Friendships made amid tough days of training
SIR
FURTHER to Roger Davis’s letter on his National Service (TWWW, February 27), my experiences were similar in some respects.
I was conscripted on October 18, 1956. I travelled up to Hadrian’s Camp, Carlisle with two other lads from Stoke-on-trent who I met on Stoke Station.
We had five weeks of basic training which were exhausting, quite brutal and remarkably generated incredible friendships among the 20 disparate lads in our squad.
We then had eight weeks of trade training – the 11th Hussars was an armoured car regiment in those days. I also wanted to get a posting to Malaya but was told I would be staying with the 11th Hussars at Hadrian’s Camp.
One of my new friends who had just got engaged wanted to stay at Hadrian’s Camp. He suggested we asked the adjutant if we could swap postings. We were told definitely not.
Sadly, he therefore went off to Malaya after his trade training and was killed six weeks after arriving.
I enjoyed my two years with the 11th Hussars and 64 years later still share time with other Cherrypickers (the regiment’s nickname after an incident in the Peninsular War) on their website.
I still have several friends made in those two years so long ago. The 11th Hussars were sadly amalgamated in 1969, after 300 years of existence, with the 10th Hussars and then again in 1992 to form the present Regiment, The King’s Hussars.
National Service didn’t suit everybody but virtually all my peer group enjoyed those two unusual years.
I was demobbed on a Tuesday in 1958 (all NS men were demobbed on a Tuesday) and went to LSE on the Thursday of the same week.
During my two years in Carlisle I would hitchhike home the 150 miles south to Stoke-on-trent – no motorways in those days – for my odd 36 or 48-hour leaves.
Then during the three years at university in London, I would hitchhike the 150 miles north to Stoke-on-trent again. Happy days, all five years.
PETER WALKER ENDON
■ Peter is the author of A Cherrypicker Conscript - A Squaddie’s Tale.
■ If you have National Service memories to share, send them to waywewere@thesentinel.co.uk