National service

OUT OF HOURS BULLY'S TRUCKSTOP BAR (INTERACTIVE)
61

bazza123:
How do you know they hated it and couldn’t wait to be de-mobbed? True they hated the war, but I’m not sure thy generally all hated the forces themselves. My grandad and my other grans partner were both called up; they didn’t both hate it, in fact they have some fond memories of certain times during the war. I’m proud of what they did, my grandad used to wear his medals with pride and tell stories of his time in. He considered going for his three stripes but in the end became a civilian once more. He didn’t hate it.

My nanna was a Land Army girl, hard work but she didn’t hate it either.

It wasn’t British political ideology or anything else, people soon saw what the fascists were like, and wanted to do their bit. I’m immensely proud of what my forefathers did, going right back to my great grandads etc. A lot of the service records from WW2 are still secret, I’d love to know when they are going to be released.

I’m only going by experience of firstly what I was told by my grandmother and mother about my Grandfather who joined up well before the start of WW2 because he knew where things would end up with Germany before the British government did,and my own father who was conscripted and then posted in Italy and what became Yugoslavia during the last months and shortly after,and many of those who I worked with and my parents’ friends who I knew during the 1970’s/early 80’s who were also WW2 vets and some relatives who were called up under the old national service system after that.

Most of those held exactly the same views concerning the difference between career soldiers,who accept army life by choice,as opposed to most WW2 volunteers/conscripts who were only there because they had to be and couldn’t wait to be de mobbed back into civilian life as soon as the war with Germany was all over.

In the case of my father he was about to be shipped directly from Italy to Palestine ironically to be involved in the campaign against,what was eventually to be,the IDF,made up of those who he’d been fighting to help to save previously.Luckily for him his de mob number came up before he was shipped out and he was shipped home instead to get back to civilian life.He also then had a similar lucky escape in the case of being called up for Korea shortly after that and having the papers cancelled because of his job involving MOD engineering sub contract work at the time.

In none of those cases did they describe their experiences as involving those Falklands type attitudes to war shown by the career type military and in all those cases they saw having to be involved in military life as a negative thing and their return to ‘civvy street’ as soon as possible as a positive one.Certainly in the case of my grandfather and father having had no further wish to be involved in anything connected to their military service which included all their old military de mob references and medals being put away and just kept amongst the family photos where they rest to this day.

Which just leaves the question what if the Germans and the Austrians had been left alone to sort out their small local problem with the Serb Nationalists instead of the Government and the Professional Army we had before the start of hostilities in 1914 getting their way,based on very similar attitudes to war that existed in the early 1980’s in the case of the Falklands.In which case WW1,and the resulting circumstances which then led to WW2,would probably never have happened. :bulb:

62

Yes they should bring back NS & why is it only the army that is mentioned what about the RAF or Navy :question:

We had it year ago you could defer if you had an apprenticeship

A lot of other countries still have this Switzerland included

63

Don’t think it would have done me no good.

64

animal:
Yes they should bring back NS & why is it only the army that is mentioned what about the RAF or Navy :question:

We had it year ago you could defer if you had an apprenticeship

A lot of other countries still have this Switzerland included

The difference is like the Israeli IDF the Swiss army is just a national defensive force.

As for having conscription here it would probably be a case of just change the words of this from Vietnam To Afghanistan. :bulb:

youtube.com/watch?v=vpfTKcm8lxo

65

This is my opinion. I think anyone who joins the Forces, be it through their own choice or NS, have to want to give it a go. As has already been said, if someone doesn’t want to do it, enforcing discipline will not work. I loved every minute of my 12 years, posted to places i just could never have afforded to go to on holiday. I’ve made life long friends, and while i may not see em for long periods of time, when i do, we just pick up on the last conversation we had last time. I trust them with my life, never had that before i joined or since i left. Would i do it again? ■■■■ yes, do i miss it? Hell yea.
BUT i chose to join, forcing people to join, wouldn’t always work. Some would get on with it, some wouldn’t. I’m a firm believer that discipline begins at home, and it is not for teachers, coppers, judges or anyone else to do what some parents are incapable of doing.
As for Ex forces in jail. My mum works at a prison up north as a counsellor, and PTSD practioner. Not one of the lads she helps have had any trouble with the police before they joined up, or any discipline issues while they were in.

66

My specific interest is in medieval military history, particularly revolving around the evolution of the longbow & into the era when it transitioned into the musket.

I’m only interested in truth that can be proven, not in propaganda that has been embellished with the passage of time.

Over the years I’ve spoken at great length with more than a few WW2 combat veterans, I have the bar bills & tape recordings to prove it.

The thing that strikes me, the common theme that runs through all of them, is how much they hate war & just how reluctant they are to open up & talk about it.

I reckon these old folk who parade up & down the High St on the 11th day, with a chest full of medals, were mostly potato peelers & wages clerks. The ones that actually got up close & personal with the enemy are all too fubar’d to celebrate.

Should we send our children to the army to make them men?

War is unnatural, it goes against the laws of nature. The laws of nature dictate that a son shall bury his father, war turns that around & dictates that a father shall bury his son.

If you wish your sons to experience national service, then you don’t need a rule change to make that happen. Simply raise your children till the age of 16, then kick them into the nearest recruiting office.

Why do you need your Government to make it compulsory?

67

degsy4wheels:
This is my opinion. I think anyone who joins the Forces, be it through their own choice or NS, have to want to give it a go. As has already been said, if someone doesn’t want to do it, enforcing discipline will not work. I loved every minute of my 12 years, posted to places i just could never have afforded to go to on holiday. I’ve made life long friends, and while i may not see em for long periods of time, when i do, we just pick up on the last conversation we had last time. I trust them with my life, never had that before i joined or since i left. Would i do it again? [zb] yes, do i miss it? Hell yea.
BUT i chose to join, forcing people to join, wouldn’t always work. Some would get on with it, some wouldn’t. I’m a firm believer that discipline begins at home, and it is not for teachers, coppers, judges or anyone else to do what some parents are incapable of doing.
As for Ex forces in jail. My mum works at a prison up north as a counsellor, and PTSD practioner. Not one of the lads she helps have had any trouble with the police before they joined up, or any discipline issues while they were in.

It’s probably a complex issue with lots of different often contradictory aspects to it.Which can probably be seperated into those in a specialised minority who join up by choice and who enjoy military life.

Then there’s the even smaller minority in those who are conscripted but then also find that they are happy with military life.

Then there are those in the massive majority who are conscripted and who don’t like military life and military regime whatsoever but are still happy to go in the case of doing what’s right because it has to be done and then get back to civilian life ASAP when the crisis is over.

It’s that latter type which defines how and when conscription can be justified IE times of national emergency when those who would never choose to be in the military decide that it’s a matter of doing what’s right.The results of what happened in the case of Vietnam shows what happens when any government abuses that by conscripting people in the wrong circumstances or even worse in an unjustified war.I’m betting that the same would probably apply in modern times in cases like the Falklands or Afghanistan while as I’ve said if we’d have had a more informed less compliant public in 1914,more like that of 1960’s America,history might have turned out very differently.

Therefore when everything is taken into account the idea of a compliant professional unquestioning forces that wants to be there is probably a bad thing in general that can lead to bad foreign policy decisions.

As opposed to a forces that doesn’t want to be there and would rather be at home but has to be for reasons of national security/emergency/defence like the IDF or Britain’s WW2 forces ).IE a forces based on National Service and Conscription would probably be a better idea.‘But’ with extremely strong reservations in regards to it’s use.Which would probably have the benefit of producing better government foreign policy decisions because every time forces are committed the public would need to be totally convinced of the justification for doing so.Unlike the situation now whereby those decisions can be easily signed off on the basis that it’s not everyone’s/ most people’s family who’ll be put in the firing line as a result. :bulb:

68

Chas:
My specific interest is in medieval military history, particularly revolving around the evolution of the longbow & into the era when it transitioned into the musket.

I’m only interested in truth that can be proven, not in propaganda that has been embellished with the passage of time.

Over the years I’ve spoken at great length with more than a few WW2 combat veterans, I have the bar bills & tape recordings to prove it.

The thing that strikes me, the common theme that runs through all of them, is how much they hate war & just how reluctant they are to open up & talk about it.

I reckon these old folk who parade up & down the High St on the 11th day, with a chest full of medals, were mostly potato peelers & wages clerks. The ones that actually got up close & personal with the enemy are all too fubar’d to celebrate.

Should we send our children to the army to make them men?

War is unnatural, it goes against the laws of nature. The laws of nature dictate that a son shall bury his father, war turns that around & dictates that a father shall bury his son.

^ This.That’s exactly my experience of the WW2 generation.

69

We’re not talking about war per se, but about being in the forces. Chas why don’t you go up to those wearing an infantry reg’ cap badge and ask If they were a potato peeler or not.

Your assertion that none of them want to talk about it is not true in my experience.

70

Chas:
I reckon these old folk who parade up & down the High St on the 11th day, with a chest full of medals, were mostly potato peelers & wages clerks. The ones that actually got up close & personal with the enemy are all too fubar’d to celebrate

Chas, I agree with most of your post, apart from this bit.

I find it disrespectful and a quite a generalisation.
Of course there’ll have been bullshitters and flakes in with the rest but to label those that turn out on 11.11 as glory boys misses the point imho.

It’s not about showing off their medals or celebrating war, it is, as the name suggests, about remembrance.
I know there are deeper connotations associated with the poppy but not, I would say by your average squaddie/matelot/penguin.

My maternal Grandfather was a Bootneck. He was a landing craft driver at Gold beach on D Day. It was sunk and most of his unit killed. He spent the rest of the day as a stretcher bearer.
He spoke to no one about the war for decades. Not my Nanna or his kids.

It was my persistent curiosity with it that led him to relate, after loosening up with scotch, only in part some of what he witnessed.

Bear in mind PTSD hadn’t been identified then and there was no counselling as there is now.

He died in '05.

A sad day for us. Later my family found 2 poems he’d Written.
One about his dog and one about D Day.

I defy you to read it and still maintain your position on the men and women that parade, as he did while wearing his own medals and those of his father.

This is one of the MEN that shaped me and my views of the stupidity of war.

71

Goaty:

Chas:
I reckon these old folk who parade up & down the High St on the 11th day, with a chest full of medals, were mostly potato peelers & wages clerks. The ones that actually got up close & personal with the enemy are all too fubar’d to celebrate

Chas, I agree with most of your post, apart from this bit.

I find it disrespectful and a quite a generalisation.
Of course there’ll have been bullshitters and flakes in with the rest but to label those that turn out on 11.11 as glory boys misses the point imho.

It’s not about showing off their medals or celebrating war, it is, as the name suggests, about remembrance.
I know there are deeper connotations associated with the poppy but not, I would say by your average squaddie/matelot/penguin.

My maternal Grandfather was a Bootneck. He was a landing craft driver at Gold beach on D Day. It was sunk and most of his unit killed. He spent the rest of the day as a stretcher bearer.
He spoke to no one about the war for decades. Not my Nanna or his kids.

It was my persistent curiosity with it that led him to relate, after loosening up with scotch, only in part some of what he witnessed.

Bear in mind PTSD hadn’t been identified then and there was no counselling as there is now.

He died in '05.

A sad day for us. Later my family found 2 poems he’d Written.
One about his dog and one about D Day.

I defy you to read it and still maintain your position on the men and women that parade, as he did while wearing his own medals and those of his father.

This is one of the MEN that shaped me and my views of the stupidity of war.

Firstly I’d guess that Chas was describing what he’d been told by the people in question,which from experience,is/was a common view,rightly or wrongly held amongst many/most conscripts non career soldiers usually meant in the best intentions of metaphorically speaking not literally.In keeping with that,in the case of my own father at least,his attitude to the remembrance parades went along those lines in saying he’d had enough of having to do all the marching and bs of military life when he was in and certainly wasn’t going to do it back in civilian life.That didn’t mean that he didn’t take an interest in the proceedings in remembrance of those who didn’t survive the war.I think it’s that type of view which is one of those defining differences between career soldiers who accept and like everything about military life as opposed to conscripts who often don’t.

As for PTSD knowing some of the things which those involved saw and had to be involved with ( in my father’s case at least armoured warfare often at combat recovery level and all the horrors that go with that ) it’s probably a state of mind more than anything else in that putting it all out of mind and forgetting it as much as possible is the body’s natural defence against it.Which probably explains why those who’ve been in and/or seen the worst aspects of war rightly prefer to just forget it rather than remember it.One thing which I’ll always remember is that with all the horrors of such work the thing that he found hardest to accept was seeing an old hand and good mate who’d fought his way from North Africa through Italy and survived to celebrate VE day there and who’d showed him the ropes during those last stage of the war,drive a tank transporter over a an anti tank mine laid by the Yugoslavs in their fight to take North Eastern Italy,when moving out at the end of it all.

72

It’s a theme that I find is common in most WW2 veterans who actually got up close & personal with the enemy.

I can talk for hours with a genuine veteran, I’m far more interested in their supposedly mundane experiences than the explosive madness of full on combat.

You can spend hours talking about how difficult it was to sweep the spent casings out of a Lancaster, then the head slumps & you get told their thoughts as they’re hosepiping out the remains of the rear gunner, just like they’re back there at that time.

You quickly get the feeling that the worst bits are firmly held behind double locked doors, set deep inside their minds. I remember one old chap begging me never to let his family know about the German he shot just outside a village in France, he must’ve killed 100’s in his 2 years of war, yet this one account mattered to him. I promised him that the tape would be erased after I’d transcribed the words to paper & I would never put his name against them.

He was very worried that his family would judge him against this one act.

I stand by my belief that most of those parading their pumped up chest full of medals on the 11th day were mostly potato peelers & wages clerks. The majority of our fighting men were left near to the battlefield, the few that came home don’t want to go back there, not even in their thoughts.

73

Something I don’t read in my history books, yet has become apparent from talking with the blokes on the ground. Is that the allied invasion of France on D day might have been made easier by the fact that the regular German army (the Werhmacht) was busy fighting the SS at the time.

I have several accounts from ‘puzzled’ veterans, including one Paratrooper who secretly kept a diary (much frowned upon) which mentions this.

I remember one chap, who drove a Bren carrier through France & into Germany, who told me about the problem they had with POW’s, they soon became aware that they had to keep the regulars separate from the SS. There was no trouble from the POW’s unless they did this?

74

Something else that I don’t read in my history books . . . :

An explosives & demolitions engineer, was seconded to an elite Commando unit that was tasked with the first clearance of some of the French towns & villages ahead of the major push.

“They’d check & clear out the towns of any remaining Germans & then I’d blow the vault of the local Bank so we could get at the notes”.

This I feel, is a subject that an amateur historian could spend a lifetime exploring, yet never get to the bottom of.

75

Chas:
I stand by my belief that most of those parading their pumped up chest full of medals on the 11th day were mostly potato peelers & wages clerks.

I’m sorry fella but I still don’t agree with this.

76

bazza123:

Chas:
I stand by my belief that most of those parading their pumped up chest full of medals on the 11th day were mostly potato peelers & wages clerks.

I’m sorry fella but I still don’t agree with this.

Me either. To me it’s a cheap shot. A shame as I can relate to the rest of Chas’ content. :unamused:

77

Goaty:

bazza123:

Chas:
I stand by my belief that most of those parading their pumped up chest full of medals on the 11th day were mostly potato peelers & wages clerks.

I’m sorry fella but I still don’t agree with this.

Me either. To me it’s a cheap shot. A shame as I can relate to the rest of Chas’ content. :unamused:

I think Chas might just be confusing what he might have been told that was meant in a metaphorical sense and which seperates,the the type of thinking,as I’ve described,which often exists amongst those,especially ex conscripts,who wouldn’t want to remember wartime casualties by taking part in a military type gathering,from those who choose to do so. :bulb:

In the same way that I think the reference to the idea that things having might have seemed easier than expected in ‘some’ cases during the invasion of France,possibly being a result of fighting between German forces,was probably a result of confused wishful thinking amongst allied forces at the time,than any real possibility of that.

Everything which I’ve been told by those who had anything to do with the war at the time was that the German forces of WW2 were probably one of the most formidable,disciplined,fanatical,indoctrinated fighting groups all acting as one,in history.In the case of any of the fighting in Normandy being easier than expected that would more likely have been a result of confusion amongst the German high command as to what was happening and where,and Allied air superiority neutralising the German armoured forces before they had a chance to organise the type of counter attack which they were more than capable of considering their superiority in weaponry on the ground.

78

Carryfast:
I think Chas might just be confusing what he might have been told that was meant in a metaphorical sense and which seperates,the the type of thinking,as I’ve described,which often exists amongst those,especially ex conscripts,who wouldn’t want to remember wartime casualties by taking part in a military type gathering,from those who choose to do so. :bulb:

As happens in todays armed forces, there was an imbalance, a massive imbalance, of support troops against frontline fighting troops. I’m led to believe by the surviving frontline troops that they find it astonishing that anyone who experienced heavy fighting is readily willing & able to don the veterans uniform of Blazer, Beret & a chest full of medals to parade down the High St.

They, not me, describe such ‘veterans’ as potato peelers, wages clerks, ammo box shifters, camp guards, Batmen etc.

What are the numbers of the average turnout at a local war memorial? I appreciate it gets less every year but it was only EVER less than 40% of all the veterans in the area. Historically, the numbers have changed significantly in the years since the 50’s, some years it’s up & some years it’s down. I feel the numbers are affected by the emotional fashions of the time & NOT a true reflection of veterans remembering their fallen comrades.

Carryfast:
In the same way that I think the reference to the idea that things having might have seemed easier than expected in ‘some’ cases during the invasion of France,possibly being a result of fighting between German forces,was probably a result of confused wishful thinking amongst allied forces at the time,than any real possibility of that.

Everything which I’ve been told by those who had anything to do with the war at the time was that the German forces of WW2 were probably one of the most formidable,disciplined,fanatical,indoctrinated fighting groups all acting as one,in history.In the case of any of the fighting in Normandy being easier than expected that would more likely have been a result of confusion amongst the German high command as to what was happening and where,and Allied air superiority neutralising the German armoured forces before they had a chance to organise the type of counter attack which they were more than capable of considering their superiority in weaponry on the ground.

I think you’re making the common mistake of bundling the SS in with the Wehrmacht. It was the SS who were the fanatical & indoctrinated, the Wehrmacht were just every day blokes thrust into the madness of war, just like your Grandad.

It’s an oxymoron to think that the German army as a whole were taken by surprise on D Day, it was the very thing that they were prepared & waiting for !

I’ve never read it in my history books, but I’m sure that the Werhmacht had fallen out & turned against the SS prior to D Day.

79

No. Just finished 34 years service in HM Forces and I can tell you that it would not work in the modern era. I have watched standards drop and the overall management of discipline change over the last ten years.

In my fathers day, when conscription was mandatory, the sort of physical discipline required to bring all to a common base level of “team player” is now frowned upon in our touchy feely modern world. All you would be doing is moving the problem from the street into HM Forces. I do believe its the lack of discipline in the family and educational environments which is fundamentally to blame for the poor personal standards of modern youth and the general lack of respect for any form of authority.

Rant over.

80

How about no to national service but the minority that are happy to cream in the social and benefits and have to complete one interview a week or whatever it is(which they balls up cause they have no interest in getting a job) then go back to the job centre to collect there cheque and the process begins again have a choice after say 6 months, either find a job or are made to join the forces for 2 years. I bet the ones who don’t want to work soon find themselfs something job done.