National Service - Earning the Pips: Reflections on Officer Selection - 1947-1963

Between 1947 and 1963, every able-bodied male in Britain turned seventeen was required by Act of Parliament to do two years' service in one of the Armed Forces (with the inevitable variations and exceptions).

In the course of those fifteen years, over two and a half million young men were drafted into uniform of one colour or another. Seventy-five per cent found themselves in the Army. Human nature being what it is, that meant that a sizeable proportion or them formed, or cherished, the amb...