My father, Raymond Cooper, was called up for National Service in the early fifties. He was a medical orderly in the RAMC and was posted to Hong Kong. It helped him a decade later when he joined the police force - exchanging khaki for blue uniform!

As C D said "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times"... Yet , I wouldn't have missed it...Demobbed Sat 11th May 1963...

One year training and a second year spent in Cyprus or in Bahrain. It was good to do something entirely different and see the World for a bit, after a 5 year engineering apprenticeship. I joined the RAF at 21 after being deferred to complete my apprenticeship.

Thanks to the British Forces.

Bring it back, it never did any harm!

Thanks for this clip.

For some of us ,it’s 70 years on.

I was sent to Malaya during the so called emergency. I wouldn't wish that on anybody! At least I survived. Many didn't!

I joined the Royal Signals Jan 02 1963. I spent '63 at Catterick (Basic) and then Loughborough - Training. I went to West Germany in Jan 64 and I recall the banter with the last couple of Natio's, as they tended to be called, at our camp. They soon left.

The opening picture is definitely not of post-war National Servicemen, the soldiers are probably war-time conscripts.

Should bring it back and teach the youth some discipline

For me it was 1956/58 RAMC 14th Field Ambulance Essen Germany waste of time but enjoyed it How we were going to look after wounded with the kit we'd got don't know but there we were playing soldiers against the Russian threat My guess was the Russians had less than we had !!

Is that 6 RTR at 0.50? My old man's first regiment before amalgamating with the 3rd RTR at Munster and it does look like a German barracks - am I right anyone? I was a sprog there went to school on the Bedford bus every morning

🎉looks to be welsh Guards trained soldier outside the clothing store at Guards Depot, Caterham, evidencing his fatigues, 1950s era.

Why is there no medal for National Service?

Remembering...shouldn't that be Commemorating National Service? I certainly think so, given the numbers of young men who were press-ganged into military service and died in nasty, unnecessary conflicts in Malaya, Korea, Africa and other far-flung places -- mainly, to prop up a dying British empire, whose rulers hadn't then come to terms with the fact that their time as lords and masters was up! And this occurred during what was supposed to be 'peace time', the victory bought about by the sacrifice of the wartime generation like my father, conscripted into the British army from February 1940 until October 1946. As he used to often comment, if the what the British gained in 1945 was a victory, then what the hell would defeat have been like!