It's back to the days of National Service again and if they weren't always the good old days, there were times when they weren't that bad, either.

The great Spike Milligan's memoirs show that, while Napoleon's armies and their successors marched on their stomachs, the British found a laugh as good as food - particularly the sort that was too often inflicted on the young conscripts.

William G Smith, formerly 2364284 AC2 Smith W G, called up in 1947, recalls his RAF hutmate Cloughie, the son of musician parents who both played in symphony orchestras.

Cloughie was mad keen to become a conductor and was naturally nicknamed Lightning. "He would sit at the hut radio," recalls William, "musical score in one hand, baton in the other, conducting the Promenade Concerts - tutting whenever the violas came in late or the tympanist became too enthusiastic. 'What's the matter?', someone would say. 'Has the flautist farted?'

The music lover, an admirer of the conductor Sir Malcolm Sargent, became one half of a memorable exchange with a Station Warrant Officer when he requested a 48-hour pass from Yatesbury in Wiltshire, where William and his mates were training as radar mechanics.

Cloughie asked for a pass.

"What for?" was the reply.

"I want to go up to London to see Doctor Malcolm Sargent."

"Permission refused. You'll have to see the station medic."

"But sir, it's the Proms!"

"Makes no difference. He can give you something for that. Report sick in the morning."

William remembers earning the princely sum of 30p a day as a tradesman, and sending half of it home.

"There wasn't much left for riotous living," he recalls.

"As for sex, it was rumoured that the cookhouse put something in the tea to reduce the urge. The service had other ways of reducing the urge.

"Attendance was compulsory at the camp cinema, the Astra, for the showing of the blockbuster Syphilis and other Sexually Transmitted Diseases in glorious Technicolor.

"As a form of aversion therapy, it worked wonders. We virgins went virginal white while the jack-the-lads, reliving their past, would faint in the foyer on the way out. I don't think my attitude to sex ever recovered."

2364282 Smith wasn't too impressed with military life, but a grateful nation was obviously impressed with him: "In 1951, due to some cold war panic, they put me back into uniform for two weeks as one of the long-forgotten army of Z-men.

"I spent the fortnight under canvas on the cliffs of Dover, peering across the English Channel through a tent flap and torrential rain, a scene that could have come straight out of Dad's Army."

Sadistic but satisfying

Alan Ball, of Allerton, who was working in London in April 1950, recalls graphically his introduction to the army:

"On Thursday morning I had breakfast, said goodbye to my pals, put my bits and pieces in a Woolworth's cardboard attache case and made my way to Waterloo Station where I was with thousands of other 18-year-olds looking lost and bewildered.

"Getting out at Aldershot it was all shouting and running everywhere at the double while we stayed at Parsons Barracks for three days getting kitted out.

"Having been an army cadet, I knew how to arrange the webbing and packs and how to put BD - battledress - on quickly. This was a great advantage and I was able to help the others".

Alan and his pals were transferred to a barrack block "which would make Armley jail look modern".

Because he had been to grammar school and had been a cadet, he was selected as possible officer material and allocated to A Company for his basic training, which was to last six weeks.

"There was cold running water only, but luckily it was not winter. The food was quite inedible and you couldn't use the NAAFI canteen in the evening because you didn't have the time - you were busy getting your kit ready for the following morning's inspection.

"Reveille was 6am and you were on Muster Parade at 7am. The barrack room had to be spick and span and kit was laid out on each bed. Your tin of boot polish had to have the lid scraped clean of paint and polished like a mirror. There were about 40 to a barrack room and the space between beds was such that we slept head-to-toe...

"The discipline was bordering on the sadistic with the continuous shouting and screaming of insults but I suppose I soon got used to it...

"To summarise: Did I resent National Service? No - a definite No. I wouldn't have missed it for anything in the world."

Like all conscripts, Alan was paid less than his regular comrades and had fewer privileges - and he was still too young to vote.

Not too young to fight, though - he spent most of his time in the Middle and Far East on active service. Some of the lads who came later actually saw war service during the Korean conflict from 1950-53.

"There are well over 200 National Servicemen in the UN cemetery in Pusan and the majority of them are 19 years of age," he says.

"If I sound bitter I am not. I am proud to have served with the British Army and on November 8, all being well, I will be marching with the Royal British Legion in Whitehall."

Young soldier died without knowing he was to be a father

National Service took young men away from their families. But what of the families from whom they were taken? Mrs Mary Birkett, of Lidget Green, tells her story:

"My husband was called up for National Service in 1950. We had just been married - I was 17 years old and Ronnie was 18.

"He was sent to Strensall near York to do his training and we saw each other only at weekends. I went to the camp to his passing-out parade, and then he was told they were going overseas - but not where they were going.

"I went to see him off and he did not want to go, but we said to him that it would soon pass and he would soon be back with us.

"Soon afterwards we found he had gone to Korea. Then I found I was pregnant, so I wrote to him straight away to tell him.

"I think it must have been before he got my letter that I received a telegram from the War Office to say he was reported missing in action, presumed dead.

"We were all devastated. By this time I was 18 and Ronnie was 19. His mother never got over it.

"I thought I wouldn't get through, but with the help of my family I did and I had a beautiful son whom I called Ronald after his dad. He is now 46 years old."

(Mrs Birkett later remarried and had four more children, but lost her husband in 1985).

"I am now a member of the Korean Veterans and I go everywhere with them and I march and wear Ronnie's medals. I look on it as a great privilege to be allowed by the veterans to do that. I have been to Korea on a pilgrimage with the British Legion and I have photographs of the military cemetery in Pusan.

"I still have the newspaper that Ronnie's picture was in when he was reported missing.

"His name was Ronald Francis Sugden."

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