The Best Years of Their Lives - The National Service Experience 1945-63

London, United Kingdom: Michael Joseph Ltd. Very Good/Very Good. 1987. First Edition. Hard Cover. 8vo 0718124596 Dust jacket complete, unclipped. Some fading. Cloth boards with gilt titling on spine. Previous owner's stamp on ffep. Photographs / plates.305 pages clean and tight. Memories of National Service experiences unite some two million individuals who, between 1945 and 1963, were forced to abandon their civilian existences and spend up to two years serving as soldiers, sailors and airmen in the colours of their monarch. Too young to vote, but old enough to kill and be killed, these legions of fresh-faced eighteen-year-olds were conscripted in the wake of the Second World War to oversee the dismantling of an empire and to garrison West Germany in the lowered temperatures of the Cold War. They served at home and some of them served abroad in Europe, the Middle East and the Far East. Many saw action, in Korea and Malaya, but whatever their experiences they all remember vividly the bull and the drill, the gaiters and the webbing, the rasp of harsh leather on their ankles at the end of the day's route march. Trevor Royle records the experiences in common to this unique cross-section of British society, evoking the good times and the bad. He has interviewed scores of ex-National Servicemen from all over the country and welded their impressions, their emotions and their anecdotes into a fascinating social history that will be of interest to all but especially the generation who were supposed to be having the best years of their lives. .