Alpha Coy Forever: How Five Grown Men Stayed in the Army Twelve Years After It Let Them Go While a Hill Grew All the Way to Johor

The Nominal Roll: Five Men Who Never Booked Out

Kelvin: “Encik” / The Commander of Absolutely Nobody

Kelvin left the army in 2014 and has been trying to re-enlist through WhatsApp ever since. He issues TIMINGS in capitals for dinner at a pasar malam, with a muster point, a dress code and a punishment for lateness, as though the enemy might seize the satay if the batch is slow. A standard Kelvin briefing:

Collared. For a pasar malam. Twelve years of orders, and the batch still strolls in forty minutes late in slippers, which means the only thing Kelvin has ever successfully commanded is a pillar outside an MRT exit. He is a general whose entire army is a pillar, and the pillar has better discipline.

Kelvin uploaded this chat himself, presumably expecting a commendation. What he gets instead is the news that his batch obeys him the way teenagers obey a lifeguard: they hear the whistle, wave, and keep running. The rank he gave himself is Encik; the rank they gave him is the uncle who makes everyone stand still for the group photo.

Irfan: The Hill’s Unreliable Biographer

Irfan has one story, a night march from 2014, and he has been inflating it like a bouncy castle at a children’s party ever since. It was 8 km when he first told it and 14 km by 2021. Last spring it crossed an international border:

Very motivated. Irfan is not remembering his national service; he is directing a franchise, and every sequel has a bigger budget and less respect for geography. A man who has walked across the sea in his own memoirs is not a veteran, he is a fantasy novelist who happened to be issued a rifle.

Dinesh: The Human Read Receipt

Dinesh has been in this chat for twelve years and has typed less than most people type ordering lunch. He reads every message within the minute, says nothing for months, and surfaces only when somebody gets married, promoted or reproduces, like a greeting card with a PayNow account. His collected works:

The 🎉 was for a wedding, and it is the most emotional Dinesh has been since basic training. He turns up to every reunion, says nothing for three hours, PayNows his exact share in seven seconds and leaves with a wave, like a ghost with excellent banking habits. He is not shy; he is watching, filing and waiting, like a CCTV camera that holds a grudge. Every man in this batch should be very afraid of what is on the tape.

Alvin: The Unsolicited Property Brochure

Alvin has turned a twelve-year friendship into an investor relations channel. He sends photos of his balcony, his marble and a second unit he is “definitely not selling”, and every one carries the same caption, as if humility were a hashtag:

Nobody asked, and Alvin answered anyway, to the dollar, with a comma. He is the only man in history to humble-brag about a 3.4% yield, which is not a flex, Alvin, it is a fixed deposit with a bathroom. In twelve years he has never once asked what anyone else’s place looks like, because the view he is really sharing is the one looking down.

Gerald: The Man Who Priced Your Wedding

Gerald has turned his friends’ weddings into a commodities market. Since 2018 he has kept a spreadsheet called the Angbao Index, which tracks what everyone gave at every wedding, adjusted for hotel, weekday and whether the family served shark’s fin, and he revises it like a central banker setting interest rates:

It is an IPO to Gerald, and the bride is the share price. The last row of the Index, the one with his own name on it, is still blank, and the other four have quietly agreed what they will give when it fills. The number ends in eight, and it is low.

Operation One: The Fall-In That Fell Apart

On Saturday 21 March, Kelvin issued TIMINGS at 9.02am: muster 7.30pm at the pillar, dinner at 8pm, anyone late buys the round. At 7.30pm only Gerald was at the pillar, standing like a man guarding a war memorial nobody else remembers. Alvin arrived at 7.55pm and estimated the restaurant’s rent out loud, Irfan arrived at 8.10pm with a new edition of the march, and Dinesh arrived at 8.40pm and said nothing, which is his version of an apology.

And the commander? At 8.04pm the commander was missing in action. When the batch asked where he was, Kelvin invented an entire military doctrine on the spot to avoid buying one round of beer:

Command delay. A carpark recce. For a zi char dinner. Gerald then split the penalty five ways, so that everyone paid for Kelvin’s lateness, and Kelvin sent his S$14.92 with the PayNow note “operational”, the first order in twelve years he has actually followed, and it was his own.

Operation Two: The Goat and the Route Card

On Wednesday 19 August at 11pm, Irfan told the march again. It had grown since spring: 31 km, uphill, in the rain, carrying the section’s kit, and somewhere around the fourth kilometre it had acquired a goat. Gerald objected, Irfan doubled down, and then Dinesh, who had not typed a word in four months, rose from the dead:

“I kept everything” is the scariest sentence in 52,640 messages. It means the quietest man in the batch has been sitting on twelve years of evidence like a sniper who never needed to fire, and every one of them is now wondering what else is in that drawer.

Irfan did not reply for six hours, which for Irfan is a vow of silence, and when he finally did, it was “ok but the rain was real”, a man surrendering the war and keeping the weather. Kelvin, smelling a crisis, did the only thing he knows how to do and issued TIMINGS, turning the public execution of a man’s life story into a mandatory parade.

The Dishonours Parade

The Command Delay Commendation goes to Kelvin. For arriving after his own troops and calling it a recce.

The Livestock in Memoir Prize goes to Irfan. The only war story in Singapore that now needs a vet.

The Silent Sniper Medal goes to Dinesh. Twelve years of nothing, then one sentence that ended a storytelling career.

The Fixed Deposit With a Balcony Award goes to Alvin. 3.4%, just sharing.

The Central Bank of Weddings Order goes to Gerald. He has priced love, adjusted it for venue and saved it in Excel.

The Never Discharged Medal goes to the whole batch. They ORDed in 2014 and are still waiting for someone to say they can go home.

The Court Martial

You guys did not stay friends after the army; you stayed in the army and invited your friends. Twelve years on, the march keeps getting longer, the angbaos keep getting bigger and the commander keeps arriving last. The only thing this batch has ever been discharged from is reality.