Description
Book SynopsisPermission to speak, Sah!
In the aftermath of the Second World War, over two million men were conscripted to serve in Britain''s armed services. Some were sent abroad and watched their friends die in combat. Others remained in barracks and painted coal white. But despite delivering such varied experiences, National Service helped to shape the outlook of an entire generation of young British males.
Historian Dr Colin Shindler has interviewed a wide range of ex-conscripts, from all backgrounds, across all ranks, and spanning the entire fourteen years that peacetime conscription lasted, and captured their memories in this engrossing book. From them, we experience the tension of a postwar Berlin surrounded by Russians, the exotic heat and colour of Tripoli in 1948, the brief but intense flashpoint of the Suez Crisis, and the fear of the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya. But we also hear about the other end of the scale, the conscripts who didn''t make it outside the confines of t
Trade Review
The book bears witness to the sheer variety, cussedness, and inventiveness of humanity during the Cold War years -- Denis Judd * BBC History Magazine *
