In 1970, 10 years on from the last National Service callup, long hair and less discipline were the order of the day. Cold War tension continued but, on the home front, three in five adults favoured the return of National Service. The last callup was remembered as having straightened out the ‘non-conforming elements’, wrote Alan Road in the Observer on 18 November 1970, serving as ‘a kind of vast borstal institution for those whose only crime was youth’.
Oldies were keen. Strangely, so were 43% of 16 to 24-year-olds, according to one poll. But most conscripts saw little action and were subjected instead to what British journalist Gilbert Harding summed up at the time as ‘a tedious, squalid and regimented discharge of an imaginary duty… They learned to keep in step, both literally and metaphorically, and to salute anything that moved and to paint anything that didn’t.’
After three years deferment, Fred Turner, 21, was the last National Serviceman to be called up. He reported for a two-year tour of duty on 17 November 1960. He recalls feeling ‘browned off’. He’d got married only a week before the conscript letter arrived. His wife, left with £5 a week to bring up their baby, had to claim National Assistance.
Turner, who worked as a cook, is invited to go and visit his military haunts for the 10-year anniversary, including the School of Army Catering. Here, eclairs and flans have replaced semolina and fried eggs.
Some National Servicemen ‘won real medals and 350 died on active service… Most of these were killed in Korea fighting with the UN force to defend a country that many of them had never heard about in their school geography lessons… Others died in Malaya, Kenya or Cyprus defending they weren’t quite sure what.’
Fred Turner had been made to stay on for an extra six months because the Army couldn’t manage without National Servicemen. ‘Of course John Profumo, then Minister for War, put it a different way to parliament,’ blaming ‘international tension’ and the ‘transition to an all-Regular Army.’ For Turner, the extra stint For Turner, National Service ‘was a bombshell’. As for other conscripts, ‘today surprisingly few seem to regret it’.
