Yours truly thought so too, and used to believe that his country provided many of his committed comrades with a meritocratic army unit, which allowed a tremendous amount of opportunities to raise to the ranks of officers and senior specialists even if you are born an ordinary Singaporean.
Unfortunately, yours truly's faith became disillusioned when his fellow Armour men and poor NSmen officers were sufficiently humiliated by biased and jealous hybrid (non-green beret) Infantry parade officers/warrant officers during the last two days of his military career in the above parade.
Your truly naively thought that he commanded a little respect after contributing his youth to the Defence of his nation, but only to realised that his fair level of recognition and respect is similar to that of a BMTC recruit in the same parade.
So much for "We Were Soldiers", it just meant that we deserved to be unfairly treated being a NSman. Hahaha
