I avoided Stanley Kubrick’s “Full Metal Jacket” for years, knowing that it was about the individual experience of being in the military. I knew it was about the Vietnam War and the ensuing cruelty. I knew it was split into two parts, the first part depicting Marine Corps training and the second part in Vietnam itself. And I knew, having served two years in the Singapore Armed Forces, that those topics are rarely things I’m in the mood to watch.

Singapore’s had National Service since 1966. Every Singaporean male has to undergo compulsory National Service for one year, ten months. There’s different branches, including the Navy, the Air Force, the Police Force, and the Army. I was in the Army.

I won’t get into the legitimacy of it, whether Singapore is actually in a war (we’re not), has ever been in a war (we haven’t), whether we’re attempting to recreate the dynamic of the IDF (the first round of men in NS were trained by Israeli commandos), whether our military is competent and effective (I have no idea and am not interested in being put on a Singaporean list), whether our military is necessary (I said I won’t get into it.)  

This year, eight years after finishing my National Service, I decided it was time to give it a watch.

There is obviously a massive gap between marine corps training for the Vietnam War and Singapore’s mandatory military training for peacetime affairs. There is very little comparable about what the two forces are preparing for. One trained to be the bodies thrown at an unjust failing war effort; the other prepares just in case. What I went through for nothing, was for nothing.

But the closest I’ve ever come to experiencing that oft-referred-to ‘Nam flashback, something I’ve only known through parody, was watching Private Pyle, Private Joker, and Sergeant Hartman in Marine Corps training.  

All able-bodied Singaporean high schoolers have to take a fitness test. It’s called the National Physical Fitness Award (NAPFA). If you don’t do well, you have to come to school early some days and do remedial training. And if you’re a boy and you fail, there’s an additional consequence: you have to do two extra months of military service. It rounds up your one year ten months of service into an even two. Nobody wants to do that.

I didn’t want to spend two more months with hundreds of other bald recruits, in a nebulous shadow of a thing I can’t prepare for. All I knew is that I am going to be sucked into the military and after two years, it will spit me back out.

I had friends who were either currently serving or had finished their service. When I see them on the weekends, none of them want to talk about it. They spend five days a week in camp, they don’t want to think about it on the weekends. None of them have the thousand-yard stare that Corporal Payback warns of, the one Rafterman is so eager to have.

PAYBACK
The thousand-yard stare. A marine gets it
after he's been in the shit for too long.

My dad tells me not to worry. He was a sergeant in NS. He says to me, “Actually, it’s not so bad. It’s quite funny. You can tell this guy, run to that tree. And then he has to run to that tree. It’s quite funny.”

That doesn’t ease my fears. It doesn’t make the sting of having failed my NAPFA burn any less. It doesn’t dry my eyes after I fail my last attempt at retaking the NAPFA after training for months. I was a zero-fighter. That’s what we called people who can’t do pull-ups. I trained for months in private, in a hotel gym my sister had the membership for. I hung from the bar and yelled in my head. “Stupid. Stupid. How can you not do one? It’s just one. It’s just one.” And then weeks before my final NAPFA attempt, I manage to do one. Days later, it’s two. Three, four, five. I still fail my NAPFA because my foot touches the line during the standing broad jump.

Two months extra of NS for me. Two months of Physical Training Phase (PTP).

The one benefit I don’t foresee about PTP is that I’m there with everyone else who wasn’t fit. There’s no jocks. No alphas. We’re nerds, we’re geeks, we’re introverts, we’re gangly, we’re skinny, we’re fat, we’re slow. Most of us are zero-fighters.

You can count the number of people who can do a single pull-up in Whiskey Company, Platoon 3 with one hand. I’m proud to be one of them. I’m proud when I do a first pull-up and some of my platoon mates gasp.

I’m in Section 4 of Platoon 3. There’s twenty of us packed into the bunk, five bunk beds on each side of the room. Whoever you’re sharing your bunk bed with is your buddy. Your buddy is your new best friend. They carry you, you lift them. Your buddy is your biggest ally, and your last line of defence.

HARTMAN
Private Pyle, from now on Private Joker is your new squad leader,
and you will bunk with him! He'll teach you everything.
He'll teach you how to pee.

Opposite my bunk, three beds down, is Gasper and Darius. Gasper and Darius are peas in a pod. Neither of them know how to fold a blanket. So each morning, they have to get up extra early to help each other make their beds. And each morning, they disagree on how best to do it, providing the bunk with a little Abbott and Costello routine. They bumble, they argue, they bicker like a married couple.

The first scene of “Full Metal Jacket” is one long-take of abuse as Sergeant Hartman lays into these privates, who he swears he will break into proud members of the US Marine Corps. He hurls insults at them, slurs, applying his vivid imagination to bring homophobia, racism, and prejudice overall to new depths. The colour of his language, the intensity of his facial features, the rigidity of his drill hat make me laugh, despite myself.

I’m not the only one amused.

PYLE has the trace of a strange smile on his face. 

HARTMAN
Do you think I'm cute, Private Pyle? Do you think I'm funny?

Sergeant Hartman screams at Private Pyle. But Private Pyle can’t stop smiling. He only stops when Sergeant Hartman chokes him. He turns red, he sputters, and finally the smile leaves.  

Gasper has a high-pitched voice and his thin lips are perpetually curved into a little grin. After a while, we realize that Gasper has to be embedded into middle of the platoon when we’re marching. Sergeants don’t like his constant smile and it gets us into trouble. But Gasper can’t help it, it’s how his face moves.

Darius wears thick, black-rimmed glasses and likes to remind us his dad was a commander in the Guards, the Singapore Army’s version of the Marines. Every time they fold their blankets, Darius shouts at Gasper to “get it right.”

Gasper and Darius are both zero-fighters. When they approach the pull-up bar, they approach it with dread, the same way I would in my sister’s tiny hotel gym. Except no one ever watched me. We all watch Darius and Gasper struggle on the bar, their legs kicking, their feet searching for some invisible step to push them up. But they remain zero-fighters.

If you’re a zero-fighter, your buddy is meant to hold your knee to help you make it over the bar. Gasper can’t carry any of Darius’ weight. Darius doesn’t want to carry Gasper.

After watching this for two months, I start asking myself. Why can’t they do any pull-ups? All we’ve been doing is training. Once they get to one, they’ll get to five, like me. Why can’t they do it?

After two and a half months of basic training, Whiskey Company is told that the people who can do pull-ups will go home earlier on Fridays. It’s meant to incentivize the zero-fighters to work harder. It doesn’t do that. It creates a dour mood in our bunk, where three of us are cleaning up our beds to go home and the other seventeen are preparing for another few gruelling hours in camp. I offer to help clean up the table, since the bunk has to be properly inspected before we leave.

Darius has been testy since the announcement. He wants to go home. He doesn’t understand why they’re treating them like this. He hears my offer and approaches the table. Darius picks up one of the plastic chairs and tosses it at me. It falls short.

Darius storms out of the room, and someone else puts the chair back. Nobody quite knows what to say to each other. We understand why he’s so frustrated. But without talking, we all know I’m simply the object of his misdirected rage. There’s no point in belabouring it.

EXT. CHINNING BAR--DAY
Recruits are doing pull-ups. HARTMAN watches.

HARTMAN
Pull! Pull, Pyle, pull! One pull-up, Pyle! Come on, pull!
You gotta be shitting me, Pyle! Get your ass up there!
Do you mean to tell me that you cannot do one single pull-up?

 PYLE, exhausted from his efforts, drops to the ground.

Gasper almost falls. Darius holds his knee, barely providing any support. The angle of his knee makes Gasper tilt away from the bar as he tries to pull. Someone else helps Gasper since Darius won’t.

In Basic Training, we’re being watched all the time to see if we’re making mistakes or breaking rules. Or if we’re going above and beyond, helping out other soldiers, being a good teammate. All of this is collated into score cards that we’ll never see that determine our postings. Darius wants to go to Command School, so he can be like his dad and take charge of other soldiers. Gasper wants to finish his two years as fast as possible.

One part of our scorecard is our timing for the Standard Obstacle Course. It starts with jumping over a low wall, crawling like a baby through a tunnel, shuffling between horizontal walls, and eventually, the apex ladder. The apex ladder is a pyramid with steps made of wooden poles. Between each pole is a gap, meaning you miss the step, you fall through the pyramid. You have to notch the heel of your boot onto the pyramid to get to the next one.

Private Pyle’s ladder isn’t a pyramid, it goes straight up. He gets to the top and he gets stuck. Sergeant Hartman screams at him.

HARTMAN
Up and over! Up and over! Well, what in the fuck
are you waiting for, Private Pyle?

The hardest part of the ladder is shifting your weight to the other side. It’s the same with the apex ladder; when you hit the peak, coming back down is the toughest part because for a moment, you’re completely suspended in the air.

Everyone in Whiskey Company has finished the obstacle course. The people who couldn’t surpass any of the obstacles do the walk of shame to the end point. Platoon 3 has lined up. But we’re missing one man. We look back at the course, at the Apex Ladder. Gasper is sitting at the top. He’s sitting there, unable to move. I race to the ladder, climb to the top, and sit next to him. He’s trembling. His usual grin is missing. He’s short of breath. I try to tell him it’s okay. That he just has to swing his foot over. He can come up with me and sit at the highest rung.

On top of the confidence climb, JOKER gently talks PYLE over the top.

JOKER
Just throw your other leg over ... that'a boy. That's it.
Now just pull the next one over . . . and you're home free. Ready?
Just throw it over. That'a boy. Just set it down. All right? 

I know the whole company is looking. I know Gasper is too scared to be embarrassed. I just to get him down. I’m trying not to think about what this will look like on my scorecard. I am doing my best to push out the possibility that this may contribute to me getting into command school.

Two commanders join me on the ladder. They tell me to go back to my platoon. They have it from here.

Three months later, I’m in command school. I’m no longer in Whiskey Company. I’m in Golf Coy. I’m with the alphas now. The jocks. I can do five pull-ups. On average, everyone else can do twelve. Some of them don’t understand why I’m there.

We’ve just finished our confidence jump, where we jump in our uniforms off a five meter diving platform into a pool. My section mate, Ryan, can’t do it. Ryan is stuck at the platform. He can’t commence training if he doesn’t finish the confidence jump. But Ryan grips onto the railing and can’t step on to the platform.

Some of us stand below, and shout up encouragements. “You can do it Ryan!” “It’s easy!” “We did it too!” But none of our words sink in.

Our commanders tell us it is time to leave. We line and enter formation outside the pool. But we can still see Ryan on the board, shaking. We can hear our captain screaming.

OUR CAPTAIN
Jump! Ryan, You jolly well jump! Oi. Don’t be such a fucking PUSSY!

He jumps. We hear the splash. He joins us in the platoon, soaking wet, grinning. Ryan’s made it through.

Ryan trembled at the diving board. But he talks big, as if it never happened. He is trying to remind us that he belongs here. But all I can think of is Gasper, having a panic attack during our last day of training. He squatted in the middle of the concrete parade square and refused to move, while everyone stumbled around him packing, sorting, rushing. I heard him whisper, “too fast, too fast, it’s all too fast.”. Nobody goes to check on Gasper. Darius ignores him completely. We don’t have time for Gasper and his idiosyncrasies. If we tend to him, we waste more time, time we could be spending at home. I think about stopping for a moment, slowing down. I don’t.

PYLE sobs loudly and sits up, holding himself in pain.
Lying in, his bunk, JOKER covers his ears.

In Command School, I’m routinely made aware that I don’t belong. I’m smaller than the others, I’m not as strong. I don’t possess the same fortitude, bailing on exercises halfway through. I can’t clear the Standard Obstacle Course anymore, unable to leap over the low wall I had such ease bounding over in Basic Training. Everyone else leaves camp Friday night; I spent Saturday mornings in camp, training, because I can’t do my twelve pull-ups.

I become scatter-brained, constantly losing things in the field. During one exercise, I lose an empty magazine after reloading. My section is forced to trail through the dirt, scouring under stones and foliage, to find my mistake. They grumble, wondering why I’m the only one who keeps losing magazines.

HARTMAN
So, from now on, whenever Private Pyle fucks up,
I will not punish him, I will punish all of you!

After Pyle fails the platoon yet again, the other privates conspire against him. Joker, his buddy in the bunk below, signals to the rest that Pyle has fallen asleep. There is a repeated ticking underneath, like a smoke alarm with a dead battery.

Two privates hold Pyle down with a blanket, another stuffs a towel in his mouth. The rest take turns beating Pyle with bars of soap wrapped in army towels. Joker hesitates. But the others egg him on. Joker is the only one who hits Pyle more than once. After they set Pyle free, Joker covers his ears to drown out Pyle’s cries. But he can’t block out the tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.

During the next firefight, I drop my magazine in the dirt and forget about it when I move to the next layer of cover. I shout to my buddy. I have to go back, I forgot my magazine.

MYLE and BUDDY are crouching behind two rocks,
while the sounds of blanks fire in the background.     

BUDDY
Can you stop being such a FUCK-UP?

He apologizes to me later, saying it was the heat of the moment. But I know he meant it. And he’s right. I don’t belong in Command School. I’m only here because I was the top of the bottom of the barrel.

JOKER
Nobody hates you, Leonard. You just keep making mistakes,
getting everybody in trouble. 

PYLE
I can't do anything right. I need help.

Nobody holds your knee when you’re doing pull-ups in Command School. You’re meant to do that on your own.

Even though we’re in Command School, we still have our scorecards. This time, we have peer evaluations, where everyone in your platoon writes anonymous remarks for each other. I see mine.

 ANONYMOUS
Myle is an asset to the company.

ANONYMOUS
Myle is not physically or mentally fit for command school.

The day after we see our results, we are streamed into different branches of the Singapore Army. Most will stay in Infantry. I get posted to the Singapore Artillery. We do math. Things get easier. I can only do eight pull-ups now, under the expected twelve. I can clear the low wall on the obstacle course every other try. But nobody seems to care as much, as long as you can do the math.

One of our last exercises as Artillery Cadets is a 32 kilometer march, in our full battle gear, our forty-five pound packs weighing on us, before we get to a firing range and have to shoot five targets. One of my platoonmates, Hao,  has a bad knee. My commander brings him over to me in the formation, and says, “Myle, you have to keep him talking. Otherwise he’s not going to make it.”

Everybody in the platoon knows one thing about me: I love movies. I force Hao to tell me about his favorite movies, the best scene in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, which magical race he would choose. We talk for the remaining five hours. Hao and I both hit the target, adding another mark to our scorecards.

After the march, Hao refuses to speak with me alone. In groups, he calls me stupid, weird, my love of movies freaky. He turns Myle, pronounced mile, into a two-syllable word, the first “My” loaded with disdain, and sneers the “Le” as if it burns his tongue.

Three months later, we are packing for our first overseas live firing exercise in Thailand. It’s the summary exercise as cadets. After this, I’ll never see Hao again. It’s the last notch on our score cards.

We have a lot to pack for Thailand. Nothing waits for us there. If we forget anything, the mission is a bust. We fail and we don’t get commissioned. The last year would be for nothing.

We never see Private Joker pack for Vietnam. We only see him end up there. We don’t see his awkward transition into being deployed, stepping out from under the thumb of Sergeant Hartman. Private Joker doesn’t have much equipment anyway. All he’s got is a camera, a notepad, a helmet, and a peace button on his vest that drives the superior officers crazy.

When we get back from Thailand, in one month, we will have our commissioning parade, certifying us as commanders in the Singapore Armed Forces. I am filled with regret. I shouldn’t have come to Command School. I should have been like Gasper and kept a low profile, flew under the radar.

Darius and Gasper are both security troopers, meaning they patrol for two days, then get two days off. I envy their schedule. Darius doesn’t have to ever leave the country for NS. Gasper doesn’t have to sort equipment into boxes and vehicles that will be loaded onto the C130. We’re flying commercial but all our equipment will fly over on military planes.

Private Pyle never makes it on the C130 that carries Joker to Vietnam. On their last night as Marine Corps trainees, Joker is on guard duty. While he patrols, he hears this tick. Tick. Tick. Joker follows the noise and finds Pyle sitting in the toilet, thumbing his rifle, muttering to himself.

JOKER stares at PYLE for a few seconds.
PYLE smiles grotesquely.

We’re racing around camp, checking items off a list, moving fast, too fast, too fast, too fast. One of my platoonmates, Jonas, is struggling to keep up with the pace. He moves around, listless, eager to help but unsure of where to direct his dwindling energy. I tell him to tape up a cardboard box, seal it shut so it doesn’t crack open on the C130.

HARTMAN bursts from his room, wearing his skivvies and D.I. hat.
HARTMAN and PYLE look at each other.
PYLE smiles from the depths of his own hell.

Jonas starts taping the box, but he isn’t covering any of the edges. He’s tired, he’s sleep deprived, he’s not paying attention. Jonas is taping around the sides of the box, not covering a single edge or flap. He’s staring out, his eyes not even looking at the task.

HARTMAN
What is your major malfunction, numbnuts?!! 

BANG!
The round hits HARTMAN in the chest.

I can’t focus on my checklist because I can’t stop watching Jonas waste this entire roll of tape. I stop and watch. He still isn’t covering the flaps. Every second wasted here is a minute we don’t get to be home before we go to Thailand for two weeks. Every mistake costs us an hour of our precious time home.

I bark.

MYLE
Are you fucking retarded?  

The whole company stops. They all heard. He looks at me, first confused. Then the words sink in. Jonas puts the box down and walks into the warehouse. Some of the other boys laugh.

CADET
Jesus, Myle, relax. 

CADET
That was fucked. 

CADET (laughing)
Didn’t know you had it in you, Myle.

I follow Jonas into the warehouse, and find him behind the shelves, shifting things that we won’t be taking with us. He’s moving for the sake of it. He doesn’t want to stand still. I can still hear one of the other cadets laughing outside.

MYLE
I’m sorry. I don’t know why I said that. I don’t . . . I’ve never even said that word.

JONAS
I don’t understand why you did that. I just don’t understand.

JONAS gazes beyond MYLE. His eyes are empty, glazed over.
JONAS cannot look MYLE in the eyes. MYLE stays silent. 

The second half of “Full Metal Jacket” didn’t strike me as hard. As I said, the Singaporean army has never been to war. It didn’t send me reeling the same way its first half did.

I was fascinated by the soldiers of Vietnam,  their casual murders, their callous indifference to the massacres they orchestrated, their desires for fame. But I couldn’t relate to them in the same way I could to Pyle and his inadequacy. Joker and his conflicted allegiances. And despite myself, Hartman and his cruelty.

In the final sequence of the film, Joker and the other soldiers are pinned down by an enemy soldier. Three have been taken out. Two of them were used as bait. They manage to sneak up on the sniper, but Joker is startled that the sniper is a young girl. He drops his gun. Right when she is about to make the kill-shot, Rafterman gets the kill.

But he doesn’t finish the job. The surviving soldiers gather around her body. And Joker, his peace button in clear view, says we can’t leave her like this. The others say she should rot. Joker protests.

ANIMAL MOTHER
If you want to waste her, go on, waste her.

Joker hears the tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Bang.

Joker makes his first kill.

Private Pyle did go to Vietnam. Not in the way we expect. He went to Vietnam, locked in the recesses of Joker’s mind. So did Hartman. No matter who Joker pretends to be, despite the peace button he adorns above his grenade, Joker carries them both with him.

JOKER
I think I was trying to suggest something about the duality of man, sir.

COLONEL
The what? 

JOKER
The duality of man. The Jungian thing, sir. 

I’ve tried to understand why I said that to Jonas. Why that burst out of me, almost against my will. Though to say it was out of my control denies that I did say it, that the words shot out of my mouth, that my instinct was to belittle, to diminish, that Jonas never looked at me the same for the next two months, that every time he saw me, he either looked down, or beyond, searching for something that wasn’t there.

I could never figure out what overcame me in that moment. But when I watched Joker pull the trigger, something clicked.

Cruelty doesn’t disappear. It spreads. It doesn’t dissipate on contact. Instead, it latches onto your skin and waits for you to brandish its whip. It had swung around me. And then it was my turn. Because despite being decades and oceans apart from my own experience, Kubrick got one thing right about the military. It’s built on cruelty. Not just cruelty without. But cruelty within. You kill your enemy. You kill your peers. You kill yourself, your old self.

HARTMAN
What makes the grass grow? 

RECRUITS
Blood, blood, blood! 

PYLE stares. He does not join in the shouting. 

HARTMAN
What do we do for a living, ladies? 

RECRUITS
Kill, kill, kill!

You kill the you that craned your neck to look at Ryan quivering on the diving platform and bellowed encouragement, lying to him, telling him it isn’t that scary, still remembering your skin crawl as it experienced freefall, wondering why it was taking so long to reach the water.

You kill the you that that raced through questions to keep Hao talking about Tolkien to stop him from quitting, trying to forget the weight of your pack as it drags your body down, the blisters on your feet, the numbness of your fingers as they grip onto your rifle’s magazine.

You kill the you that sat on the ladder with Gasper, blazing sun scorching your skin, your butt burning against the black wood of the highest rung, trying to keep your foot from trembling so Gasper thinks it’s not scary.

You kill and you kill and you kill. You slice off the soft parts of yourself. You look back on who you were, and you can’t find him. You search, and you gaze, and you stare for a thousand yards looking for the old you, that thought the army was about running back and forth between trees. But he’s gone now.

PYLE looks at JOKER and slowly raises his rifle.
PYLE breathes heavily, and keeps the rifle aimed at JOKER.
PYLE turns away from JOKER and stares into space,
a strangely peaceful look transforming his face. 
He places the muzzle of the rifle in his mouth.

BANG

Myle Yan Tay is a writer, actor, editor, and director. His works can be found in The Bangalore Review, New Naratif Magazine, and his film reviewing website: myleyantay.com. He is currently an Associate Artist with Checkpoint Theatre, and his novel "catskull" will be released with Ethos Books later this year.