Monday, September 23, 2013

A bachelor Gunner





There are two category of bachelors in the army. Bonafide and married bachelors. The latter, officers being married and behaves like the former. I know as I went through both categories. I believe the categories remain the same today.

I was a bonafide bachelor as all young officers were, until I got hitched up as a Captain in 1970. I got married when I was posted to be the Gunner Officer Instructor in the FMC Sungei Besi in 1968. My bachelorhood days wasn’t too bad and likewise as a married bachelor as well in 2 ARTY, Kluang, which unfortunately lasted only for a year or so, when all hell broke loose. But that will be another story.

As with all bachelors in the sixties and being an officer to boot, I was brash, suave, confident and fun. I was after all a Pegawai. And Pegawais were laku those days. “Oh mama, saya mahu kahwin” a popular song those days, was not our favourite song. We lived like there was no tomorrow. Nor did we care for tomorrow.

We were trained to be an officer and gentlemen always. The latter augurs well with the ladies. We were quick to learn that girls wanna have fun too. Madonna sang it much later in the 80s. Mess dance parties were the order of the day and also moonlight parties at the Garrison swimming pool in Kem Makhota Kluang. We did not have a particular girlfriend for long and most often dated in groups. In those days, just holding a girls hand would mean you were serious and she wants to marry you. But not with us, because we would declare our intent/interest first. Coming or not? We would ask.
One evening I telephoned a girl for a date and asked her if it was alright if I came to pick her up at 8.00 pm. She replied No.

I then asked what time would she be ready. She replied 7.00 pm.

We actually had more girls than we could handle. Firstly there were the Tima Rolling, (Fatimahs), MinaKarans, sometimes aka Perakus, who rolled from officers mess to officers mess. Some are hand me downs from officer to officer. Then there were girls from Airdrops, an effective communication/contact mode. We would drop a note to girls as we droved pass them. The note would contain our officers mess telephone number, and we would get a 80 percent chance of receiving a call within 96 hours. Pegawais were really laku with Malay girls, both in the Kampong and institutional hostels in KL area.

We would patronize the dance halls at BB Park KL almost all weekends dancing the Cha Cha Cha and Off beat Cha Cha Cha. We would organized our own Joget Lambak in the Regment. On one occasion we did not have sufficient time to call up our usual girls. We were so desperate that we actually rounded up a bunch of Orang Asli girls. Most were bare footed and some toothless. Nonetheless girls.
We would also spend weekends chilling and hanging out at our bar in the officers mess. Sometimes we would engage actively and intelligently in debates with the girls. I remember the hottest topic discussed was “Are women boobs sexual organs?”

Talking of sex, I believed the Kama Sutra, which was the most read book by officers, never taught us how to perform on an officers field camp bed, a green canvas contraption with metal rods for legs. Don’t try it, unless absolutely necessary.

I learnt to operate the movie projector during the Tawau days. It was the issued 16mm movie projector. We had films nights on Wednesday. We could get movies, which were mainly uncensored directly from the British AKC Films. (Army Kinema Corporation). I would stop the reels at the “hottest” moments. Most times the intense heat from the projector bulb would burn through the celluloid film. Truth be told, the girls loved it more than us. Whenever we had “nice” scenes (obscene?) I would cut off several frames for our keeping. AKC would always complain. When Japanese/Taiwan logging ships came to Tawau/Wallace Bay, we would get to screen blue movies in the officers mess.

As bachelor officers we had a quality standard with the girls. Just like the ISO 9000, we made measurable and achievable objectives. For your information the ISO 9000 series for quality management were direct adaption from the British Army standards.

Our quality standard for a Gunner officer was to have sex BEFORE dinner. Sex after dinner was the norm but not the gold standard of our times. On one occasion my date objected to sex before dinner as it would messed up her Saloma style hairdo done up for the evening. She later obliged by turning over.

Oh those bachelor days. We loved Cliff Richard’s song Bachelor Boy.

Rama, If this post is too lewd, please censor/delete.

Allen Lai

1 comment:

  1. Keep them coming Col. It is hilarious and somewhat educational as well. I hope the officers of today read these.Thank you SIR!

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