When once the flag flew me

Once, dur­ing NS, me and two other guys were made the battalion’s flag rais­ing party for one of many early morn­ing parades.

This task entailed pick­ing up the flags from the Reg­i­men­tal Sergeant Major’s office, check­ing the cords to make sure noth­ing was frayed, and rehears­ing our march­ing to the flag poles at the top of the parade square, and then doing it for real dur­ing the actual parade, com­plete with rais­ing the national flag and the Army flag.

We were told sev­eral times to check and make sure that the loops for the flags were attached prop­erly before rais­ing the flag dur­ing the national anthem, and told in no uncer­tain terms, on pain of pain, that we should never, ever, raise the flag upside down.

To our hor­ror, as the anthem played, the white por­tion of the national flag appeared to creep up the pole as we hoped against hope that the flag was merely impos­si­bly crum­pled and would unfurl itself soon enough.

It didn’t, and it was the longest Maju­lah Sin­ga­pura I had ever heard. Our lives flashed before our eyes as we con­tem­plated a long stint in deten­tion, and we felt the ridicule and then the pity heaped on our backs from our bat­tal­ion mates stand­ing in parade behind us, as we raised the upside down flag the best we knew, and only took it down once the parade was over.