1. IWMSA 14786, Godfrey Raper, reel 3.
2. The two near exceptions to this rule were graduates who, having been recognized as officer material before they joined the air force, went straight from kitting-out camp to officer training, and doctors, who were almost automatically commissioned.
3. TNA ADM 1/23211, report signed Admiral Commanding Reserve, 10 December 1951: ‘there is a strong feeling in schools that the Army offers far better chances of obtaining a commission during National Service than does the Navy.’ On the views of public school housemasters about naval commissions, see the letters that Harold Walker (of Winchester) wrote to his protégé Peter Jay while the latter was serving in the navy. Churchill College, Cambridge, Papers of Peter Jay 4/1/1.
4. TNA AIR 32/416, ‘Outline of Suggested Procedure for the Selection of Candidates for National Service Commissions at RAF Station Hednesford’, signed Mary Allan (Senior Psychologist) and Sqn Ldr Carmichael, 28 January 1952.
5. Ibid.
6. TNA AIR 32/466, ‘Investigations into Potential Officer Material’,1957.
7. The Times, 24 February 1950.
8. TNA AIR 10/7398, ‘Annual Digest of Air Force Statistics’, 1953.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid. By 1957, the national service component of the air force comprised 1,807 officers and 63,128 other ranks.
11. TNA AIR 2/13938, various documents on what national service officers in ground branches did.
12. TNA AIR 32/414, ‘National Service Commissioning in Ground Branches’, 1951.
13. TNA AIR 32/466, ‘Potential Officer Material’.
14. TNA AIR 2/11603, note to D of M, illegible signature, 4 March 1953.
15. TNA AIR 32/466, ‘Potential Officer Material’.
16. David Sharman, interviewed by Anthony Isaacs, Millennium Memory Bank, 1998, British Library Sound & Moving Image Catalogue reference C900/18039. © BBC. David Cainey, interviewed by Andrew Vincent, Millennium Memory Bank, 1998, British Library Sound & Moving Image Catalogue reference C900/00543. © BBC.
17. TNA WO 384/15, ‘Abstract of Army Statistics’, 1954.
18. So far as the army is concerned, this would also fit in with statistics for the number of officer cadets. We know that there were around 3,000 officer cadets per year in the early 1950s (at a time when the army took a little over 100,000 national servicemen per year). It seems likely that the number of officer cadets increased later in the decade – partly because the number of men with the minimum educational level required to be officers increased and partly because the War Office sought to increase the number of commissions granted as a matter of policy.
19. TNA WO 291/1510, AORG, ‘The Different Officer Potentials of Various Regions of Great Britain’, L. J. Holman, 1956.
20. IWMSA 24570, Piers Plowright, reel 2. Plowright recalled the irritation that he felt towards Smart, an Oxford graduate, who was, as the sergeant always put it, ‘smart by name and smart by appearance’. This is presumably the same Smart who eventually passed out top at Eaton Hall and was commissioned into the Intelligence Corps. A few of his papers can be found in IWM 2519.
21. IWMSA 20656, Michael Foulds, reel 2.
22. IWMSA 27184, John Akehurst, reel 2.
23. IWM, Trevor Royle, 66/211/2/(2/16), Neal Ascherson. Perhaps the question was harder than it sounded. In the army, as opposed to the marines, officers were sometimes discouraged from playing sport with other ranks. In an infantry regiment, the correct answer would probably have been ‘Rugger’s my game, sir.’
24. TNA WO 291/1510, AORG, ‘Officer Potentials’. Men from northern England performed less well than those from the south at all stages of officer selection; the gap narrowed over the years (partly because of pressure from the War Office) but it narrowed less quickly with regard to USB than with regard to the centralized War Office Selection Board.
25. IWMSA 20656, Foulds, reel 1.
26. IWMSA 24569, John Harlow, reel 2.
27. Brian Thompson, Clever Girl: Growing Up in the 1950s (2007, this edn 2008), p. 72.
28. Bernard Fergusson, The Trumpet in the Hall, 1930–1958 (1970), p. 246.
29. NAM 2003-08-59, W. J. R. Morrison.
30. John Scurr, Jungle Campaign: A Memoir of National Service in Malaya, 1949–51 (Lewes, 1998), p. 23.
31. IWMSA 24570, Plowright, reel 1. Scurr and Plowright did eventually fail WOSB.
32. W. K. B. Crawford, ‘Training the National Service Army Officer at Eaton Hall’, Journal of the Royal United Services Institution, February 1951, pp. 134–8.
33. TNA WO 32/15146, ‘The Future of the Officer Cadet Schools’, paper prepared for a meeting of 24 November 1953.
34. Robert Douglas, Somewhere to Lay My Head (2006), p. 236.
35. So far as I am aware, there is only one account by a sergeant major who trained national service men. It is Eric Howard, My Trinity (Edinburgh, 1999).
36. Kevin O’Sullivan, http://wabbrown.co.uk.
37. IWMSA 27184, Akehurst, reel 3.
38. Manchester Guardian, 17 September 1955.
39. NAMSA 2000-04-52, John Arnold, reel 2.
40. TNA WO 305/204, ‘School of Signals (OTW), Jan. 1949–Nov. 1958’, by Lt Colonel Howarth, enclosed note dated 16 November 1958.
41. Crawford, ‘Training the National Service Army Officer’. In the year to September 1953, just twenty-two cadets were returned to unit from Eaton Hall, Manchester Guardian, 16 January 1954.
42. TNA WO 32/13957, Memorandum from War Office to commandants at Mons and Eaton Hall, signed Director of Personnel Administration, 25 October 1956.
43. IWMSA 21564, John Cormack, reel 12.
44. TNA WO 291/1510, AORG, ‘Officer Potentials’.
45. TNA WO 32/15743, ‘Provision of NS Officers for the Reserve Army’, Appendix B.
46. TNA WO 291/1510, AORG, ‘Officer Potentials’, Appendix D, ‘Shortage of Officers from the North’, by CEO [Chief Education Officer] Northern Command.
47. TNA WO 291/1510, AORG, ‘Officer Potentials’.
48. Scurr, Jungle Campaign, p. 30.
49. TNA WO 291/1510, AORG, ‘Officer Potentials’: ‘Scottish accents seem more acceptable than English ones to PSOs’.
50. Keith Taylor and Brian Stewart, Call to Arms: Officer Cadet Training at Eaton Hall (2006), p. 94.
51. Churchill College, Cambridge, papers of Peter Jay, 4/1/1, letters from Harold Walker to Peter Jay.
52. Taylor and Stewart, Call to Arms, p. 65.
53. Cecil Blacker, Monkey Business: The Memoirs of General Sir Cecil Blacker (1993), p. 120. The personnel selection officer in the training regiment commanded by Blacker said that the son of a minister was unsuitable for a commission. Blacker insisted that he was sent to WOSB and he passed.
54. IWMSA 20656, Foulds, reel 2.
55. C. M. Maclachlan, ‘Officer Selection’, Journal of the Royal United Services Institution, November 1949, pp. 615–22.
56. TNA WO 291/1510, AORG, ‘Officer Potentials’.
57. Ibid.
58. TNA WO 32/15743, ‘NS Officers – Geographical Distribution’, report attached to note, signed Houghton-Beckford, 18 September 1953.
59. Tales from the University of Aberdeen Forestry Graduates of 1956. This can be found at homepages.abdn.ac.uk/forestry/ or at http://homepages.abdn.ac.uk/forestry/associated%20links/Tales%20from%20Aberdeen%20Foresters%20of%201956%20vs2.pdf.
60. TNA WO 32/15604, Appendix A to CRNC, 13 July 1954 interview with Dr McKay, Personnel Director, Imperial Chemical Industries: ‘We find that chemists will do all they can to avoid National Service on the grounds that such service is a complete waste of time as few of them obtain commissions, and there is no opportunity of carrying out technical work. This attitude is not particularly noticeable in engineers who are usually able to find a job in the forces which will give them useful experience.’
61. TNA WO 32/15743, ‘Note on Shortage of Officers in the North’, brigadier commanding War Office Selection Board, 27 March 1953.
62. REME took four graduates in arts subjects and the Royal Engineers took twelve.
63. TNA WO 384/5, figures for June–December 1951. In the Armoured Corps, 193 who left school at eighteen had studied arts, 64 had studied science. In the artillery, 405 had studied arts and 147 had studied science.
64. The Times, 13 July 1956.
65. Alexander Thynn, The Marquess of Bath, Strictly Private to Public Exposure (Series 1: A Plateful of Privilege, Book III: Two Bites of the Apple) (2003), p. 11.
66. IWM, Royle, 66/211/1/(1/15), A. B. Carter.
67. David Baxter, Two Years to Do (1959), p. 17.
68. TNA WO 291/2193, AORG, ‘Likes and Interests Test: A Report of the Experimental Testing of Recruits Eligible for Commissions as Potential Officers’, prepared by Joan Harris (1958). Of 135 in one sample who were rated as potential officers, forty-two did not attend USB.
69. IWMSA 29062, John ‘Jack’ Burn, reel 1.
70. John Kelly, National Service, 1950s: Lancs, Bucks, Libya (Cambridge, 2003), p. 30.
71. T. C. Sparrow, Tales of a Schoolie: A Story of National Service (Badsey, 2006).
72. TNA WO 32/15743, Advisory Committee on the Territorial Army, ‘TA Officer Problem, Examination by West Lancs: T & AF Association, Paper by the Chairman, West Lancashire T and AF Associations for consideration by the Committee at their meeting to be held on 11th June 1953’.
73. TNA WO 291/1510, AORG, ‘Officer Potentials’.
74. NAMSA 1995-05-93, Robin Ollington, reel 2.
75. IWM 15595, David Batterham, ‘National Service Recalled’.
76. Tony Dipple in Ken Drury (ed.), Get Some In: Memories of National Service (Great Dunmow, 2006), pp. 125–7.
77. IWMSA 14053, David Henderson, reel 1.
78. IWM 1834, A. R. Eaton, letter to parents, 9 July 1953.
79. Ibid., 22 March 1954.
80. Ibid., 26 July 1953.
81. Ibid., 13 September 1953.
82. IWMSA 20668, Alan Bexon, reel 1.
83. IWM 2118, Peter Mayo, diary entry, 8 May 1955.
84. IWM 2775, J. C. A. Green, 86/47/1, letters to parents, 3, 10 and 22 October 1952.
85. Ibid., 11 October 1952.
86. Ibid., 30 September 1953.
87. IWM 15595, Batterham, ‘National Service Recalled’.
88. IWM 3126, R. J. Miller, memoir.
89. TNA WO 32/13957, memorandum from commanding officer 14/20 Hussars to War Office, signed Lt Colonel Stephen, 10 July 1951.
90. Ibid., ‘Internal Recruiting Intelligence Corps’, 28 November 1960, illegible signature, reporting speech by Brigadier Crosthwaite Emerson.
91. IWMSA 24570, Plowright, reel 3.
92. Ibid., reel 6.
93. Ibid., reel 7.
94. Andreas Whittam Smith, interviewed by Louise Brodie, An Oral History of the British Press, 2007, British Library Sound & Moving Image Catalogue reference C638/08, track 1. © The British Library.
95. P. J. Kavanagh, The Perfect Stranger (1966), p. 61.
96. News Chronicle, 13 May 1955.
97. TNA WO 32/13957, ‘Memorandum to all Commands’, 29 April 1960.
98. The Times, 31 May 1958.
99. IWMSA 14822, Rodney Giesler, 8 reels.
100. IWMSA 20494, Peter Featherby, reel 2: ‘they wanted you to be reasonably intelligent unless you were going into the cavalry’.
101. Eton College Archive, letter to Hugh Marsden from J. Smith, 28 April 1948.
102. NAM 2003-08-63, Philip Firth.
103. IWMSA 20668, Bexon, reel 2.
104. IWM 16584, Michael Longley, letter of 12 October 1947. Longley described the RASC as ‘the easiest commission’.
105. Christopher Hurst, The View from King Street: An Essay in Autobiography (1997), p. 130.
106. Simon Raven, The English Gentleman: An Essay in Attitudes (1961), p. 141.
107. NAMSA 2003-04-2, Field Marshal Sir John Chapple, reel 1. Chapple does not seem to have minded serving with the artillery – though he did contrive to be commissioned into the Gurkhas (associated with the Rifle Brigade) when he returned to the army as a regular.
108. IWMSA 12663, Denys Whatmore, reel 1.
109. TNA WO 305/204, ‘School of Signals (OTW)’.
110. IWMSA 22307, Anthony Howard. © Whistledown, 2000.
111. Michael Holroyd in B. S. Johnson (ed.), All Bull: The National Servicemen, pp. 136–48, at p. 141.
112. Terence Breden in Drury (ed.), Get Some In, pp. 77–97, at p. 79; Thompson, Clever Girl, p. 74.
113. John Nott, Here Today, Gone Tomorrow: Recollections of an Errant Politician (2002), p. 35.
114. John Barkshire, interviewed by Kathy Burk, NLSC: City Lives, 1990, British Library Sound & Moving Image Catalogue reference C409/057, track 1. © The British Library.
115. NAM 2001-07-1187-47, papers of Andrew Man, Lt Colonel A. E. Green DSO OBE to ‘Andrew’ (i.e. Man), 31 January 1951.
116. John Chynoweth, Hunting Terrorists in the Jungle (Stroud, 2007), p. 18.
117. Hansard, 26 February 1952. Statement by Secretary of State for War: ‘The Brigade of Guards have stated emphatically that there is absolutely nothing to prevent an officer joining the Brigade of Guards who has no private income whatever.’
118. IWMSA 10669, Brian Vyner, reel 1. Vyner was unusual in that he was commissioned into the 4th Hussars, after lunch at the Cavalry Club, without having previous associations with the regiment, just before it went to Malaya. He later obtained a regular commission, but after his regiment returned to Britain he decided that life in it would be too expensive and left the army.
119. NAM 2003-06-9-40, Nigel Hensman, ‘List of Essential Clothing Required by an Officer on Joining the XII Lancers’, undated.
120. John Sutherland, who went through Mons with a group of guards officers claimed: ‘the Brigade wouldn’t look at you unless you had £300 a year’. John Sutherland, The Boy Who Loved Books (2007, this edn 2008), p. 190. This is probably an overstatement. Auberon Waugh recalls that his father paid him £25 per month in the army, but stopped his allowance when he was seriously wounded and confined to hospital. Auberon Waugh, Will This Do? An Autobiography (1991, this edn 1992), p. 109.
121. Robin Chapman, A Waste of Public Money, or The Education of Charlie Williams (1962), p. 102.
122. TNA WO 32/15746, letter, Stopford to Director of Infantry, 6 March 1954 and attached list. Of the eight men who had left school, two were undergoing basic training and six were at Eaton Hall.
123. Oliver Lindsay, Once a Grenadier …: The Grenadier Guards, 1945–95 (1996), p. 113.
124. TNA WO 32/16277, note to Under Secretary of State, illegible signature, 25 September 1951.
125. Lindsay, Once a Grenadier …, p. 117.
126. Churchill College, Cambridge, British Diplomatic Oral History Project, Martin Morland, interviewed by Malcolm McBain, 24 January 2006. Available online at https://www.chu.cam.ac.uk/media/uploads/files/Morland.pdf.
127. Eton College Archive, letter to Hugh Marsden, signed illegibly, 30 August 1948.
128. So far as I can discern from the Eton College Chronicle, seven of the sixteen men who went though Brigade Squad with W. G. Runciman (himself an Etonian) in 1953 were Etonians. The thirty-eight Grenadiers were those described as second lieutenants in the Army Emergency Reserve in the Army List for 1956. I’ve compared this list with names given in the Eton College Chronicle for 1948.
129. Hurst, The View from King Street, p. 121. Hurst went through Eaton Hall with a number of guards officers from Brigade Squad but also with an ordinary guardsman who was to be commissioned after a year in the ranks. He was not to be commissioned in the guards: ‘his plebeian accent and demeanour explained why’.
130. John Milne, interviewed by Sue Bradley, NLSC: Book Trade Lives, 1999, British Library Sound & Moving Image Catalogue reference C872/17, reel 1. © The British Library.
131. TNA WO 291/1510, AORG, ‘Officer Potentials’.
132. IWMSA 19061, Hugh Currie, reel 1.
133. Tom Stacey in Peter Chambers and Amy Landreth (eds.), Called Up: The Personal Experiences of Sixteen National Servicemen, Told by Themselves (1955), pp. 47–66.
134. W. G. Runciman, interview, 17 April 2013.
135. Bruno Schroder, interviewed by Cathy Courtney, NLSC: City Lives, 1992, British Library Sound & Moving Image Catalogue reference C409/076, track 2. © The British Library.
136. Thynn, Two Bites, p. 10.
137. At least, I can find no reference to a guards officer among the military records described in The Monmouthian.
138. TNA AIR 2/15389, minutes of meeting at Ministry of Defence on ‘Call-Up of Graduates’, 3 December 1959.
139. Waugh, Will This Do?, p. 95.
140. Hansard, 8 May 1963, question from George Thomas to Profumo (Secretary of State for War).
141. Manchester Guardian, 16 December 1953.
142. Ibid. The cadet giving evidence was Alistair Black.
143. Andrew Sinclair, The Breaking of Bumbo (1959, this edn 1961), p. 42.
144. The Times, 14 January 1954.
145. Elizabeth Basset, Love is my Meaning: An Anthology of Assurance (1973).
146. W. G. Runciman, interview, 17 April 2013.
147. The Times, 8 January 1954.
148. Manchester Guardian, 8 January 1954.
149. Ibid., 16 January 1954.
150. Hansard, 19 January 1954, answer by J. R. H. Hutchison.
151. Taylor and Stewart, Call to Arms, pp. 67, 94, 115, 128. An earlier suicide at Eaton Hall had attracted less attention. Manchester Guardian, 27 July 1948.
152. John Bingham in Chambers and Landreth (eds.), Called Up, pp. 83–98, at pp. 86–7.
153. The Times, 6 June 1951. Douglas Hurd, Memoirs (2003), pp. 81–2.
154. TNA DEFE 13/53, Hurd to Macmillan, 13 February 1955.
155. TNA WO 32/13775, ‘The Continuing Need for National Service in the Army’, undated and unsigned.
156. TNA WO 32/15604, ‘Retrospect: A Survey of the Effects of National Service’, 1954.
157. The Times, 13 July 1956.
158. Sutherland, The Boy Who Loved Books, p. 194.
159. Brian Jackson and Dennis Marsden, Education and the Working Class: Some General Themes Raised by a Study of 88 Working-class Children in a Northern Industrial City (1962, this edn 1966), p. 55.
160. Waugh, Will This Do?, p. 102.
161. IWM 15316, P. J. Houghton-Brown, undated letter to mother.
162. Bruce Kent, Undiscovered Ends: An Autobiography (1992), p. 41.
163. IWMSA 9395, Colin Bower, reel 2.
164. IWM, Royle, 66/211/1(1/17), Simon Coke.
165. IWM, Royle, 66/211/1(1/77), J. M. H. Radford, letter dated 28 April 1985.
166. NAM 2000-08-55, D. F. Barrett, diary entry, 19 February 1951.
167. NAMSA 2000-04-55, John Hodgson, reel 1.
168. Hurst, The View from King Street, p. 116.
169. TNA WO 291/1494, AORG, ‘Field Follow-up of Young Regular and National Service Officers’ by L. J. Holman, 1955.
170. Kent, Undiscovered Ends, p. 40.
171. John Peel, Margrave of the Marshes: His Autobiography (2005, this edn 2006), p. 145.
172. Hurst, The View from King Street, p. 144.
173. Peter Nichols, Feeling You’re Behind: An Autobiography (1984), p. 93.
174. IWM 12733, Cyril MacG Williams, letter of 25 January 1953.
175. IWM, Royle, 66/211/1(1/17), Simon Coke.
176. IWM 3225, W. S. B. Loosmore, diary entry, 15 July 1958.
177. Ibid., 15 November 1957.
178. Ibid., 26 October 1957.
179. Ibid., 28 February 1958.
180. Ibid., 5 September 1958.
1. IWMSA 22307, Anthony Howard. © Whistledown, 2000.
2. Dr John Lester cited in John Blair, The Conscript Doctors: Memories of National Service (Edinburgh, 2001), p. 22.
3. TNA AIR 2/10934, ‘Brief for DGM on Allocation of National Servicemen to Trades’, signed Lumgair, 6 February 1956.
4. Leslie Ives, A Musket for the King: The Trials and Tribulations of a National Serviceman 1949–1951 (Tavistock, 1999), p. 26.
5. Karl Miller in B. S. Johnson (ed.), All Bull: The National Servicemen (1973), pp. 256–66, at p. 258.
6. IWMSA 20668, Alan Bexon, reel 1.
7. TNA AIR 20/6457, ‘Attitudes of Serving Airmen: Report of a Working Party, Oct.–Dec. 1948’.
8. IWM, Trevor Royle, 66/211/1(1/27), J. Dinning.
9. Alan Sillitoe, Life Without Armour (1995), p. 91.
10. Don Wallace, ‘The POM Has Landed’, Aviation News, 8–21 August 1986.
11. Harold Evans, My Paper Chase: True Stories of Vanished Times, an Autobiography (2009, this edn 2010), p. 88.
12. Jimmy Reid, Reflections of a Clyde-built Man (1976), p. 29.
13. Wallace, ‘The POM Has Landed’.
14. TNA WO 32/17657, ‘The Effect of the Abolition of National Service and the Reduction in Size of the Army on Promotion Prospects of Regular Other Ranks’, draft, attached to note Forster to Legh, 1 January 1959.
15. TNA WO 291/1080, AORG, ‘The Promotion of National Servicemen to Non-commissioned Rank’, July 1949.
16. NAM 2001-07-1187-46, Andrew Man, ‘The National Service Soldier in Korea’, May 1951.
17. NAM 2000-08-55, D. F. Barrett, diary entry, 29 December 1950.
18. TNA WO 384/20, ‘Abstract of Army Statistics’, March 1956.
19. TNA WO 32/14970, ‘Substantive Promotion – Drivers’, signed by Colonel Wilson, 26 September 1955.
20. TNA WO 291/1408, AORG, ‘Follow-up Study of Psychiatric Gradings Given at Arms Basic Training Units’, February 1954, prepared by Basil Clarke and Dr J. Penton.
21. TNA AIR 10/5478, ‘Annual Digest of Royal Air Force Statistics’, no. 2, 1953. TNA WO 384/12, ‘Abstract of Army Statistics’, March 1954.
22. TNA WO 32/17657, ‘The Effect of the Abolition of National Service’.
23. TNA WO 384/22, ‘Abstract of Army Statistics’, September 1956.
24. IWMSA 21582, David Davies, reel 3.
25. T. C. Sparrow, Tales of a Schoolie: A Story of National Service (Badsey, 2006), p. 42.
26. NAM 2003-05-23, Patrick J. Wye, ‘Royal Army Service Corps, March 15th 1951–March 1953’.
27. Frank Stokes in Ken Drury (ed.), Get Some In: Memories of National Service (Great Dunmow, 2006), pp. 63–8.
28. Daily Mirror, 26 August 1950.
29. IWM 3126, R. J. Miller, memoir.
30. Leslie T. Wilkins, The Social Survey: National Service and Enlistment in the Armed Forces. A Report on an Enquiry Made for Several Government Departments into the Attitudes of Young Men Prior to, and on Joining the Armed Forces (1951), p. 19.
31. Derek Seaton, Memoirs of a Conscript: National Service 1950–1952 (Alton, 2002), pp. 9 and 10.
32. Ibid., p. 13.
33. Alan Watson in Drury (ed.), Get Some In, pp. 113–17.
34. IWMSA 26097, Terrance Atkinson, reel 1.
35. David Baxter, Two Years to Do (1959), p. 60.
36. IWM 3135, J. R. Beverland, memoir.
37. NAMSA 1995-05-93, Robin Ollington, reel 2.
38. Eric Pegg (ed.), The Royal Engineers and the National Service Years, 1939–1963: A Military and Social History (2002), p. 22.
39. Daily Mirror, 11 March 1955.
40. IWM 7178, C. B. L. Barr, diary entry, 4 February 1955.
41. Seaton, Memoirs of a Conscript, p. 16.
42. TNA WO 291/1510, AORG, ‘The Different Officer Potentials of Various Regions of Great Britain’, L. J. Holman, 1956.
43. IWMSA 29895, Paul Croxson, reel 2.
44. Ibid.; IWMSA 17223, Adrian Walker.
45. John Ockenden, ‘Memoirs of a Computing Man’ (unpublished manuscript).
46. NAMSA 2000-04-52, John Arnold, reel 1.
47. TNA AIR 32/414, ‘National Service Commissioning in Ground Branches’, 1951.
48. Geoffrey Elliott and Harold Shukman, Secret Classrooms: An Untold Story of the Cold War (2003), p. 50.
49. Brian Jackson and Dennis Marsden, Education and the Working Class: Some General Themes Raised by a Study of 88 Working-class Children in a Northern Industrial City (1962, this edn 1966), p. 184.
50. IWMSA 26569, John Waine.
51. NAMSA 2000-04-52, Arnold.
52. NAM 2003-08-61, Jack Gillett.
53. TNA AIR 20/6457, ‘Attitudes of Serving Airmen’.
54. TNA ADM 1/21623, ‘Reduced NS Intake’, signed head of Naval Branch, 11 November 1949.
55. Ministry of Education, 15 to 18 (1959) (Crowther Report), II, pp. 144 and 148.
56. TNA AIR 20/6457, ‘Attitudes of Serving Airmen’.
57. TNA AIR 2/10933, ‘Intakes from the NS Fields’, signed Marchant, 22 October 1953.
58. The Times, 11 October 1960.
59. Ken Lynham, interviewed by Michael Cos, Food: From Source to Salespoint, 2005, British Library Sound & Moving Image Catalogue reference C821/165, track 4. © The British Library.
60. NAM 2001-07-1187-54, papers of Andrew Man, ‘The Requirement for NS from the Army’s Point of View’, 27 May 1954. The document was designed to prepare speakers to justify national service at a conference of industrialists.
61. Wilkins, National Service and Enlistment, p. 19.
62. Ibid., p. 15.
63. TNA WO 32/15604, Appendix C to CRNC 185006, 13 July 1954, ‘Discussion with Employers at Conference at Headquarters of North Midland District’.
64. IWMSA 27184, John Akehurst, reel 4. Akehurst remarked that a regular sergeant in his battalion was capable of ‘coming the old soldier’.
65. Peter de la Billière, Looking for Trouble: SAS to Gulf Command (1994, this edn 1995), p. 56.
66. NAM 2001-07-1187-46, Andrew Man, ‘The National Service Soldier in Korea’.
67. IWMSA 11139, David Storrie. National service officers were more sympathetic to regular other ranks in the marines. IWMSA 22268 Neal Ascherson. © Whistledown, 2000.
68. IWM 675, A. R. Ashton, ‘National Service: Royal Marine Commando Memoirs’ (1990).
69. Keith Jessop, Goldfinder: The True Story of One Man’s Discovery of the Ocean’s Richest Secrets (1998).
70. Robin Welch, interviewed by Hawksmoor Hughes, NLSC: Craft Lives, British Library Sound & Moving Image Catalogue reference C960/85, track 3. © The British Library.
71. Alun Pask in Adrian Walker (ed.), Six Campaigns: National Servicemen at War, 1948–1960 (1993), pp. 115–21, at p. 117.
72. IWMSA 13645, General Forrester, Brigadier Flood, Brigadier Dawney, reel 1.
73. IWM 4102, Peter Burke, diary entry, 10 May 1956.
74. Ibid., 26 April 1956.
75. Adrian Walker, A Country Regiment: 1st Battalion The Queen’s Own Royal West Kent Regiment, Malaya, 1951–1954 (2001).
76. Frank Dickinson, Them Days ’ave Gone (Ely, 2008), p. 126.
77. Ibid., p. 200.
78. Ives, A Musket for the King, p. 20.
79. Peter Nichols, Feeling You’re Behind: An Autobiography (1984, this edn 1985), p. 76.
80. NAMSA 1995-05-93, Robin Ollington, reel 1.
81. IWM, Trevor Royle, 66/211/1(1/37), Frank Gaff.
82. IWM, Royle, 66/211/1(1/38), Dennis Gane.
83. IWM, Royle, 66/211/1(1/35), W. Findlay.
84. IWM 15719, G. T. Kell, ‘The Diary of 2266489 Kell’, in fact more a memoir than a diary, p. 23.
85. TNA AIR 20/12136, ‘Morale of the National Service Airman (an Account of an Investigation Covering the Period October 1947–September 1950)’, by A. S. Anthony, 24 July 1951.
86. IWMSA 21681, Ray Self. © Whistledown, 2000.
87. IWM 15103, Bernard Parke.
88. TNA AIR 20/12136, ‘Morale of the National Service Airman’.
89. Ibid.
90. Gordon M. Williams, The Camp (1966), p. 29.
91. IWMSA 14983, Albert Shippen, reel 14.
92. TNA WO 32/17243, ‘Report of Committee on Employment of National Servicemen in the United Kingdom’, 1956/57.
93. The War Office statistics in the WO 384 series are curiously unrevealing about the total number of men on three years’ engagements. In a sample of people born in Scotland in 1936, 253 men had performed national service and 100 had served for three years – sixteen of the later group became regulars. James Maxwell, Sixteen Years On: A Follow-up of the 1947 Scottish Survey (1969), p. 167. Figures for various kinds of engagements are given for 1957/1958 in TNA DEFE 7/1453, ‘Recruiting and Prolongation: Statistics and Returns’. In this year, there were 26,065 regular recruits to the army, of whom 12,536 were three-year men; in the air force there were 15,755, of whom 5,991 signed up for three years. One assumes that the number of three-year engagements dropped as national service was coming to an end and most men could hope to avoid serving altogether.
94. TNA DEFE 13/53, Minister of Defence Service Ministers Committee, ‘Full-time National Service. Report of Working-party on the Effect of Straight Reduction in the Period of Full-time from 2 Years to 21 Months’, 20 January 1955.
95. TNA AIR 20/12136, ‘Morale of the National Service Airman’.
96. Maxwell, Sixteen Years On, p. 167: thirty-seven out of 253 national servicemen had done something related to their civilian occupation; sixteen out of 100 three-year men had done so.
97. IWM 614, W. H. Butler, ‘Derby to Derna (an Account of National Service Experiences)’, p. 11.
98. Peter Hems in Drury (ed.), Get Some In, pp. 141–5.
99. TNA WO 32/15604, Appendix A to CRNC, dated 13 July 1954, reporting opinion of Clarke, Chapman and Co. Marine Engineers, Gateshead.
100. TNA DEFE 13/53, letter from head of BOAC to Sir Miles Thomas, 10 June 1955.
101. Ibid., BOAC pamphlet.
102. TNA AIR 2/10934, ‘Selection of National Service Recruits and their Allocation to Ground Trades’, signed Group Captain Lumgair, 19 June 1957.
103. IWM 2279, Brigadier P. J. Jeffreys, ‘Account of 1st Btn Durham Light Infantry in Korea, September 1952 to September 1953’.
1. TNA DEFE 13/53, note to minister, illegible signature, 22 July 1955. It was said that George Craddock MP planned to raise national service in the forthcoming adjournment debate and that he would argue that it was a ‘contributory cause to delinquency’.
2. TNA WO 291/1408, AORG, ‘Follow-up Study of Psychiatric Gradings Given at Arms Basic Training Units’, February 1954, prepared by Basil Clarke and Dr J. Penton.
3. TNA ADM 1/26594, RN Detention Quarters: Statistical Report, 5 January 1956.
4. Manchester Guardian, 2 June 1955.
5. Ibid., 7 April 1958.
6. TNA WO 291/1408, AORG, ‘Psychiatric Gradings’.
7. Hermann Mannheim and Leslie T. Wilkins, Prediction Methods in Relation to Borstal Training (1955), p. 187. The man in question was, in fact, turned away by the army on account of his poor scores on education tests.
8. T. C. N. Gibbens, ‘Borstal Boys after 25 Years’, British Journal of Criminology, 24, 1 (1984), pp. 49–61.
9. TNA WO 291/1455, AORG, ‘Quality of Intake to RASC and Relationship Between General Ability and Driver Training Results’, 1956.
10. Gibbens, ‘Borstal Boys after 25 Years’.
11. TNA WO 32/13364, minute sheet, signed QMG, 3 October 1949.
12. TNA LAB 6/370, ‘Draft Paper by DMP for Consideration at a Future Triangular Meeting’, attached to letter from Waters to Hooper, 29 September 1954. See also table of men downgraded from January to June 1954. In all, 259 came from the infantry, 58 from the RASC, 36 from the Ordnance Corps, 34 from the Catering Corps, 79 from the artillery, 26 from the Armoured Corps, 10 from the Royal Engineers, 39 from the Signals, 28 from the Medical Corps and 6 from REME.
13. TNA WO 32/13849, Executive Committee of the Army Council, 11 October 1954, ‘Provision of Military Labour for Administrative Installations in the United Kingdom’; TNA WO 32/16806, ‘Recruiting for the Royal Pioneer Corps’, 5 September 1958.
14. Mannheim and Wilkins, Prediction Methods, p. 189.
15. Royston Salmon in Peter Chambers and Amy Landreth (eds.), Called-Up: The Personal Experiences of Sixteen National Servicemen, Told by Themselves (1955), pp. 144–50.
16. NAM 2003-08-59, W. J. R. Morrison.
17. George Gardiner, A Bastard’s Tale: The Political Memoirs of George Gardiner (1999), p. 72.
18. Jeff Nuttall in B. S. Johnson (ed.), All Bull: The National Servicemen (1973), pp. 17–25, at p. 21.
19. IWM 9870, James Jacobs, ‘Korea: One Conscript’s War’.
20. Leslie Ives, A Musket for the King: The Trials and Tribulations of a National Serviceman 1949–1951 (Tavistock, 1999), p. 30.
21. TNA WO 291/1408, ‘Psychiatric Gradings’.
22. TNA WO 32/10994, Director of Army Education, ‘Review of Illiteracy and Sub-literacy among National Service Men’, 3 March 1953. There are numerous discussions of this matter in WO 32/10994, WO 163/305 and LAB 6/370.
23. TNA WO 32/10994, note by DAE (Director of Army Education), 13 February 1948.
24. Ibid., minutes of meeting, 14 March 1947, contribution by Colonel Ungerson.
25. Hansard, 15 October 1952, Antony Head.
26. TNA WO 32/10994, Director of Army Education, ‘Background Information’, 14 January 1955. Apparently prepared in anticipation of a question in parliament. These figures differ slightly from those given in the ‘Abstract of Army Statistics’ – see Appendix VIII.
27. TNA WO 384/22, ‘Abstract of Army Statistics’, September 1956.
28. TNA WO 32/10994, Director of Army Education, ‘Background Information’. Once again, the figures differ slightly from those given in the ‘Abstract of Army Statistics’.
29. TNA WO 32/10994, loose minute, ‘Education of Sub-literate NSM, Reference your Note 20 Jan.’, 4 February 1954.
30. TNA WO 163/305, ‘Activities and Responsibilities of the RAEC’, attached to note from F. W. Armstrong and B. L. Rigby, 12 July 1951.
31. The Times, 13 February 1953.
32. TNA ED 34/185. The House of Commons statement was made on 15 October 1952. A civil servant minuted, of questions asked about literacy rates in the army, ‘I have no doubt that this question arises out of some recent obiter dicta of a lieutenant colonel which were, I believe, promptly disavowed by the War Office.’ Note by Bennet, 12 September 1952.
33. Ross Cranston, ‘A Biographical Sketch: The Early Years’ in Mads Andenas and Duncan Fairgrieve (eds.), Tom Bingham and the Transformation of the Law: A Liber Amicorum (Oxford, 2009), pp. li–lxxii, at p. lviii.
34. TNA WO 32/10994, ‘For the Information of the Minister’, 18 July 1953.
35. Ibid., ‘The Battle Against Illiteracy’, attached to note by John McCulloch, 12 March 1953.
36. IWMSA 18338, David Fisher, reel 2.
37. IWM 2775, J. C. A. Green, letter dated ‘Monday 23rd’; it seems to have been written in 1952.
38. Daily Mirror, 18 April 1953.
39. TNA WO 291/1408, AORG, ‘Psychiatric Gradings’.
40. IWMSA 26559, Leigh Parkes.
41. IWM 1779, I. W. G. Martin, letter of 4 May 1958.
42. The Times, 3 July 1953.
43. TNA WO 32/15021, psychiatric report on Gunner W., 26 April 1951, signed G. W. Hill.
44. TNA WO 32/15024, ‘NSM considered unsuitable for service in the TA’, appendix to letter to Under Secretary of State for War from GOC-in-C, Anti-Aircraft Command, 28 November 1952.
45. The Times, 2 May 1959.
46. TNA WO 291/1408, AORG, ‘Psychiatric Gradings’.
47. TNA WO 291/1152, AORG, ‘The Military Value of the ex-Borstal Boy’, report by J. Penton, November 1951.
48. Winifred Elkin and D. B. Kittermaster’s Borstal: A Critical Survey (1950) suggests that in 1947 1,766 boys and 136 girls were committed to Borstal. A newspaper article of 1951 talked of ‘2,000 lads’ being committed annually, Manchester Guardian, 17 August 1951.
49. TNA WO 32/15021, Butterfield to Hooper, 27 April 1955, Ministry of Labour to Brigadier Dewar, signed Hooper, 22 April 1955.
50. TNA HO 291/116, 23 February 1956, ‘Case of G.’.
51. TNA WO 32/16185, ‘Borstal Boys in the Army’, unsigned and undated note.
52. TNA PCOM 9/1390, AORG, ‘The Military Value of the ex Juvenile Delinquent’, I. R. Haldane. The research on which the report was based seem to date from 1947–8, though it is attached to a letter from Snell to Colonel Penton, 17 May 1952.
53. David Baxter, Two Years to Do (1959), p. 11. Baxter recalled training with a man called Dartmoor because he had apparently been released from a long stretch in prison.
54. Roger Hood, Homeless Borstal Boys: A Study of their After-care and After-conduct (1966), pp. 41–2. The study took place from 1953 to 1957.
55. Mannheim and Wilkins, Prediction Methods, p. 181.
56. Ewen Montagu, letter to The Times, 24 January 1949.
57. TNA WO 32/16185, AG to S of S, 3 March 1958: ‘I have had to guess at the proportion of NS with past criminal records, because the figures are withheld from us. I assume the figure to be about 5 per cent.’
58. TNA DEFE 7/141, Antony Head to Lloyd George [i.e. Gwilym Lloyd George, the Home Secretary], 16 November 1954.
59. Ibid., memorandum by Secretary of State for War, 21 January 1955.
60. The Times, 3 August 1960.
61. Ibid., 5 March 1955.
62. Daily Mail, 10 June 1960.
63. Daily Mirror, 15 and 23 November 1955.
64. James Maxwell, Sixteen Years On: A Follow-up of the 1947 Scottish Survey (1969), p. 71.
65. IWM 7178, C. B. L. Barr, diary entry, 17 January 1955.
66. The Times, 21 January 1960.
67. Hansard, 14 July 1955, Alport.
68. Daily Express, 12 January 1954. Halladay returned after three and a half years, was court-martialled and sentenced to nine months.
69. Mannheim and Wilkins, Prediction Methods, p. 191.
70. Ibid., pp. 200–202.
71. TNA WO 71/1200, court martial of Signalman Charles Connor, 19 June 1951, letter read out by defence.
72. Baxter, Two Years to Do.
73. Daily Mirror, 5 July 1957.
74. Manchester Guardian, 23 December 1952.
75. TNA MEPO 2/7822, note to M. R. Carter from chief inspector (name illegible), 23 June 1949.
76. Ibid., R. L. Jackson to Philip Allen at the Home Office, 17 July 1952.
77. Ibid., note to M. R. Carter from chief inspector (name illegible), 23 June 1949.
78. Hansard, 4 April 1950.
79. TNA DEFE 7/61, preparation for reply by Minister of Defence to parliamentary question, 23 July 1958.
80. TNA WO 384/1, ‘Abstract of Army Statistics’, Outflow by Arms, 1 April 1950–March 1951.
81. Hansard, 1 August 1952. Shillingford’s career was described by James Simmons and George Wigg. The Under Secretary of State for War said that Shillingworth’s last sentence had been quashed and that he had now been released from the army.
82. TNA WO 32/16185, AG to S of S, through PUS, 25 November 1957.
83. TNA PCOM 9/1390, memorandum by Secretary of State for War, 21 January 1955.
84. Hansard, 14 July 1955, Alport.
85. TNA WO 32/16185, VAG to S of S, 4 August 1961.
86. TNA WO 32/16806, ‘Recruiting for the Royal Pioneer Corps’, 5 September 1958.
87. The Times, 13 March 1961.
88. Hansard, 14 July 1955, Alport.
89. TNA WO 71/1198, court martial of Bates, RPC, and others, 16 and 17 May 1951. Plea in mitigation.
1. IWM 12515, Sir Peter Holmes, ‘Korean War Diary’ (it is in fact mainly a memoir), p. 12.
2. Ibid., pp. 9 and 10.
3. Ibid., p. 14.
4. Ibid., p. 15 refers to 7 to 22 November 1951.
5. Ibid., p. 17, quoting diary entry for 1 December, describing events of 17 November 1951.
6. IWM 1324, A. L. Saunders, letter to ‘mum and uncle’, 13 September 1951.
7. Ibid., telegram from War Office, 13 November 1951; letter to Mrs Hilda Cole, signed Scotland, 3 March 1952.
8. TNA CAB 128/17/39, Cabinet meeting, 27 June 1950.
9. NAM 2000-08-55, D. F. Barrett, diary entry, 14 August 1950.
10. IWMSA 17987, Roy Vincent, reel 2.
11. NAM 2001-07-1187-64, papers of Andrew Man, notes for a lecture on Korea given at Catterick District Officers’ Club, 10 September 1951.
12. TNA WO 384/1, ‘Abstract of Army Statistics’, 1951.
13. TNA DEFE 7/509, ‘The Present Need for Sending Very Young National Servicemen to Action Theatres Abroad’, first of briefs attached to letter from Ministry of Defence, no signature, to Sellar of Ministry of Labour, October 1953. The brief did not break down numbers in any more detail.
14. Hansard, 31 January 1956, answer by Antony Head.
15. By October 1952, 150 national servicemen had been killed or died of wounds in Korea and a further six had died as prisoners of war. All of these were soldiers. Hansard, written answer by Nigel Birch, 20 October 1952.
16. NAM 1995-01-164, Robert Gomme, ‘Korea: A Short Memoir, Forty Years On’.
17. NAMSA 1995-05-93, Robin Ollington, reel 1.
18. IWMSA 18825, Joseph Roberts, reel 3. Roberts remembered his contemporaries being told that they could stay with the Argylls in Germany if they signed on for three years but ‘no one bit that’. They were transferred to the Black Watch and sent to Korea. Emrys Hughes alluded to ‘dictatorial methods’ used to make men sign on for regular service, with the threat that they would be drafted ‘to serve in the Far East’. He said that he had received letters from three different parts of the country describing such methods. The Secretary of State for War admitted that members of the Queen’s Regiment had been offered regular engagements in terms that made it clear that acceptance would get them out of drafts for Korea. Hansard, 10 March 1952.
19. John Hollands, The Dead, the Dying and the Damned (1956, this edn 1976), p. 11.
20. Daily Telegraph, obituary, 25 March 2004.
21. Tom King in Adrian Walker (ed.), Six Campaigns: National Servicemen at War, 1948–1960 (1993), pp. 101–7, at p. 106.
22. IWM 15595, David Batterham ‘National Service Recalled’.
23. IWMSA 21696, Brian Sewell. © Whistledown, 2000.
24. John Boorman, Adventures of a Suburban Boy (2003), p. 66.
25. IWMSA 22268, Neal Ascherson. © Whistledown, 2000.
26. TNA WO 71/1024, court martial of R. Bone and ten others for mutiny, 1951.
27. IWMSA 18338, David Wray Fisher, reel 3.
28. IWM 9870, James Jacobs, ‘Korea: One Conscript’s War’, pp. 4 and 9.
29. IWM 12515, Holmes, ‘Korean War’, p. 15.
30. IWMSA 8850, Peter Farrar, reel 4.
31. Ibid.
32. NAM 1995-01-164, Gomme, ‘Korea: A Short Memoir’, citing letter from the front.
33. P. J. Kavanagh, The Perfect Stranger (1966), p. 97.
34. IWMSA 12663, Denys Whatmore, reel 1.
35. Max Hastings, The Korean War (1987), p. 253.
36. Stephen Martin, ‘Did Your Country Need You? An Oral History of the National Service Experience in Britain, 1945–1963’ (PhD thesis, University of Wales, Lampeter, 1997), p. 41.
37. Major Harry Legge-Bourke, quoted in Hastings, The Korean War, p. 329.
38. NAM 2000-08-55, Barrett, diary entry, 4 October 1950.
39. IWMSA 18439, Albert Tyas, reel 2.
40. George Brown in Walker (ed.), Six Campaigns, pp. 21–7, at p. 23.
41. IWMSA 17740, Desmond Barnard, reel 2.
42. NAMSA 2001-02-397, Barry Reed, reel 3.
43. Nottingham PRO, papers of Professor J. M. Lee, DD 393/1/1, Patrick Preston to J. M. Lee, 2 May 1951.
44. IWM 9870, Jacobs, ‘Korea: One Conscript’s War’, p. 25.
45. IWMSA 10708, Jack Harrison, reel 1.
46. NAM 1995-01-164, Gomme, ‘Korea: A Short Memoir’.
47. IWM 9870, Jacobs, ‘Korea: One Conscript’s War’, p. 26.
48. Hastings, The Korean War, p. 103.
49. NAMSA 2001-02-398, Dr Stanley Boydell, reel 2.
50. IWM 9870, Jacobs, ‘Korea: One Conscript’s War’, p. 60.
51. IWMSA 20471, William Purves, reel 1.
52. NAM 2001-07-1187-64, notes for a lecture on Korea given by Colonel Andrew Man at Catterick District Officers’ Club, 10 September 1951.
53. IWMSA 26098, Benjamin Whitchurch, reel 2.
54. Cited in Hastings, The Korean War, p. 366.
55. IWMSA 20669, John Keays, reel 5.
56. NAM 2000-08-55, Barrett, diary entry, 5 September 1950.
57. IWM 9968, D. Oates, ‘Memoirs of the British Commonwealth General Hospital, Kure, Japan during the Korean War, 1950–53’.
58. IWMSA 10302, Peter Bangs, reel 2.
59. IWMSA 12729, Dennis Matthews, reel 2.
60. IWMSA 26098, Whitchurch, reel 2.
61. IWMSA 12663, Whatmore, reel 1.
62. Ibid., reels 2 and 3.
63. S. P. MacKenzie, British Prisoners of the Korean War (Oxford, 2012); C. N. Barclay, The First Commonwealth Division: The Story of British Commonwealth Land Forces in Korea, 1950–1953 (1954), p. 189.
64. On the experience of national service prisoners see IWMSA 26098, Whitchurch, and IWMSA 18439, Tyas.
65. Hansard, 20 October 1952, written answer by Nigel Birch.
66. IWM 12515, Holmes, ‘Korean War’, epilogue, p. 43.
67. Ibid., quoting diary entry, 1 December 1951, p. 18.
68. Kavanagh, A Perfect Stranger, pp. 104 and 105.
69. NAM 2000-08-55, Barrett, diary entry, 1 December 1950.
70. Ibid., diary entry, 17 February 1951: ‘Another strong rumour going the rounds at this time is that the MO has let it be known he will always do his very best for us if we suffer a grievous wound and will not allow undue suffering.’
71. NAMSA 2001-02-398, Boydell, reel 1. Boydell was Medical Officer with the Middlesex. He carried a gun to protect men in his care but makes no reference to killing badly wounded patients.
72. IWM 26098, Whitchurch, reel 3.
73. NAM 1995-01-164, Gomme, ‘Korea: A Short Memoir’.
74. IWMSA 20364, Francis Cheesman, reel 3.
75. IWMSA 21064, Thomas Nowell, reel 3.
76. IWMSA 20471, Purves, reel 2.
77. IWMSA 22138, Thomas Henson, reel 3.
78. NAMSA 2001-02-397, Reed, reel 5.
79. IWM 12515, Sir Peter Holmes, ‘Korean War Diary’, p. 2.
80. Ibid., p. 14.
81. Ibid., epilogue, p. 42.
82. An account of Whybrow’s action can be found in his medal citation in TNA WO 373/116/65.
83. IWM 12723, John Whybrow, ‘Korea, 1951–1952: Some Personal Impressions’: ‘To my shame and regret: one sadly neglected group are the men who saved my life on the night of 29 January 1952.’ Whybrow tried to track down members of his platoon but Talbot, the man who had rallied the soldiers, was dead by the time Whybrow found his address.
84. Kavanagh, The Perfect Stranger, p. 93.
85. IWM 9870, Jacobs, ‘Korea: One Conscript’s War’, p. 56.
86. Hollands, The Dead, the Dying and the Damned, p. 253.
87. IWM 12515, Holmes, ‘Korean War’, introduction.
88. On feelings towards the Gloucesters, see IWMSA 18439, Tyas, reel 4. Tyas was himself captured with the Ulster Rifles and resented the attention given to the Glosters when prisoners were returned. Holmes too drew attention to the fact that the Royal Ulster Rifles had fought their way out from circumstances similar to those in which the Glosters had found themselves caught, IWM 12515, Holmes, ‘Korean War’, introduction, p. 4.
89. IWM 2279, Brigadier P. J. Jeffreys, ‘Account of 1st Btn Durham Light Infantry in Korea, September 1952 to September 1953’.
90. Manchester Guardian, 30 March 1954, ‘Young Soldiers in Korea 1. Casualties at Night’, by a ‘Young National Service Officer who was in Korea before the armistice’. See also the articles by the same author on 31 March and 1 April.
91. IWM 12515, Holmes, ‘Korean War’, p. 3, quoting diary entry for October 1951.
92. Ibid., epilogue, p. 44.
93. IWMSA 20471, Purves, reel 2.
94. NAMSA 2001-02-397, Reed, reel 1.
95. IWM 12515, Holmes, ‘Korean War’, epilogue, p. 43.
96. IWM 12723, Whybrow, ‘Korea, 1951–1952’, letter to father, 9 February 1952: ‘having weighed up the pros and cons, I think that life will still be almost as enjoyable when I finally recover’.
97. NAMSA 2001-02-397, Reed, reel 5.
98. IWMSA 20471, Purves, reels 3 and 4.
99. IWM 12723, Whybrow, ‘Korea, 1951–1952’.
100. Berwick Coates, Sam Browne’s Schooldays: Experiences of a Typical Squad of Postwar National Service Recruits (Bognor Regis, 2009), p. 2: ‘I was at college with someone who had lost a leg in Korea and I did not detect a trace of bitterness in his make up or his speech.’
101. For information on John Whybrow’s later life, I am grateful to his son Nicolas.
102. IWMSA 12663, Whatmore, reel 4.
103. IWMSA 12729, Matthews, reel 2.
104. IWMSA 20268, Edwin Haywood, reel 4.
105. IWMSA 18825, Roberts, reel 5.
106. IWMSA 26098, Whitchurch, reel 6.
107. Martin, ‘Did Your Country Need You?’, p. 246.
108. IWMSA 21593, Maynard Leslie Winspear, reel 5.
1. Crispin Worthington preface to Robert Bonner, Jungle Bashers: A British Infantry Battalion in the Malayan Emergency, 1951–1954 (Knutsford, 2002).
2. New Statesman, ‘London Diary’, 31 December 1955. The French did not use conscripts in colonial wars. They sent them to Algeria precisely because they did not consider it a colony, but even there few of them resisted.
3. IWMSA 8736, John Harding, reel 38.
4. TNA WO 384/15, ‘Abstract of Army Statistics’. In December 1954, 51 per cent of all soldiers served in the UK and 19 per cent served in BAOR. These figures refer only to soldiers and do not distinguish between regulars and conscripts.
5. TNA WO 384/22, ‘Abstract of Army Statistics’, figures for 30 September 1956.
6. Hansard, 20 March 1956, answer by Fitzroy Maclean.
7. Monmouth School, The Monmouthian, July 1954.
8. Ibid. It was reported that R. L. Patterson was undertaking a course in London ‘to be a better bearer of the white man’s burden. He bears this burden in Tanganyika.’
9. Antony Copley, ‘Midshipman’s Workbook’, entry for 12 March to 11 April 1955. Copley was to become a historian of decolonization with a particular focus on Gandhi and the independence movement.
10. Antony Copley, private diary, extracts lent by author.
11. Leslie Thomas, This Time Next Week (1964, this edition 1991), p. 154.
12. John Catton, Prickly Heat: A Cheerful Happy Gallop through Experiences in Africa with the King’s African Rifles (Brighton, 2011).
13. IWMSA 22307, Anthony Howard. © Whistledown, 2000. Michael Holroyd, Basil Street Blues: A Family Story (1999, this edn 2000); David Cesarani, Major Farran’s Hat: Murder, Scandal and Britain’s War against Jewish Terrorism, 1945–1948 (2009).
14. IWM 7178, C. B. L. Barr, diary entry, 24 May 1954.
15. IWM 2775, J. C. A. Green, letter home, ‘Monday 23rd’, apparently March 1953.
16. IWMSA 29062, John ‘Jack’ Burn, reel 4.
17. Mark Girouard, interviewed by Paul Thompson, NLSC: Architects’ Lives, 2009, British Library Sound & Moving Image Catalogue reference C467/92, track 1. © The British Library. Girouard was initially recruited into the Brigade of Guards, in which his father had served, but was posted to the Nigeria Regiment after officer training.
18. John Cowell, Elephant Grass (Blackburn, 2007). The book describes the author’s national service in British Cameroons and those locals whom he got to know with great affection.
19. IWM 3135, J. R. Beverland, memoir.
20. IWM 6431, E. A. Dorking.
21. Hansard, 27 January 1953.
22. Ibid., 11 March 1954.
23. According to the Ministry of Defence, 55 British soldiers died in ‘Egypt/Suez’ between 1 January 1948 and 31 December 1960. Of these, 43 were killed by terrorist action, 10 were killed by enemy action and 2 died of wounds. It may be that all men killed in the Suez expedition of 1956 were recorded as the victims of enemy action and all those who died in the Canal Zone before 1955 were designated victims of terrorism (see Appendix III).
24. NAMSA 2002-07-358, anonymous.
25. Ibid.
26. IWM 12733, Cyril MacG Williams, letter to ‘All’, September 1952, otherwise undated.
27. Ibid., 23 November 1952.
28. Ibid., 16 February 1953.
29. Ibid., 22 March 1953.
30. Ibid., 25 July 1953.
31. J. B. P. R., ‘The Emergency in Malaya: Some Reflections on the First Six Years’, The World Today, 10, 11 (1954), pp. 477–87.
32. See Karl Hack, ‘ “Iron Claws on Malaya”: The Historiography of the Malayan Emergency’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 30, 1 (March 1999), pp. 99–125.
33. IWMSA 10316, Frederick Dobbs, reel 3.
34. IWMSA 24570, Piers Plowright, reel 4: ‘I began to worry and have an almost hero worship of these guys who live in the jungle … Fighting a desperate battle.’
35. John Chynoweth, Hunting Terrorists in the Jungle (Stroud, 2007), p. 150. Bonner, Jungle Bashers, p. xvii.
36. J. B. P. R., ‘The Emergency in Malaya’.
37. IWM 11915, N. A. Martin, ‘The Day the Sun Stopped Shining’, p. 66.
38. Huw Bennett, ‘ “A Very Salutary Effect”: The Counter-terror Strategy in the Early Malayan Emergency, June 1948 to December 1949’, Journal of Strategic Studies, 32, 3 (2009), pp. 415–44.
39. David French, The British Way in Counter-insurgency, 1945–1967 (Oxford, 2011), pp. 122–4.
40. Hansard, 1 November 1949 gives the figures of killed from 1 May 1948; Hansard, 31 January 1956 gives the figures of killed and wounded from November 1949 to January 1956. At least 184 national servicemen were wounded in Malaya during this period.
41. TNA DEFE 13/843, transcript of interview with Sir Stafford Foster-Sutton on World at One, 2 February 1970.
42. Christopher Hale, ‘Batang Kali: Britain’s My Lai?’, History Today, 62, 7 (2012).
43. Cited in the People, 1 February 1970, copy in TNA DEFE 70/101.
44. Both NCOs were ‘lance sergeants’ – a rank in the Foot Guards that is equivalent to corporal in regiments of the line.
45. TNA WO 296/41, sworn testimony of Cootes, 8 January 1970.
46. Ibid.
47. Ibid.
48. Statements of Tuppen, Remedios, Brownrigg and Cootes cited in the People, 1 February 1970, copy in TNA DEFE 70/101. The original sworn statements can be found in TNA WO 296/41.
49. Cited in the People, 1 February 1970.
50. TNA WO 296/41, sworn testimony of Cootes, 8 January 1970.
51. TNA DEFE 70/101, Director of Public Prosecutions to Sir James Dunnett, 29 June 1970. The Director of Public Prosecutions does not mention the Batang Kali case in his memoirs: Public Prosecutor: The Memoirs of Sir Norman Skelhorn, Director of Public Prosecutions 1964–1977 (1981).
52. TNA DEFE 70/101, ‘Alleged Massacre at Batang Kali: Position of RSM Douglas SG’, 13 August 1970, signed Tugwell.
53. Ibid., Lt Colonel Commanding Scots Guards, reference to MOD letter, 10 February 1970, 17 February 1970.
54. IWMSA 9936, Edward Russell, reel 2.
55. David Erskine, The Scots Guards, 1919–1955 (1956), p. 478.
56. Tom Stacey in Peter Chambers and Amy Landreth (eds.), Called Up: The Personal Experiences of Sixteen National Servicemen, Told by Themselves (1955), pp. 47–65.
57. Chynoweth, Hunting Terrorists, p. 58.
58. Hansard, 4 February 1970.
59. Leslie Ives, A Musket for the King: The Trials and Tribulations of a National Serviceman 1949–1951 (Tavistock, 1999), p. 109. IWMSA 17333, John Noble, reel 2.
60. David Loewe, interview, 19 July 2012.
61. IWMSA 14053, David Henderson, reel 2. Henderson compares Malaya with ‘Aden’ – though he seems to be referring to Cyprus.
62. IWM 4102, Peter Burke, diary entry, 29 February 1956.
63. Nottingham PRO, papers of Professor J. M. Lee, DD 393/1/1, Preston to Lee, 2 May 1951.
64. IWMSA 17333, Noble, reel 2.
65. Geoffrey Barnes, With the Dirty Half-hundred in Malaya: Memories of National Service, 1951–52 (Royston, 2001), p. 137.
66. Bernard Wickstead, Daily Express, cited in Adrian Walker, A Country Regiment: 1st Battalion The Queen’s Own Royal West Kent Regiment, Malaya, 1951–1954 (2001), p. 24.
67. IWMSA 14053, Henderson, reel 2.
68. Ibid., reel 1.
69. IWMSA 10211, Peter Beadle, reel 2.
70. French, The British Way, p. 290, n. 108. Precise figures are available only for the period after 1953.
71. IWMSA 10211, Beadle, reel 2.
72. Barnes, With the Dirty Half–hundred, p. 70.
73. IWMSA 10742, Kenneth Bartley, reel 1.
74. Neal Ascherson in Walker (ed.), Six Campaigns, pp. 1–7.
75. IWMSA 24570, Plowright, reel 5.
76. Barnes, With the Dirty Half-hundred, p. 20.
77. Ibid., p. 108.
78. Ibid., p. 147.
79. Ibid., p. 140.
80. Ibid., p. 125.
81. Ibid., p. 161.
82. Ibid., p. 147.
83. Ibid., p. 60.
84. Cited in ibid., p. 99.
85. IWMSA 21876, Geoffrey Barnes, reel 3.
86. Barnes, With the Dirty Half-hundred, p. 97. ‘H.’ was a regular corporal – later awarded the Military Medal and promoted to sergeant.
87. Cited in ibid., p. 147.
88. Ibid., p. 101.
89. IWMSA 17333, Noble, reel 2. Noble, who worked in the officers’ mess, recalled that Hands had been upset by the accidental drowning of one of his men.
90. IWMSA 28424, Leslie Hands, reel 4.
91. Daily Telegraph, obituary for Leslie Raymond Hands, 13 February 2012.
92. French, The British Way, p. 120.
93. Huw Bennett, Fighting the Mau Mau: The British Army and Counter-insurgency in the Kenya Emergency (Cambridge, 2012).
94. TNA WO 384/15, ‘Abstract of Army Statistics’, figures for December 1954.
95. TNA WO 384/1, ‘Abstract of Army Statistics’.
96. Hansard, 9 December 1952, reply by Antony Head.
97. Hansard, 13 July 1954, written answer by James Hutchison.
98. Hansard, 24 March 1953, Antony Head.
99. IWMSA 11159, Thomas Hewitson, reel 2.
100. Brian Thompson, Clever Girl: Growing Up in the 1950s (2007, this edn 2008), p. 91.
101. French, The British Way, p. 290. Between October 1952 and April 1953, 8,400 alleged Mau Mau fighters were killed and 1,193 firearms were recovered.
102. From Simon Raven’s Bird of Ill Omen (1989), cited in Howard Watson (ed.), The World of Simon Raven (2002), p. 196.
103. French, The British Way, p. 297.
104. IWMSA 18825, Joseph Roberts, reel 6.
105. Cited in Bennett, Fighting the Mau Mau, p. 217.
106. TNA WO 32/21720, Proceedings of McLean Court of Enquiry, evidence of 2nd Lt Ellis, 16 December 1953.
107. TNA WO 32/16103, interrogation of Innes Walker, answer 93.
108. TNA WO 71/1221, Proceedings of Second Court Martial of Captain G. S. L. Griffiths, evidence of Innes Walker, 9 March 1954.
109. Ibid., 8 March 1954.
110. TNA WO 32/21722, suggested answer, signed T. L. Binney, 4 December 1953.
111. Chynoweth, Hunting Terrorists, p. 102. Tom King also alludes to the case – though without naming Griffiths. See Tom King in Walker (ed.), Six Campaigns, pp. 101–7, at p. 104.
112. French, The British Way, p. 313.
113. TNA WO 32/21720, McLean Enquiry, 17 December 1953, evidence of Major Holmes.
114. David Larder, letter to Guardian, 10 June 2013.
115. TNA WO 93/56, list of court martials in Kenya, attached to loose minute, illegible signature, 13 January 1954. Larder was court-martialled at Sagana on 10 August 1953.
116. TNA WO 32/21720, McLean Enquiry, 29 December 1953, evidence of Lt Colonel Windeatt, commanding officer of the Devonshire Regiment.
117. Bennett, Fighting the Mau Mau, p. 119.
118. TNA WO 32/21720, McLean Enquiry, 29 December 1953, evidence of Reverend Squire.
119. Roy Fuller, The Father’s Comedy (1961), p. 91.
120. TNA WO 32/21721, Journal Devonshire Regiment, November 1953.
121. Michael Barber, The Captain: The Life and Times of Simon Raven (1996), p. 123.
122. IWMSA 19064, William Fitt, reel 1.
123. Ibid., reels 1 and 2.
124. Thompson, Clever Girl, pp. 76–123.
125. Ibid., p. 110.
126. IWMSA 10010, Simon Maclachlan, reels 2 and 3.
127. IWM Trevor Royle, 66/211/1(1/37), Frank Gaff.
128. IWMSA 10145, Michael Harbottle, reel 1.
129. F. A. Godfrey, The History of the Suffolk Regiment, 1946–1959 (1988), pp. 140–41.
130. French, The British Way, p. 169.
131. Ibid., p. 170.
132. David Lance, interviewed by Michelle Winslow, Oral History of Oral History, 2005, British Library Sound & Moving Image Catalogue reference C1149/01, track 1. © The British Library.
133. Antony Copley, diary entry, 11 August 1956.
134. IWMSA 17223, Adrian Walker, reel 2.
135. Albert Balmer, A Cyprus Journey: Memoirs of National Service (2008), p. 192.
136. LHCMA, I. W. G. Martin, letter cited without date in Ian Martin, ‘The “Cyprus Troubles”, 1955–1960’ in Kampos: Cambridge Occasional Papers in Modern Greek (1993). The originals of Martin’s letters can be found in IWM 1779.
137. Letter cited without date in ibid.
138. Pat Baker in Walker (ed.), Six Campaigns, pp. 8–14, at p. 13.
139. Interview with Simon Coningham, 20 May 2013.
140. IWM 15316, P. J. Houghton-Brown, undated letter in part 2, and ibid., part 4, brief memoir between letters in part 4.
141. IWM 675, A. R. Ashton, ‘National Service: Royal Marine Commando Memoirs’ (1990), p. 183.
142. David Baxter, Two Years to Do (1959), p. 50.
143. Stephen Hugh-Jones, Guardian, 19 February 1960.
144. Owen Parfitt in Walker (ed.), Six Campaigns, pp. 108–14, at p. 111.
145. Balmer, A Cyprus Journey, p. 128.
146. IWMSA 21684, Tom Davis. © Whistledown, 2000.
147. TNA WO 32/16103, interrogation of Innes-Walker, answer 403.
148. TNA WO 32/21720, McLean Enquiry, 29 December 1953, evidence of Lt Colonel Windeatt, commanding officer of the Devonshire Regiment.
1. David Morgan, ‘It Will Make a Man of You’: Notes on National Service, Masculinity and Autobiography (Manchester, 1987), p. 9.
2. TNA DEFE 7/808, letter to Richard Powell, illegible signature, 30 November 1956.
3. IWMSA 22307, Anthony Howard. © Whistledown, 2000.
4. John Ferris, interview, 25 July 2012.
5. A. J. P. Taylor, A Personal History (1983, this edn 1984), p. 273.
6. IWM 15316, P. J. Houghton-Brown, letter to mother, 5 November 1956.
7. Alan Watson in Ken Drury (ed.), Get Some In: Memories of National Service (Great Dunmow, 2006), pp. 113–17, at p. 116.
8. Francis Holford, interviewed by Cathy Courtney, NLSC: City Lives, 1992, British Library Sound & Moving Image Catalogue reference C409/067, track 1. © The British Library.
9. IWMSA 10145, Michael Harbottle, reel 1.
10. IWMSA 21690, Paul Foot. © Whistledown, 2000.
11. Antony Copley, diary entry, 1 November 1956.
12. IWMSA 10925, Bruce Kent.
13. John Barnes, Diary of a National Serviceman in the Royal Navy (Edinburgh, 1994), p. 43, letter to parents, 2 November 1956.
14. Alan Watkins, The Spectator, 7 April 1979.
15. Peter Jay, The Spectator, 18 August 2012.
16. Peter Jay, entry in ‘Midshipman’s Workbook’, 14 September 1956, comment by superior officer.
17. Peter Jay, entry in Ibid., 9 December 1956.
18. Douglas Jay, Change and Fortune: A Political Record (1980), p. 268.
19. IWMSA 22307, Anthony Howard. © Whistledown, 2000.
20. John Ferris, interview, 25 July 2012.
21. IWM 2118, Peter Mayo, diary entry, 6 November 1956.
22. IWMSA 11146, General Sir Michael Gray, reel 4.
23. Alun Pask in Adrian Walker (ed.), Six Campaigns: National Servicemen at War, 1948–1960 (1993), pp. 115–21, at p. 120.
24. IWM 675, A. R. Ashton, ‘National Service: Royal Marine Commando Memoirs’ (1990), p. 83.
25. Ibid., p. 92.
26. IWMSA 11142, Nicholas Vaux.
27. IWM 675, Ashton, ‘National Service’, p. 114.
28. Ibid., pp. 121–3.
29. IWM 2118, Mayo, diary entries, 22 September, 31 October, 2 November, 4 December 1956.
30. Copley, diary entry, 7 November 1956.
31. Ibid., 10/11 November 1956. Copley wishes to distance himself from these remarks, which he now regards as ‘infantile’.
32. IWMSA 21674, Nick Harden. © Whistledown, 2000.
33. The Times, 23 November 1956.
34. TNA WO 71/1235, ‘Report of Mutiny at Platres on 1 October 1956 and Events Leading to it’, by Lt Colonel Baverstock, 2 December 1956.
35. TNA WO 71/1235, words reported in letter from Deputy Judge Advocate General to General Commanding Officer, Cyprus District, 24 November 1956.
36. Ibid., court martial proceedings, 7–12 November 1956.
37. TNA WO 32/16713, ‘The Case of Mrs Margaret B’, signed DP, 16 October 1956.
38. TNA WO 71/1234, letter to Driver Newall, signed Rosie, dated ‘Monday’.
39. TNA WO 32/16713, ‘Statement by Brigadier A. W. Brown, CBE, DSO, MC, Duty Commander, 10th Armoured Division, on Alleged Incident at Derna, Cyrenaica, Involving Men of the 1st Battalion KRRC on or about the Week-end 29th/30th September 1956’.
40. Ibid.
41. Ibid.
42. Ibid., telegram from commandant Malta, ‘Incident Involving Other Ranks of 3 Grenadiers GDS Which Occurred Friday 5 October’.
43. NAMSA 2002-07-358, anonymous.
44. Ibid.
45. Ibid.
46. Ibid.
47. Ibid.
48. Ibid.
1. John Sutherland, The Boy Who Loved Books (2007, this edn 2008), p. 175.
2. Peter Cobbold, The National Service Sailor (Wivenhoe, 1993).
3. NAMSA 2003-04-4, Mike Gilman, reel 1.
4. TNA DEFE 7/1048, Maston to Mottershead, 15 August 1958, and attached memorandum.
5. Nigel Nicolson, Alex (1973), p. 302.
6. Shinwell apparently made this suggestion in an article for the Sunday Pictorial. See TNA PREM 11/201, note to Prime Minister by Jacobs, 4 September 1952.
7. Conservative Manifesto, cited in D. E. Butler, The British General Election of 1955 (1955), pp. 18–19.
8. TNA PREM 11/201, Montgomery to Churchill, 6 September 1952.
9. Ibid., Head to Churchill, 24 July 1952, and Churchill to Head, 25 July 1952. Churchill was angry when Head initially sent him a brief factual account of how much money might be saved by shortening national service.
10. Ibid., Churchill to Jacob, 15 August 1952: ‘considering that he [Shinwell] was the Ministerial author of two years Service and has on several occasions shown patriotic inclinations I should like to know whether he has any foundation for his views’.
11. TNA PREM 11/494, Churchill to Head, 11 September 1953: ‘The cogent arguments which you use would not I fear make two years popular and would only lend publicity and weight to Shinwell’s inconsistent and unpatriotic activities. There is no doubt a plebiscite would negative two years, and eighteen months after that. The House of Commons is the best place for arguing this.’
12. Brigadier A. H. Head, MP, ‘The Army We Need’, The Spectator, 17 December 1948.
13. TNA WO 216/411, note by Antony Head (Secretary of State for War) to DCIGS and VAG, 21 February 1952.
14. TNA AIR 8/1656, Head to Eden, 23 November 1955.
15. TNA DEFE 7/808, letter from Naval Manpower Branch, 21 August 1956, illegible signature but apparently written on behalf of Admiral Bryant.
16. TNA CAB 139/505, Playfair of War Office to Campion of Central Statistical Office, 25 July 1956.
17. TNA WO 32/17657, AAG to DPA, ‘The Effect of the Abolition of National Service and the Reduction in Size of the Army on Promotion Prospects of Regular Other Ranks’, 12 January 1959. It was estimated that a man in an all-regular army would take four, rather than two, years to reach the rank of corporal.
18. TNA WO 32/16430, Major Freyburg (War Office) to Major Johnson (Grenadier Guards), 12 July 1960.
19. TNA CAB 139/505, Central Statistical Office, working group on regular recruiting possibilities after the termination of national service, ‘Draft Review of the Estimates of Regular Recruiting, the Likely Period of Regular Service and the Strength of the Forces Which Would be Thereby Maintained after the Cessation of National Service’, circulated by Ridley, 11 December 1956.
20. TNA PREM 11/1935, Home to Sandys, 22 February 1957.
21. TNA DEFE 7/808, Hailsham to meeting on future of national service, 4 October 1956.
22. TNA DEFE 7/808, note by N. S. Forward to Sir Richard Powell, summarizing meeting of Minister of Labour and service ministers, 6 June 1956. The meeting concluded: ‘We must have national service … We cannot go on with the present policy of raising the age of intake … We must not cut down the period … Therefore, we must have some kind of selective draft.’
23. Ibid., meeting on future of national service, 4 October 1956.
24. TNA DEFE 13/53, Norman Dodds, MP for Dartford, to Eden, 1 September 1955.
25. TNA PREM 11/935, notes to Pitblado, illegible signature, 6 December 1955: ‘I did not record this statement as I assumed that the Prime Minister would not specially wish to have a general prognostication of this kind included in the minutes.’ Eden’s words on this subject do not appear in the official minutes of the Cabinet meeting of 6 December 1955. See TNA CAB/128/29/45.
26. TNA PREM 11/1935, Eden to Minister of Defence, 1 July 1956.
27. Ministry of Labour and National Service, National Service (1955), cmd 9608.
28. Nigel Fisher, Iain Macleod (1973), p. 114.
29. TNA CAB 130/120, Cabinet committee on national service, 23 July 1956.
30. TNA PREM 11/1935, ‘National Service’, note by Lord President of the Council, initialled by Salisbury, 10 January 1957.
31. TNA DEFE 7/808, minute to Chilver, illegible signature, 16 November 1956.
32. IWM 12505, T. J. Hunt, Midshipman’s Workbook, 20 January 1957.
33. Martin S. Navias, ‘Terminating Conscription? The British National Service Controversy 1955–56’, Journal of Contemporary History, 24 (1989), pp. 195–208.
34. TNA CAB 129/86/19, draft circulated by Sandys, 15 March 1957. The language of the final published paper was more measured.
35. Churchill College, Cambridge, papers of Duncan Sandys, 6/52, ‘How the Total of 375,000 for the Forces Was Reached’, apparently an aide memoire drafted for Sandys.
36. TNA CAB 129/86/41, ‘Future of National Service’, memorandum by the Minister of Labour and National Service, 5 April 1957.
37. Ministry of Labour and National Service, Call Up of Men to the Forces, 1957/60 (1957), cmd 175.
38. TNA LAB 6/694, ‘Run-down of National Service’, 31 July 1959, attached to note, Bond to Maston, 5 August 1959.
39. TNA PREM 11/2088, ‘National Service and Regular Recruiting’, Faviell, 26 June 1957, sent to Bishop on 8 July 1957 by Michael Fraser of the Conservative Research Department and apparently seen by the Prime Minister before being forwarded to officials in the Ministry of Defence.
40. TNA CAB 128/31/32, 9 April 1957.
41. Churchill College, Cambridge, papers of Duncan Sandys, 8/10, Sandys to Wigg, 27 November 1961.
42. Hansard, 7 June 1956. Macleod said that the deferment of scientists had been announced in 1954 and that the number involved had risen sharply, and was expected to reach 1,400 in 1956. See also Hansard, 29 October 1957. The indefinite deferment of teachers with first- and second-class degrees had been announced in July of that year.
43. TNA LAB 6/624, ‘National Service Acts: Programme of Medical Examinations’, circular signed S. Price, 20 March 1959.
44. TNA LAB 6/694, ‘Run-down of National Service’, 31 July 1959.
45. Ibid., minutes meeting, 28 April 1960, chaired by Martyn: ‘the judgement of doctors were affected by the standards applied by Service medical officers for retention in the services’.
46. Ibid., ‘Run-down of National Service’, 31 July 1959.
47. The Times, 13 August 1955.
48. TNA UGC 7/407, Master of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge to Murray of the UGC, 2 March 1956.
49. TNA LAB 6/694, letter from Neil Scott, Secretary to Nottingham University Careers and Appointments Board, to Whittington, Secretary to University Joint Recruitment Board, 22 October 1959.
50. TNA LAB 6/691, ‘History of the Deferment Arrangements for Science and Engineering Graduates’, 9 October 1960.
51. TNA LAB 6/694, ‘Problem of Call Up in 1960’, brief for minister, attached to note to Bond, illegible signature, 6 November 1959.
52. John Sainsbury, interview, 15 December 2011.
53. Churchill College, Cambridge, papers of Peter Jay, 4/1/1, Harold Walker to Jay, 2 May 1957.
54. IWM 2118, Peter Mayo, diary entry, 9 October 1956.
55. David Lodge, How Far Can You Go? (1980, this edn 1981), p. 50.
56. Antony Copley, diary entry, 4 November 1956.
57. TNA AIR 2/14647, various documents on this matter, particularly ‘Extract from Minutes of Principal Personnel Officers’ Committee’, 12 October 1960.
58. Trevor Royle, The Best Years of Their Lives (1986), p. 222.
59. TNA LAB 6/694, Maston to Drew of Ministry of Defence, proposed draft of joint statement by their ministers, 1 June 1960.
60. TNA PREM 11/3037, note for Prime Minister, ‘National Service Call Up’, illegible signature, 9 August 1960.
61. TNA LAB 6/694, working party on national service intakes, minutes of meeting, 10 August 1960.
62. The outline script for this programme (written by Michael Nelson) and various correspondence relating to it are to be found in TNA DEFE 7/1037.
63. TNA DEFE 7/1037, Ministry of Labour to Minister of Defence, signed J. H., 16 November 1960.
64. The figure of ‘9,000 to 10,000’ was given by Lord Shepherd in the House of Lords, Hansard (HOL), 27 February 1962. There were eighty-nine national service officers and 5,139 national service other ranks still serving in the army on 1 January 1963, by which point even the very last intake of national servicemen would have served for more than two years. Hansard, 31 January 1963, answer by Profumo.
65. Richard Vaughan, interview, 23 January 2013.
66. The Times, 13 May 1963.
67. Ibid., 12 August 1960.
68. NAMSA 2003-03-626, Peter Duffell, reel 1.
69. TNA LAB 6/741, Billing to Macdonald, 20 May 1976.
70. TNA LAB 6/694, ‘Run-down of National Service’, 31 July 1959.
71. IWMSA 26559, Leigh Parkes, reel 1.
72. Philip Naylor in Eric Pegg (ed.), The Royal Engineers and the National Service Years, 1939–1963: A Military and Social History (2002), pp. 413–19, at p. 415.
73. Letter to The Times from Peter Duffell, 8 October 1959.
74. TNA LAB 6/637, copy of statement made by Flynn.
75. Daily Express, 1 April 1960.
76. John Hoskyns, Just in Time: Inside the Thatcher Revolution (2000), p. 3.
77. Ministry of Defence, Report of the Advisory Committee on Recruiting (1958), cmd 545 (Grigg Report).
78. Stanley Price, ‘The Fucking Army’, unpublished chapter of autobiography and also his unperformed play, ‘A Sergeant’s Tale’, partly about Wavell. Stanley Price, interview, 17 May 2013.
79. Denis Healey, The Time of My Life (1989, this edn 1990), p. 256.
80. TNA WO 32/19447, draft letter from Stockwell, undated, and ‘Redundancy – AG’s Personal Letter’, note signed Hingston, 23 June 1960.
81. Resettlement Advisory Board, Progress Report, 1957–1959 (1959), cmd 789, pp. 6–8.
82. Hansard, 17 April 1957.
83. Discussion of 19 November 1947 on the ‘Supply and Training of Officers’, Journal of the Royal United Service Institution, February 1948, pp. 45–68, comments by John Wolfenden, p. 62.
84. TNA PREM 11/2088, note by Faviell, 26 June 1957.
85. TNA WO 384/40, ‘Abstract of Army Statistics’, March 1961.
86. IWM 3300, Brigadier T. Hart Dyke.
87. C. B. Otley, ‘Militarism and Militarization in the Public Schools, 1900–1972’, British Journal of Sociology, 29, 3 (1978), pp. 321–39. The proportion of public school bursars with military backgrounds seems to have peaked at 38 per cent in 1972.
88. Resettlement Advisory Board, Progress Report, p. 11.
89. John Drummond, Tainted by Experience: A Life in the Arts (2000, this edn 2001), p. 86.
90. Michael Holroyd in B. S. Johnson (ed.), All Bull: The National Servicemen (1973), pp. 136–48, at p. 146.
91. ‘A National Serviceman’, ‘The New Unemployables’, New Statesman, 15 June 1957.
92. Ibid., ‘Band Night’, 13 April 1957.
1. TNA PREM 11/201, Churchill to Jacob, 15 August 1952.
2. Oliver Franks, Britain and the Tide of World Affairs: The BBC Reith Lectures, 1954 (1955), p. 2.
3. Stephen Martin, ‘Did Your Country Need You? An Oral History of the National Service Experience in Britain, 1945–1963’ (PhD thesis, University of Wales, Lampeter, 1997), p. 57.
4. Ibid., p. 59.
5. A few young seamen on unofficial strike were called up in 1955. Revealingly The Times suggested that continued deferment should be granted only to men on official strikes. The Times, 28 June 1955.
6. TNA LAB 6/19, Smieton to Sutherland, 23 September 1957.
7. IWSMA 26731, Leonard Knowles, reel 2. Knowles returned from the air force to find that his employer would re-employ him only as an apprentice. He resigned and was helped only because an official of the Communist Electricians’ Union bent the rules to get him a union card, and hence the right to work.
8. Frank Myers, ‘British Trade Unions and the End of Conscription: The Tripartite Committee of 1950–56’, Journal of Contemporary History, 31, 3 (1996), pp. 509–20.
9. Quaker Meeting House, London, Friends Peace Committee Conscription Group, minutes, 30 November 1955, report by Eden Peacock: ‘70 per cent of the local Labour Parties voted against conscription and the vote in relation to its continuance was only carried by the large number of votes registered by the Trade Union blocs.’
10. John Drummond belonged to the small group of men who managed to join the navy, the small group who became officers, the small group who learned Russian and the small group, even within this small group, who became interpreters rather than merely translators. Not surprisingly, he had fond memories of national service and he also wrote of his politics: ‘I am a typical Butskellite of the post-war generation, and deeply resented the way in which the consensus politics of the middle years of the century fell victim to the Thatcherite need for confrontation.’ John Drummond, Tainted by Experience: A Life in the Arts (2000, this edn 2001), p. 81.
11. In discussion after a sermon by the Bishop of Croydon about ‘Christianity as opposed to Communism’, Lt General Sir Giffard Le Quesne Martel said: ‘Some of us have been trying to get rid of Communism in certain ways, such as among school teachers and so forth. We have studied this matter. In the olden days we should have cleared them out in five minutes and some of them would have been burnt at the stake, but in these days the Country is in a very timid state.’ Journal of the Royal United Services Institution, November 1953, p. 522.
12. TNA WO 32/16246, ‘Military Assistance in the Event of Civil Emergency’, undated and unsigned but apparently attached to note to the Secretary of State from a lieutenant colonel, with illegible signature, 28 January 1958 about a forthcoming bus strike: ‘Although the character of the Services has changed to some extent since 1926, mainly through the advent of National Service, there is no doubt that the reliability of the forces is beyond question. All emergencies dealt with in recent years have shown this quite clearly. Full employment and high wages have removed entirely the elements of sympathy that existed between troops and strikers in 1926, and apart from feelings of class or in some cases family loyalty, there will be few points of concord.’
13. TNA WO 32/15857, letter from W. H. Cuties, 9 September 1953, enclosing a cheque for £3,000 to be distributed to service charities from oil companies as a token of appreciation for help during a tanker drivers’ strike.
14. TNA WO 32/10994, Army Educational Advisory Board, 11 October 1951.
15. TNA DPP 6/31, Hill to Mathew, 25 March 1953, and Mathew’s reply, 27 March 1953.
16. Leslie Ives, A Musket for the King: The Trials and Tribulations of a National Serviceman 1949–1951 (Tavistock, 1999), p. 100.
17. Arnold Wesker, As Much as I Dare: An Autobiography (1932–1959) (1994), p. 295. See also Jimmy Reid, Reflections of a Clyde-built Man (1976), p. 21.
18. David French, Army, Empire, and Cold War: The British Army and Military Policy, 1945–1971 (Oxford, 2012), p. 156
19. Albert Balmer, A Cyprus Journey: Memoirs of National Service (2008), p. 80. NAM 2004-02-106, Simon Bendall, ‘Memoirs of a National Serviceman’. Bendall, a gunner in Germany, was issued with ‘what passed for anti-radiation clothing’ and trained in how to use a Geiger counter – supposedly so that he could tell his comrades whether it was safe to emerge from their shelters after a nuclear attack.
20. IWM, Trevor Royle, 66/211/1(1/92), Richard Storey.
21. Bernard Palmer in B. S. Johnson (ed.), All Bull: The National Servicemen (1973), pp. 149–58.
22. Anthony Hampshire, interview, 15 May 2013.
23. French, Army, Empire, and Cold War, p. 104.
24. NAMSA 2000-04-56, Canon Michael Perry, reel 2.
25. TNA WO 32/17243, ‘Interview of National Servicemen by Personnel Selection Officers’, signed Director of Manpower Planning, 21 December 1956.
26. TNA WO 32/15021, AORG, ‘Psychiatric Assessment of Borstal Entrants’, 11 August 1952.
27. Geoffrey Barnes, With the Dirty Half-hundred in Malaya: Memories of National Service, 1951–52 (Royston, 2001), p. 77.
28. IWMSA 11146, General Sir Michael Gray, reel 1.
29. Bruno Schroder, interviewed by Cathy Courtney, NLSC: City Lives, 1992, British Library Sound & Moving Image Catalogue reference C409/076, reel 1. © The British Library.
30. IWM, Royle, 66/211/1(1/51), Jim Laird. See also Scottish Paraplegic Association Journal, spring 1985.
31. Wesker, As Much as I Dare, p. 306.
32. TNA HO 344/28, Defence Committee, 8 December 1960.
33. Richard Pole, interviewed by Louise Brodie, Down to Earth: An Oral History of British Horticulture, 2006, British Library Sound & Moving Image Catalogue reference C1029/38, track 2. © The British Library.
34. TNA DEFE 7/808, meeting on future of national service, 4 October 1956.
35. Ministry of Defence, Report of the Advisory Committee on Recruiting (1958), cmd 545 (Grigg Report), paras 164 and 257.
36. David Lodge, Ginger, You’re Barmy (1962, this edn 1984), p. 216.
37. Karl Miller in Johnson (ed.), All Bull, pp. 256–66, at p. 257.
38. IWMSA 8423, Peter Burke.
39. Jim Riordan, Comrade Jim: The Spy Who Played for Spartak (2008), p. 28. Ronald Hyam, My Life in the Past (privately published, 2012).
40. David Morgan, ‘It Will Make a Man of You’: Notes on National Service, Masculinity and Autobiography (Manchester, 1987). Morgan does mention the relatively large number of grammar school boys in his intake and does say, though not in his published memoir, that he ‘vaguely’ understood Hednesford to be a camp for potential officers.
41. Jeremy Crang, The British Army and the People’s War, 1939–1945 (Manchester, 2000), p. 36.
42. Alan Sillitoe, Life Without Armour (1995), p. 38.
43. Michael Young, The Rise of the Meritocracy (1958, this edn 1963), p. 112.
44. TNA WO 163/107, Executive Committee of the Army Council, ‘Future of the Royal Pioneer Corps (Memorandum by AG for Consideration by the Executive Committee of the Army Council at a Future Meeting)’, 24 September 1948.
45. Peter Nichols, Feeling You’re Behind: An Autobiography (1984), p. 120.
46. TNA AIR 77/608, ‘Morale of the National Service Airman on Entry and During Initial Training’, January 1949. TNA WO 32/15604, ‘Retrospect: A Survey of Effects of National Service’, 1955. The first concerned only airmen, the second only soldiers. ‘Retrospect’ dealt with men who had actually changed jobs whereas the survey of airmen looked at their expectations for the future.
47. Martin, ‘Did Your Country Need You?’, p. 54.
48. Cited in Adrian Walker, A Country Regiment: 1st Battalion The Queen’s Own Royal West Kent Regiment, Malaya, 1951–1954 (2001), p. 24.
49. Ministry of Education, 15 to 18 (1959) (Crowther Report), II, pp. 158–65.
50. Two papers by economists try to assess the impact of national service on long-term earnings. In his ‘Long-term Effects of Conscription: Lessons from the UK’, http://www.sole-jole.org/820.pdf, Paolo Buonanno argues that conscription had a markedly negative effect. Professor Buonnano uses ‘a regression discontinuity approach to compare individuals born just after 1943 (affected) with those born just before 1943 (not affected)’. But no one born later than September 1939 and relatively few men born in the year before that were called up, so Buonnano is just comparing two different cohorts of post-conscription men. In ‘Above and Beyond the Call: Long-term Real Earnings Effects of British Male Military Conscription in the Post-war Years’, IZA Discussion Paper No. 5563, March 2011, Julien Grenet, Robert A. Hart and J. Elizabeth Roberts argue that national service did not have a demonstrable effect on earnings – though they are sympathetic to the idea that it might have provided men with economically useful experience. After complicated discussions of statistics, Hart et al. resort to qualitative assertions about the value of ‘teamwork’ and ‘leadership’.
51. IWM 15103, Bernard Parke. Parke was discharged from the RAF in 1958.
52. Anthony Heath and Clive Payne, ‘Twentieth Century Trend in Social Mobility in Britain’, Centre for Research into Elections and Social Trends, Working Paper 70 (1999), http://www.crest.ox.ac.uk.
53. TNA WO 32/15604, ‘Retrospect: A Survey of Effects of National Service’, 1955.
54. TNA AIR 20/12136, ‘Morale of the National Service Airman (an Account of an Investigation Covering the Period October 1947–September 1950)’, by A. S. Anthony, 24 July 1951.
55. TNA AIR 20/6457, ‘Attitudes of Serving Airmen: Report of a Working Party, Oct.–Dec. 1948’.
56. Essex University, Affluent Worker Survey, 204.
57. IWMSA 21582, David Davies, reel 4. Having left grammar school relatively early, Davies trained as a teacher after national service. The sociologist John Ferris, who had left a secondary modern school at fifteen, and the historian Patrick O’Brien both returned to education after their service.
58. IWM 15595, David Batterham, letter to parents, 2 March 1953.
59. Philip Bell, interview, 21 May 2013.
60. NAM 1995-01-164, Robert Gomme, ‘Korea: A Short Memoir’.
61. Abigail Wills, ‘Delinquency, Masculinity and Citizenship in England, 1950–1970’, Past and Present, 187 (2005), pp. 157–85.
62. Peter Duncumb, interview, 11 January 2013.
63. TNA AIR 20/6457, ‘Report of a Working Party on the Attitudes of Serving Airmen, Oct.–Dec. 1948’.
64. IWM 16584, Michael Longley, letter, 9 April 1949.
65. Nottingham, PRO, papers of Professor J. M. Lee, DD 393/1/1, letter from Graham Mottershaw to Lee, 12 November 1950.
66. NAM 2005-09-145, John Joseph Wellington.
67. It may be that national service had helped underwrite the networks that linked the upper reaches of business to the Conservative party in the 1970s. Brian Wyldbore-Smith, March Past: The Memoirs of a Major-General (Spenneymoor, 2001), p. 130. Wyldbore-Smith believed that raising money for the Conservative party was relatively easy in this decade because so many businessmen had done national service. The Conservative minister George Younger sometimes said that William Purves, the banker, had saved his life in Korea – though, in fact, the two men were not on the front line at the same time. David Torrance, George Younger: A Life Well Lived (Edinburgh, 2008), p. 31.
68. Cecil Parkinson, Right at the Centre: An Autobiography (1992), p. 63.
69. Douglas Hurd, Memoirs (2003), p. 64.
70. Peter Sharp in Peter Chambers and Amy Landreth (eds.), Called Up: The Personal Experiences of Sixteen National Servicemen, Told by Themselves (1955), pp. 68–81, at p. 81.
71. Tom Stacey in ibid., pp. 47–65.
72. IWMSA 21690, Paul Foot. © Whistledown, 2000.