National Service

[Audrine]

Loved that photo Hugh, quite priceless.

[Hugh]

Glad they have stopped building warships out of alloy and returned to steel. The alloy gave no protection for the crew inside. There was 12 holes just like them around where I stood, only one of my missile crew got hurt. Our ship got a nick named HMS Pepper pot

[Michael Rolls]

  As for the situation postwar, as much as we may deny it, Russia won the war in Europe with sideshow assistance by the Western allies. We were on the winning side but the result was very much a Phyrric victory for us; how we managed to pay for and sustain 55,000 troops in Germany down the ensuing years along with a nuclear deterrent eludes me.  In hindsight, we should have not subscribed so much to American hysteria about the so called Russian threat but perhaps endeavoured more to accommodate them.  In my unworthy way, I am old enough to have done my NS and then spent twenty years in the reserves and TA training with Rhine army and no, I admit I never heard a shot fired in anger!

'So called'? Try telling that to the folk of Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Romania, East Germany, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Albania. Without the counter threat of NATO where do you think Russian expansion would have stopped. Accommodate them? Had Austria fallen -as it might have done - where would have been next?
Mike

[Johned]

The Russians agreed to leave Austria simultaneously with the withdrawal of British troops in 1954 which they did.

[Michael Rolls]

Ask yourself why. I still can't understand your use of the phrase 'so-called threat'. It was real - remember the Berlin Airlift?
Mike

[Johned]

The allies agreed at the Yalta Conference on a line where the Western allies would stop and the Soviets could never understand how this could be interpreted such that the former would end up 160 miles to the East of that line in Berlin where they much resented our presence as they fought over the place.  As for the countries which later constituted the Eastern bloc and later the Warsaw Pact, they were liberated by the Soviets and thus came into their sphere of influence much though the West may have regretted the fact.  And yes I know all about the Berlin Airlift and the fact British rations were cut to feed the German population who were on the verge of starvation.  One has to look at the "realpolitik" of the time; were we to continue the war but against the Soviets to stop them coming even further West than they did?  Montgomery for a short while maintained intact some German defeated formations with their weapons in case the Russians exceeded the limit of the demarcation lines; thankfully they did not.  From numerous conversations with lads on the spot, I think Monty would have been on his own as the former by 1945 had had enough and just wanted to get home!

[Michael Rolls]

Still can't understand your use of the phrase 'so called'. Given Stalin's record any failure to regard the possibility of a Soviet threat as real would have been criminal. A chap who worked for me in the 60s had been a Captain in the Hungarian Amy - managed to escape in 56; a number of his colleagues were rounded up by the Soviets and shot. Some liberators!
Mike

[crabbyob]

Mike you must also remember what uniform the Hungarians were wearing in 45
they werent just shooting Russians they were also shooting our troops... if you play with the devil expect to get dirty....

[Michael Rolls]

Crabbyob
Yes, I do realise that. 1956 demonstrated (if it needed to be demonstrated) how little there was to choose between Nazi Germany and the USSR. I remember how Stalin's death in 1953 led many folk to assume that relations with Moscow would improve - some hopes. 1956 was, after all, eleven years since the end of WW2, and as a demonstration of how the USSR treated its 'friends' what could the rest of us expect if we were to lower our guard?
Mike

[Johned]

The Russians were deeply upset when the West reformed the Bundeswehr, the West German army in 1955 just ten years following WW2 together with the navy and Luftwaffe.

[Michael Rolls]

And when you look at the relative strength of boots on the ground and the continual sabre rattling by the USSR - what did they expect? The Bundeswehr would have been a first line of defence (and by all accounts probably not a very effective one) had the Red Army decided to come - and at the time an awful lot of people believed that had the Red Army been given a sniff of a chance - like a pacifist in the White House for example - then it was highly likely that they would have come.
Mike

[crabbyob]

they are gradually becoming world travellers mike
 both Turkey and Goa are saturated with Russians
quite ill mannered also.they think a Queue is for playing pool

[Michael Rolls]

they are gradually becoming world travellers mike
 both Turkey and Goa are saturated with Russians
quite ill mannered also.they think a Queue is for playing pool

Mike

[ronyork]

It,s called Empire building,The British ,French plus the Dutch and other,s were very keen on this, Plundering and thieving assets when ever they felt like it. then ruled this countries with the bullet and the sword. I not saying this is right but our record is not to good.

[Michael Rolls]

It,s called Empire building,The British ,French plus the Dutch and other,s were very keen on this, Plundering and thieving assets when ever they felt like it. then ruled this countries with the bullet and the sword. I not saying this is right but our record is not to good.

That is so often thrown up - and to be fair, is a valid criticism - but that was then, this is now - we've moved away in most parts of the world from raiding coastal villages, raping and pillaging and selling the survivors as slaves. Just because that was the way the Vikings, for example, carried on, doesn't excuse the way the Nazis did, nor the way the USSR carried on.
Mike