Permission to speak Sah! In the aftermath of the Second World War over two million men were conscripted to serve in Britains armed services. Some were sent abroad & watched their friends die in combat. Others remained in barracks & painted coal white. But despite delivering such varied experiences National Service helped to shape the outlook of an entire generation of young British males. To mark the 50th anniversary of the end of National Service historian Dr Colin Shindler has interviewed ex-conscripts from all backgrounds & ranks spanning the entire period of peacetime conscription & captured their memories in this engrossing book. From them we experience the tension of a postwar Berlin surrounded by Russians the exotic heat & colour of Tripoli in 1948 the brief but intense flashpoint of the Suez Crisis & the fear of the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya. But we also hear about the other end of the scale the conscripts who didnt make it outside the confines of their barracks or in one case beyond his home town. In National Service we see the changing face of British society across these pivotal years which spans everything from the coronation of Elizabeth II to the birth of rock n roll to the beginning of the end of the Empire. The stories within these pages are fascinating. & they deserve to be told before they are lost forever.