I have a lot of army stories to share, but not all are positive ones. For me, I was always intrigued by the Detention Barracks as it was right next to Kranji Camp, which I was posted to temporarily after my signalling course. DB serves as the army prison, so looking back, it was like the NS guys' Prisoner of Azkaban, and looked scary and imposing. Whenever we did our guard duty for Kranji Camp, we also also hear the din from their early wake up routine in the mornings from the guard house where we rested in between sentry shifts. Thank god I've never been inside personally. But the memory of DB also makes me heave a deep sigh because my best friend from junior college spent a week in DB back in 1990. It was the biggest secret of his life as well as the worst time of his life. I believe even his wife only found out about the incident a few years into their marriage, so ashamed was he of the experience. What happened was that as an NS man, he lost an ammunition round during guard duty. He didn't know what had made him lose that 1 fateful round, just that during a random guard duty check, all the sentries were gathered and an ammo check was carried out. He was found to be one round short for some reason. He never found out whether it was some prank another NS colleague pulled off or he had really lost it somehow. Those of us who have done guard duty before know that the number of rounds given are signed out & counted by you. You don't technically use the rounds, you just carry them with you during guard duty just in case you need to use them to guard the facilities, so the loss is still a mystery to this day. Anyway, losing an ammo round is a very serious offence in the Army and punishable by having to serve time in prison / DB. He was read his sentencing in his Commanding Officer's office, marched out to the railed transport vehicle like a criminal, his head was shaved, and he suffered the shame of being a court-martialled army prisoner for that 1 week in hell. The worse thing was he didn't dare to tell his own mother for fear of upsetting her so he just told her he had an in camp exercise for the week. After being released, he just told his mother that the crew cut was mandatory for hygiene reasons for the exercise. His mum still doesn't know that he had served in DB up to this day. Thank goodness today he is a financial consultant after doing his University, and happily married with 2 kids.
