I deferred my two years service in order to read Physics at Manchester University and now I was a BSc. There was no prospect of National Service coming to an end, in fact it went on into the early sixties, so it was about the first week in August that my call up papers arrived in the post. As well as instructions on where to report there was a travel warrant, to be exchanged for a rail ticket at the local station, and my first days' pay. This took the form of a postal order for four shillings ( twenty pence in today's money ). I still have it, why it was never cashed I'm not sure, it would have taken me to the pictures a couple of times ! As a student I had a grant, seemingly more generous than present day ones, since I was not in debt. Perhaps it was because this was the first money I actually felt I had earned, or would do once I was enlisted, that it was kept.
 

      The day to report was the 18th. and I started my journey to Catterick which is on the edge of the Yorkshire moors. Since I had a ticket I could have gone all the way by rail, two or three miles on the branch line and then a stopping train from Coaley junction to Gloucester. However that was only 15 miles so my parents took me by car to Gloucester and saw me off from the now demolished Eastgate LMS railway station. I don't remember the journey but I think the railway took us as far as Richmond where there were Army three ton lorries to deliver us to our destination which was No.7 Training Regiment, always known as 7TR. It transpired that we were to do a month of basic training here which was less than many other national service recruits did. After the basic training there would be trade training for the job you were chosen to do and then you got a posting to a working camp that could be anywhere in the world.
 

      In due course we were processed, our details recorded by a series of clerks and we signed the Official Secrets Act. ( Any information you may read here is already in the public domain and does not give anything new away. A visit to Bletchly Park will show this applies to ciphers and my work in the Royal Signals. )  Army clothing from head to toe that just about fitted us was issued and since we were not allowed to wear civvies while in a training regiment I think we posted our own clothes home. We acquired some "dog tags" to be worn at all times and "eating irons" that had to be taken to the mess hall and then washed up after each meal. Eventually we were also issued with a 303 Army rifle which was ours for the next month. We had to learn to dismantle and clean it with a "pull through" which was a piece of wadding pulled down the barrel with some thread. The rifles were chained and padlocked on a stand in the barrack room but there was definitely no ammunition!
 

      Obviously we had to make our own beds but there was a daily routine to be gone through. Each morning all the bedding was stripped off the bed and one blanket was folded over the mattress with hospital corners all round. The remainder was neatly folded into rectangles and laid down rather like a sandwich of sheets and blankets while the last blanket was wrapped round the lot which was placed on top of the pillow. Every bed with its "bedroll" at the head produced a neat looking room ready for inspection.  In all of the Signals billets I stopped in  sheets were provided but I gather this was not the case throughout the Army.
 

      The one thing I most remember about 7TR were the many periods of drill as we learnt to march in step, then change direction and finally present arms and the like for inspection parades and slow march if we should go to a funeral. There was a fairly private parade ground where all this went on and should it be wet there was no let up as there was also a drill shed, National Service men for the use of. It was only at the end of the first month when we were about to leave 7TR that we were put on a parade ground, across the road in 1TR, accessible to spectators for our passing out parade. There was a dodge to avoid anyone who was really bad at drill messing up this parade since someone had to stay behind and guard the barrack room. I avoided this job but I never considered myself as very good at drill.
 

      Interspersed with the parade ground drill were sessions of Physical Training and I was probably as fit as I ever have been at the end of this first month. The weather that summer was quite good because normally all recruits went on a route march to demonstrate they were fit. Splashed across the tabloid press was a story that somewhere a recruit had collapsed after such a march and the powers that be decided it was too hot to risk letting us march. Much to our joy it was cancelled. We could not escape other such joys as "bulling" our best boots. Hours of work to remove the wrinkles and produce a mirror finish on the toes of the boots. Blancoing our belts and other canvas webbing which had to be done nearly every time you wore the item. Blanco was a paste that was smeared on and allowed to dry but came off almost as easily. It could be topped up so many times and then it all needed to be scrubbed of and started again. The buckles on our belts had to be cleaned every day with brasso but we were very up to date and had "staybright" buttons that did not need attention.
 

      As a result of some selection process it was decreed that my army trade was to be a cipher mechanic and I would go to 1TR for the six months course it required. So after the passing out parade when our basic training was finished this is where I ended up. The length of the course was in part because access to any area concerned with ciphers was very restricted and in theory we were supposed to be able to do any technical job in a cipher center because no other mechanics were allowed in. The army was a bit paranoid about security and had the brilliant idea of renaming us Electronic Technicians so that no one would know we were anything to do with ciphers! In the first three months we were to learn some basic electric and electronic theory and then the lineman's job and the telemechanics work. A lineman had to install the telephone lines across country, then the exchange and finally the work station with the line terminal. We didn't actually go climbing poles to string lines but we had to make off forty way cables onto terminal blocks and connect up batteries to power the lines. Rather surprisingly this proved useful later on when the Suez crisis meant extra circuits had to be installed over a weekend.
 

      Most of the equipment we dealt with was based on the use of paper tape with punched holes in it. Five holes across the width of the tape could either be punched out or not and this represented the Murray code for each letter or character on a teleprinter keyboard. A teleprinter actually printed the text on a sheet of paper and sent signals down a line but there was also a printing reperforator that produced tape and auto heads that read tape. There were daily, weekly and monthly routines for maintaining all this equipment and we  conscientiously practiced all this.
 

      Many of us on the course were recent graduates because this was how the army thought we could best be used " looking after very complicated equipments". ( The quotation is from my discharge papers )  However one chap had just moved up from being a boy soldier ( and could choose which trade he tried for ) and he coped just as well as us with degrees. One of our number who had been at a public school was whisked off to the Officer Training school and we were a bit envious for a while till later events changed our minds. Both selections seemed to be typical of the way the professional Army mind worked.
 

      To get us into the Army way of things we had to do a guard duty every couple of weeks. This usually lasted twelve hours and you were divided up into three shifts so that you did two hours on guard and then four hours at the ready in the guard room. A subsequent visit to Catterick showed that 7TR and 1TR have vanished completely. There still remained an Army Education Center, not part of either, that allowed their previous positions to be found. In those days however at the entrance to the regimental compound there was a neatly kept grass bank with several bushes on it. The chap on guard here actually stood inside one large bush as a camouflage. The only thing was that the bush stood out like a sore thumb because there was a well worn path that went up to it and stopped there. I stood duty in it once and even more amusing to me was the duty officer coming up to the bush and talking to it to ascertain that I was awake. While we were there the IRA raided any army camp somewhere and I think broke into an armoury. For a while the number of people on guard were doubled up but the only "weapons" we ever had were pick handles.
 

      If you were unlucky you got a twenty four hour duty. I only ever pulled one and that meant being locked inside a huge armoury for the whole time. Despite the array of weapons on show we were only there as lookout and wandered round in our work clothes. If one was really unlucky you ended up doing a main guard on the gate and had to be immaculately turned out. Actually one extra person was called for the mounting parade and the smartest person was nominated "stick man" which meant they were just in reserve in case someone fell ill. One of our number decided to make a career out of this and worked really hard on his kit and was stick man at the next duty. It soon became clear to us that there was no point in competing with him and I don't think he did another guard duty.

This shows trainees and instructors, the names are as follows:-

Top  Cedric Hartle,  Jerry Fryer,  Peter Bayliss,  Jim Dawson,  Rhys Goodwin
Middle   Peter Ingham,  Brian Davis,  Alan Newton, Trevor Marsland, Andrew Nisbett, Leslie White
Bottom   Chris Brocksom, Bob Montgomery, Cpl Bill Leaney, Cpl Dennis Penny,
L/Cpl Mike Cooper, Peter Hickman.
Missing  L/Cpl Brailsford  and Tony Holt who took the picture.

      Our billet in 1TR was at the far reaches of the camp, the only things between us and the moors was a small NAFFI and then a football field .The billet consisted of two wooden barrack huts connected at one end by a brick built set of washing facilities so that the whole unit was U shaped. Each barrack had a partitioned off room for the corporal in charge and a coke stove for heating. Somewhere there was a boiler room that provided hot water for washing. We were woken at six thirty in the morning and the "first works parade" was on the road outside the billet at seven. Since this was the era of wet razors there was a dash first thing to get shaved. On more than one occasion when we arrived to perform our ablutions there was a poor soul shivering with cold trying to shave. It turned out that they were from the Officer Training school, had been out all night on the moors on an exercise, and were expected to be immaculate on parade in less than an hour. Ours being the nearest billet to the moors they made a bee line to it. Seeing them and learning about other "character building" aspects of their life was what changed our views about becoming a National Service commissioned officer.
 

      There was not much in the way of entertainment. I suppose we could have gone to a cinema somewhere in the camp but we never did. Perhaps getting up at six thirty made it a long day and it was too much effort. There was an Army Education center close by and some of us took evening courses there but I can't remember what I studied. Our barrack corporal had a radio and sometimes turned it up and left his door open so that we could listen. I can state with complete certainty that "Rose Marie I love you" was top of the pops most of that summer. The fact that we wore uniform all the time including boots, which few of us were used to, was another dampening factor. One day I started to get serious pains in one foot so It meant going on sick parade and a visit to the Medical Officer. We were marched to the sick bay and I think I hobbled behind. It turned out that I had Achilles bursitis an inflammation of the Achilles tendon caused by wearing boots and the only cure was not to wear them. I was issued with an "excused boots"  chit that lasted several weeks and was much admired by all and sundry including several NCOs who stopped me because I was not properly dressed.
 

      One of the army skills we had not been taught in 7TR was shooting and 1TR set about rectifying this. First of all we were introduced to the subject with a point 22 rifle on an indoor range and then we graduated to the then army standard .303 rifle. It had to be held firmly to the shoulder or the recoil could give you a nasty bruise. There was a test in which you had to get a minimum score and for this we went to a range up on the moors. By this time of year the weather was getting really cold. There had been notices that you could draw thermal underwear if you wanted, long johns, as they were called. Going on the moors for the best part of a day called for underwear, pajamas and anything else you could get under your battledress. Because it was important to our progress ( a poor score meant a retake ) it was quite a protracted event. First you took the allocated rifle and fired a clip of five rounds at a short range target. Hopefully this produced a "group" of five holes in the target not necessarily in the center but reasonably close together. You took this to an armourer who zeroed the rifle by making adjustments to the sight to compensate for your particular style. Then back to the full range and I passed the minimum score so all was well. Apart from the cold the thing I do remember was that there was no NAFFI or whatever up there on the moor so we were taken in groups to a near by private house and bought mugs of tea and slices of the most marvelous home made apple pie.
 

      We were actually considering getting our long johns because of the cold when a notice went up saying that because the cipher school at Catterick was going to be rebuilt we would be posted to Blacon camp at Chester to finish our training. It must have been just before Christmas. I think we had a weekend leave because I remember a cold miserable and slow journey back to Richmond and then the Three toner taking us all round the camp before reaching 1TR so that we only just made it back before the time stamped on our leave passes.The Christmas card I sent home however came from Chester.
 

      Chester was different again. It was a working camp where people who had finished their National Service came back to do their reserve training in the summer. At this time of year it was largely deserted and because the reservists were effectively civilians, not averse to complaining, the food was quite good. At weekends we could come and go as we pleased and no one cared what we wore when off duty. Unlike Catterick, daily newspapers could be bought at breakfast time. "We all bought the same one, the old Daily Dispatch I think, and when we got behind the locked doors of the cypher school our day started with a race to see who could finish the crossword first.

    We were learning about the various cypher machines we might encounter when we got into the field. Many will now have heard about the German Enigma codes that we were able to decipher during the war. At that time we knew nothing about this as it only started to come out in the 1970's but the Signals still had in use the TypeX,  a machine which worked on exactly the same principals. We were actually told that unlike the other machines in use the messages might be broken and it could only be considered secure for 48 hours. Wether any one else was looking at our traffic I don't know - perhaps we were the only people that knew it was not secure. Why it was kept in use when there were really secure alternatives is another puzzle.

    The other point that was put to us by the instructors was that a clever intelligence officer did not have to actually read our messages to gather information. For instance if the amount of traffic started to build up more than normal then it probably meant that something was being planned and the destination of the messages might give a clue as to what this was. In practice I was never aware that we took any account of this although I am told that others monitored the involvement of the French in Suez by this method.
 

      Our billet was a wooden building again, but a bit bigger than Catterick, so it had two stoves in it and no live in NCO. That winter was a really bitter one and the army fuel ration was not enough for the bleak weather. The only thing we could do was to draw up a roster and each evening two of us crept the length of the camp, to the fuel store, and stole an extra hod of coke. Despite our efforts when the fires burnt out during the night it was bitterly cold and one morning we woke up with hoar frost on the blankets round our faces where our breath had condensed and frozen. Part of our kit was a Poncho which was a rubberized sheet with a hole in the center to put your head through and use instead of a raincoat. The next night most of us added this to the blankets over us and this was a big mistake. In the middle of the night we woke up and discovered we were wet through. The moisture from our bodies had condensed on the underside of the waterproof sheet and dripped back on us.
 

      The proverbial army advice to recruits " If it moves salute it, if it doesn't whitewash it and never volunteer for anything" had more than a grain of sense in it. The whitewashing of piles of coal was legendary as an example of army bull but to the Sergeant Major it made perfect sense. As he walked by it was obvious if even a single lump of his precious coal had been nicked. On the other hand it was much more difficult to do anything about a pile of loose coke and our gleanings were never remarked upon.
 

      With our own clothes we could pass for civilians as the haircuts the army had given us at Catterick were replaced by more normal ones. On a Saturday afternoon we would go into Chester and look around, have a meal and end up going to the cinema. There was a Officer training establishment somewhere close, I think it was called Eaton Hall, and we used to see people from it. They were not in uniform but they all wore identical, presumably army issue, suits and you could spot them a mile off. Again I think we felt a bit sorry for them. During the week there was not a lot to do as it was a little way into the town so we went to the NAAFI and then early to bed. We would lie in bed and play word games, a favorite one was to start with a word and everyone tried to be first to follow it with an associated word perhaps....cat, mouse, trap, snare, drum, major, minor... punctuated by arguments about whether snare could follow trap and wasn't booby better and could twit follow booby. After all we were mainly a bunch of graduates !
 

      As it came towards the end of our course an exam had to be taken and if you passed there was even a small increase in pay. Our course instructors announced that two of them were due for demob and they would be replaced by the top two in this trade test. As it happened there were two married chaps in the group who did not want to go abroad while the rest of us were eager to see the world. We put our heads together and decided that all of us who were not married would fail to answer one of the questions and lo and behold when the results were announced they were just what we intended. We had no say in where we went and four of us were allocated to Cyprus. Others went to Malta, Kenya and I think Hong Kong so off we all went on a fortnight of embarkation leave.
 

      I had been at home about a week when a telegram arrived. "Report back at once" was the gist of it. There was a flap about a shortage of mechanics in Cyprus and the four of us due to go there were being called back. We arrived at Chester station at 1 am and transport was waiting for us. By noon the next day we were kitted out with new Khaki Drill uniforms, always known as KD, suitable for the coming Cypriot summer, had a medical and were on our way to London. This was much to the envy of people we had spent the night with who had been waiting three or four weks to start their journey to Cyprus.

    We spent the night at the "London assembly center" which was part of the Underground railway near Goodge Street station. No lift so we had to lug our kit all the way down and back up the next day. In the evening we went out and had a meal in a Lyons corner house and then went to a News theater. Next day we flew out of the UK on a Skyways "Crusader Service" flight. They then ran one round trip a week, out on Wednesday, back on Thursday but this was actually a special charter. Here we were treated to lunch before we boarded the plane which was a Hermese with about sixty passengers and two cabin staff . It left from Stanstead at about 2.30 in the afternoon and in a letter home I noted that we flew at heights between 7,000 and 14,000 feet at speeds of between 215 and 275 mph. No cooked food but tea and sandwiches were served.The first leg of the journey took seven hours to reach Malta and we landed at Luqa airport at 10.30 their time for perhaps a two hour break. We came off the aircraft in the dark to have a meal of fried liver, egg and chips in the airport and this was the first time I had ever set foot on foreign soil. I have a lasting impression of the smell of the cooking food, not unpleasant but definitely foreign.
 

      It was still dark as we took off on the second leg of our journey so I suppose we tried to sleep a bit since there were still nearly six hours to go. However we were well on the way to finding out what the army had in store for us for the next year and more.
 

           The story continues in Cyprus........plus I bought a camera and some of the pictures are included.