Entry and training – How does one end up in the National Service? Soon after my eighteenth birthday in December 1950, I received a brown envelope marked OHMS ordering me to report to a Drill Hall in Blackheath for a medical examination. Without question I attended and after an interview, a sight and hearing test, finally dropping my trousers to be poked with a swagger stick and told to cough (I did not ask where the stick had been before my turn), the result was Passed A1. Then it was back to work as a Trainee Surveyor on a building site. [Read more…]