Like every other young man in Britain after the end of World War II in 1945 I was required to do my National Service. That is, compulsory service in the armed forces of the Crown. Unlike most of my comrades, I decided to write about my experience in this National Service memoir. It begins here. [Read more…]
So I left home for the training regiment, Royal Artillery, Oswestry.
After a train journey from Paddington Station in London through the Midlands and parts of England I had not seen before I arrived at Oswestry, Shropshire, at about mid-day. Outside in the station yard there was a military presence and it was not long before I was in the back of a truck along with many others being taken to Park Hall Lines, a hutted camp on the outskirts of the town. [Read more…]
The Training Battery which we joined had been doing its job for many a year and occupied a series of huts known as Horne Lines situated on the far west side of the School of Artillery. The School itself was in a series of fine brick buildings and barrack blocks on Knighton Down out on Salisbury Plain about 12 miles from Salisbury along the A344 road. [Read more…]
In 1950 all long distance travel and beyond the borders of one’s own country was generally by sea. The passenger liners were the prime carriers. Air travel was still in its comparative infancy, expensive and the first (and in the world) transatlantic flights by the British Comet jet passenger plane did not take place until 1958. It was long before the 747 revolutionized travel and shrunk the world. [Read more…]
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