was linked to Mandai Road through Lorong Asrama.

Photo 2: Left - A fire trench with a soldier armed with mounted AR15 on look-out duty. Right – Platoon marching in a single file formation on Lorong Asrama towards Hill 265. Platoon Commander and his runner are at the back of the single line formation. (circa 1974)

Photo 3: the Line of Sight from a hill in Mandai/Marsiling training area points to a tower called the Bangunan Sultan Ibrahim which is now blocked by Waterfront City (circa 1981). From a distance, we saw the top of the tower emitted a yellow glow at night. During WW2 General Yamashita stood in this building peering through his binoculars across the Straits of Johore into the Kranji area.

We had to summon all historical knowledge on what the SAF had previously trained us to be good mapping specialists and intelligence scouts. Frankly, what we did was rather primitive. Finally the big day arrived. Initially it was quite hard to accept that this was Hill 265 but in Singapore nothing really remains after 15 years since we are always renewing ourselves.

So where was Hill 265?

Our conclusion is that Hill 265 is now the open space between Woodgrove Avenue, Woodlands Avenue 2 and the 11km Seletar Expressway. The same water-pipeline from Tebrau Water Works, Johore into Singapore runs parallel to the BKE. The Woodlands South Flyover was built over farm houses and ponds. At Exit 11 of the SLE, to your left was Hill 251.

Photo 4: This we believe is what is left of Hill 265. Behind us is the SLE. Photo taken on 5 Mar 2009.

Chun See continues ……

I am afraid I do not have much recollections of this place called Hill 265 although the name is familiar. However, whenever I drive along the SLE past what I now know is Hill 265 - or what is left of it - and exit downwards towards Woodlands Ave 2 and see the flat land before me, I am reminded of a sight from my SISL days.

I believe the exercise was called Recce Patrol. We started after lunch from the old Bt Panjang Community Centre at Lorong Malai off Upper Bukit Timah Road and made our way northwards in section-size groups (8 men) towards Marsiling. Our mission was to spy on some location there and report back. I remember the long and arduous trek through difficult terrain. Finally we climbed a ridge and as we emerged on the other sight, we were met with the unforgettable sight of a huge valley below us and lots of vegetable farms and hills in the distance. I believe that ridge that we climbed that afternoon 38 years ago must have been Hill 265.

Another encounter with Hill 265 was a night training exercise during my OCS days which involved ‘withdrawal’. As often the case, I was appointed the ‘casualty’ and my section mate had to carry me using the fireman lift method. He ran along a ridge and to our right was a steep slope. My position was very comfortable, but I dared not complain, knowing how tired my friend was. All the while, I was keeping my fingers crossed that he wouldn’t drop me down the slope.

SAF (public) training areas - Where is Hill 180?

Today, it is called Sispec (School of Infantry Specialists), but back in 1971 when I was first enlisted into national service, it was called SISL (School of Infantry Section Leaders). It was during my time in Lima Company, SISL that I did a few days of Defence Camp at a hill in Marsiling called Hill 180.

Over the years, much changes have taken place in Marsiling. A whole new Woodlands New Town, complete with MRT lines, have emerged and I had assumed that Hill 180 had long vanished from the face of this earth. Still I was very curious to find out where exactly Hill 180 used to be, and where would it be today.

With the help of my friend Peter Chan and one of my readers, Keith, we went on a ‘mission’ to find Hill 180 and Hill 265 last week. I am very happy to report that our ‘mission’ was a success. We believe that Hill 180, or at least part of it is still intact. We also found what was left of Hill 265. I will blog about the former and let Peter tell you about Hill 265.

We did not have much to go on. First, my memories from 38 years ago.

1) I saw two blocks of flats

I remember that as our 3-tonner approached the foot of Hill 180, there were two blocks of what looked like HDB flats on the right side the road. I saw some Malay women and children in front of these flats. A short distance after passing the flats, we reached the foot of the hill where we unloaded our defence stores – stuff like iron pickets, sandbags, wooden beams and changkols. We carried our stores up the hill along a gentle slope, continuing in the easterly direction from where the road ended.

The reason these two blocks of flats remained quite fresh in my memory is that in subsequent years, when I traveled along the present Marsiling Road, I often saw these two blocks of flats. But last week, when we went there, I did not expect to see them anymore. Hence I was happily surprised to see them still there in an open field, but fenced up. According to Peter, they belonged to KD Malaya, or Royal Malaysian Navy and were the housing quarters for staff of the Malaysian Navy camp which used to be located at Admiralty Road (near the present Riverside Road).

Today, these flats are called Marsiling Apartments; and they even have a website here.

2) I could see JB

The hill was divided into sectors. My platoon was in charge of one sector called Apple (or maybe Orange) Sector. One night I was on guard duty. In the dead of the night when most of the others were asleep, I sat in my shell-scrape and admired the beautiful sight of the Johor causeway as well as the neon lights of Johor Bahru. (I seem to recall seeing a grey tower-like structure which was part of the JB prison. Can anyone confirm?). Of course, it was also a time for reflection; and as you might expect, I felt lonely and homesick.

3) A newspaper article

Another vital piece of clue was this 1974 news clipping with Peter sent me. It was about a soldier who was killed by lightning on Hill 180. It mentioned that Hill 180 was off Marsiling Avenue. With the help of a map from YG’s 1970 street directory, we were thus able to work out the rough location of Hill 180. We suspected that it should be next to Woodlands St 13. Peter even singled out Block 118.

What we saw last week

As we traveled along Woodlands Street 13, I was so glad to see the Marsiling Apartments and thought to myself – could these be the same blocks that I saw in 1971?

It soon became apparent that they were. And then we saw this hill near the bend in the road. There was a track leading up the hill which I was so sure was the very same one that we took in 1971. Once we reached the top of the hill, the first thing I tried to confirm was, would we be able to see JB from here?

The answer was yes. Even though the view was blocked by some flats, JB and the causeway would definitely be visible had the flats not been there.

We were thus very sure that we had found Hill 180 or part of it at least. But two doubts lingered.

a) Peter remarked that the hill was too low to be Hill 180.

b) I recall clearly that the 2 blocks of flats were to my right hand side in 1971 when we approached the hill; and they were quite near to the road.

Conclusion

Hence, our final conclusion is that Hill 180 was located in what is today the Woodlands Town Park East. In 1971, there was another road parallel to Woodlands Street 13 which was north of the Marsiling Apartments. Maybe it was today’s Marsiling Road. The actual Hill 180 would be slightly to the north of and probably joined to this hill that we climbed on 5th of March 2009.

Where (exactly) is Hill 100?

Regarding my previous post about Hill 100, Peter has emailed me to dispute my theory that it was located at present Baxter plant. He thinks it should be a bit further south at where the Turf Club is located.

I think he is wrong, and to prove it, I have to add another aerial photo. I don’t think there is any sensitivity (security-wise) seeing these SAF training locations have long disappeared from the face of the earth.

1. Access to Hill 100

Second Shot is right. The access to Hill 100 is probably via Lorong Woodlands Kechil. (I say “probably” because I simply cannot recall with certainty stuff from more than 30 years ago). Remember I mentioned passing the old age home. We had to go around the hill and access it from around 12 o'clock direction where the slope was not so steep for the 3-tonners. And that was where I saw the charcoal-producing farm house.

2. Woodland-Marsiling Road Junction

Second Shot is right again. As you can see from photo no.2, the Woodlands- Marsiling Road junction is just to the left of this photo. That was what I wrote behind the photo.


As you can see from these two photos,

1) Hill 100 is very near to the Woodlands-Marsiling junction, which means it is also quite near the Metal Box factory.

2) Woodlands Road is very near to Hill 100 and runs northwards. If you look at the old 1983 map, Woodlands Road first runs in N-E direction and makes a sharp bend northwards. It is at this bend that I saw the cows grazing back in the 50’s/60’s in front of us as we traveled towards the causeway.

It is also at this sharp bend that they later added Woodlands Ave 3. A traffic light junction was created here so that from Woodlands Road you actually proceed straight ahead to get to Woodlands New Town and BKE via Ave 3. And you have to turn left if you want to get to the Metal Box and the causeway.

Furthermore, if you have been traveling in this area before the construction of Turf Club, you will know that the land north of Ave 3 is quite high compared to the land south of it.

Hence, I still stick to my theory that Hill 100 was at the Baxter location. But to be more sure, we need to identify where exactly was the Woodlands-Marsiling junction is today’s map. I think it is Woodlands Industrial Park D.

SAF (public) training areas – Where is Hill 100?

During my active NS days, I had a few training sessions at a place called Hill 100 in the Woodlands area. The hill was not very high and accessible to three-tonners and land rovers. It was also quite flat; like a plateau, and thus very suitable for mine warfare training. This was in the mid-1970’s

I have always wondered where exactly was Hill 100. Looking at my recently acquired old street directories, and blogging about the old times have triggered my memory and I think I have finally found the answer. I believe Hill 100 is where the present day Baxter Plant is located.

Below are some old maps of the Woodlands Road area.

In the 1983 map, you will see an old age home (bottom right). I remember that in getting to Hill 100, we had to pass by this old age home.

In the 1993 map, you can see that this old age home is labeled Woodlands Home for the Aged.

Can you also see the SBS Woodlands Depot?

At the top of the 1993 map, you will see many small factories and a road named Woodlands Industrial Park D. I believe this road used to be part of the old Marsiling Road. As for the factories, they are very similar to those you can still see in Ang Mo Kio Industrial Park 2. Around 1997~98, the government wanted to relocate these factories to multi-storey ramp-up factories in Woodlands East Industrial Estate. I was involved in some of the consultancy projects to help these factories and visited this place many times.

And going back even further to the late 1950’s and early1960’s, I remember seeing something very interesting here. At that time, the only way to get to the Johore causeway was by Woodlands Road. When we came to the bend in the road, I remember seeing cows grazing on a hill side. What an interesting sight it was to us kids then. I believe that the hill where the cows grazed was Hill 100.

Let’s get back to the mid-70’s. At that time, I was attending the Junior Officers Engineers Course in Gillman Camp. Besides mine-warfare training, I remember we also had an exercise called Exercise Albino here in Hill 100. This was a field fortification simulation exercise. We had to create what looked like a battalion in defence when viewed from afar or from the air by enemy recce parties. As usual, there was lots of digging to be done. Among the many trenches that we had to dig was a battalion command post, as well as several heavy weapon emplacements. Although there was no need to dig to the full depth – we only needed to dig about 1 foot deep and then spray the soil with black colour oil to give an appearance of depth when viewed from the air – but we still had to construct the superstructures. We also had to build dummy military trucks and park them next to real ones (to confuse the enemy).

After the exercise, we were taken on a helicopter ride to view our work from the air to see for ourselves how realistic they were to enemy aerial recce. I have three photos but I am not sure if I am permitted to put them up for the public to see. So I will just show one where you can clearly see Hill 100 from a height of 500 feet. (This photo is taken in the easterly direction. The road on the foreground is Woodlands Road running towards the Johore Causeway on the left)

Another interesting thing I remember was that there was a farmhouse nearby which produced charcoal.

This is all that I can recall about Hill 100. I hope my readers can contribute more details which may trigger more memories for me.

Akan datang: My next article in this series will be about Hill 180 in Marsiling, followed hopefully (if I can persuade him) by one on Hill 265 by our friend Peter.

SAF (public) training areas – Peter recalls

Let me continue from where Chun See left off in the previous post with a story about how we benefited by "walking all over Singapore" when doing NS in the early 70’s.

1. We could never envisage thriving rural business enterprises all over Singapore that could succeed until we did our defense camp on one of the ridges of Hill 265. Today that location is the Singapore Sports School at Woodlands Drive 15.

One thing impressed me about those villagers; their business acumen. Their clients were SAF NS personnel. Many went into the drinks business whilst others did the catering.

For those into the drinks business, they either set-up permanent structures (like in this photo) or pedaled their bicycles with crates of Coca-cola and plastic bags/straws. The profit margins must have been very attractive because whenever a SAF detachment arrived, you can find many such stallholders. Some resorted to using their beautiful daughters as "magnets" to attract potential SAF lads, similar to those you see as "Tiger Beer Girls" in today's kopi-tiams. The girls or more likely children looked like they were under 16 years. Of course the village girls did not dress like "TIGER Beer Girls" but their facial beauty was enough to turn on most SAF lads. Imagine a youthful Fann Wong at 16 years of age with two pony-tails would have mesmerized every SAF lad. That girl was none other than what most SAF personnel referred to as the "Marsiling Girl". Unfortunately she was very shy to face my camera and all I have is the back of her body.

For those who went into the catering business, their kitchens were turned into frying Bee-Hoon with Mai Ling canned braised pork and canned "Fu Yee". It cost S$2 for a big plate which could feed 4 NS men. We sat at make-shift tables and were served with small porcelain soup bowls and black wooden chop-sticks. The catering business survived because nobody was keen on the SAF Wet Ration which tasted like "Sai" on most occasions because the rice was soggy and the chicken was still raw and still had strands of hair.

2. The other thing I learned was how reservoirs were able to keep the rain water. I had wondered for a long time whether the hydro engineers laid some kind of plastic sheet at the bottom of the reservoir to prevent water seepage. Well I found my answer through our exercises in the deep jungles of the Upper Pierce Reservoir and Bedok Reservoir. Actually, all you needed were huge granite boulders piled in layers until at the very top there was a layer of smaller granite aggregates. During "Exercise Red Beret", we walked to the bottom of the Upper Pierce Reservoir before emerging at Chestnut Avenue Water Pumping Station to continue our journey to Hong Kah.

The other exercise was a platoon withdrawal at the Bedok Reservoir. In 1974, Bedok New Town was under construction and Bedok Reservoir had been recently excavated. We withdrew from one end of the reservoir near Kaki Bukit to the other end near the "Clearwater Condominium and the Prison Department Sports Club (previously called the Bedok Reformatory Center)". At that time the Bedok Reservoir had not been laid with granite boulders and contained yellow earth. I can tell you that at the center of the reservoir, the depth must be at least 20 meters deep because when the platoon withdrawal exercise ended, we were all puffing and were "dying". The gradient was very steep. Guess who I piggy-backed in full battle orders? Gerard Ee the chairman of NKF Foundation. In his NS days, he weighed more than he does now.

Chun See continues …..

Actually, the kampong lasses sold much more than the soft drinks that Peter mentioned. There was also fried bee hoon, fried prawn cake (hea piah – circular shape with strands of bean sprouts, eaten with chilli sauce), fried tau kua (bean curd), hot coffee, and what I remember most, cheap chocolate wafers like the ones in this photo. I recall with great fondness, what a welcome sight those girls were to us cold, tired, rain-soaked soldier boys, appearing out of the darkness of the night in Area D, Sungei Gedong, where we did our field fortification exercises.

I dedicate this post to all the girls who ‘took care’ of us all those long years ago. I wonder where they are now. I hope some of them, or their children at least, are reading this story.

Update: 27 Sep 2000 - This is the photo that Peter and Icemoon are discussing about in the comments section.

Memories from an old news clipping (2) – SAF (public) training areas

Today I want to continue from where I left off the last time to blog about an item in that 1969 newspaper clipping my neighbour gave me. There was a small announcement entitled; “Military Exercises this week” which mentioned the times and places where military exercises would be conducted. Of course nowadays, the army no longer carries out training in such public places; but up to the 70’s it was quite commonplace. By that time, the announcement usually carried an extra sentence which warned the public not to be alarmed by the sound of blanks and thunder flashes.

In the above announcement, the following places were mentioned: Chua Chu Kang, Marsiling, Jurong and Tuas. As far as I know, there were a number of other areas. Those that I have personally experienced include Hong Kah, Mandai, Neo Tiew Road and Tampines in the east.

Because my time was mainly spent in Safti, I experienced a lot of training in the Jurong area. Nowadays, I often fetch my daughter to her classes at the NTU (Nanyang Technological University). Driving along some of the fringe roads, I keep thinking that I must have done a couple of “Enemy on the right … Charge!”s there. That’s because from our training area, we could see the dormitories of Nantah. At that time, to access this area, we would get out of Safti via an opening in the fence on a slope at the back of OCS.

The young reader may find this a bit difficult to picture, but in those days, all these training areas were very, very different from today. To give you an idea, I show you a sketch of the Hong Kah area from my 1981 street directory. Today this area is all empty land between the PIE and KJE. In those days, it was thriving with life. There were a lot of kampong houses, shops, schools, temples, a community centre and a big Chinese cemetery called Bulim Cemetery. The most prominent landmark was a brick factory with a very tall chimney which could be seen from miles around, including Jurong Road. It was a great boon for us soldier boys because it helped us to orientate our position on the topo map.

This is the Green Haven Half Way House in Old Jurong Road. It used to be school in the Hong Kah area (I think).

This used to be one of the many tracks that traversed this part of Singapore.

As for the Marsiling area; I remember it had a lot of vegetable farms and the area was very hilly. In my Section Leaders training days, I did lots of topo training here. The most prominent object here was the water pipe line. We were not allowed to follow it because that would make our job too simple ….. but do you think we would be so obedient? I remember one time we started off from a community centre in Jalan Malai in Bukit Panjang. There was a nearby Telecom exchange.

The most ‘memorable’ incident as far as Marsiling is concerned was when somebody in our company lost his bayonet. We wasted hours combing the area searching in the bushes, drains, ponds and vegetable plots for the missing bayonet. I cannot recall if it was found in the end.

Talking of blanks and thunder flashes, I am reminded of a tragic accident that happened during my time in NS (National Service). In those days, many civilian kids liked to follow the soldiers to pick up spent bullets (plastic blanks) in order to sell as scrap. Often they even ventured into the restricted areas like Area D in the Sungei Gedong area. In this particular accident, which I only learned from the newspapers, a young girl was rushing to pick up the bullets; and in her haste she got in front of a soldier’s rifle and was killed by the flash and hot gases emitting from the barrel. Yes; it’s true; blanks can kill if fired at close range; especially when you hit the vulnerable areas of a young victim. If you have seen the flash emerging from the barrel of the M16 firing blanks at night, you will believe me; especially when set to ‘auto’.

I am sure the older guys who have done NS will recall many incidents about doing their military training is such public areas. My friend Peter will share some of his memories the next time.