An adventurous and extroverted young woman, Pauline joined the WRAC at seventeen years old after outperforming boys at her school in an army assault course. She knew in that moment that she would excel in a military career. Following her six weeks at Guildford she was posted to Blackdown to train as a supply clerk with the Royal Army Ordnance Corps. She wanted to be a Physical Training Instructor but was advised to go into stores whilst placed in holding for an opening in physical trades. She remained in her first role as a store supplier before she was posted to Rheindahlen to supply local army bases. Being from Guyana Pauline describes the anxiety she felt in certain environments regarding racial prejudice but reflects fondly on her time in Rheindahlen due to her being surrounded by many women of different ethnicities. During her three years in Germany, as well as managing stores, she was also told to watch for Russian number plates or report suspicions of IRA or Cold War tensions. In this interview, Pauline recalls her upset at her forced leave due to her pregnancy and describes the many good soldiers the army lost due to this very reason. Like many other women, she felt she had more to give and these opportunities were taken away. Although Pauline speaks passionately about her time with the WRAC, her journey also highlights the issues with the treatment of women in the army.

From a young age Katherine knew she wanted to travel and when offered the opportunity to join the Royal Corps of Transport, she signed with the army. At nineteen she left for Guildford and speaks fondly of her time at the training base, in particular her passing out parade which she describes as an incredibly surreal experience. Although her trade training was postponed due to the Mill Hill Bombing in 1988, she soon became part of the team at Bovington Training Centre that drove new officers fresh from Sandhurst who were on their Tactical Exercise Without Troops (TEWT) training. Later she was moved to Rheindahlen 68 Squadron where she met different soldiers from the UN and NATO and remembers this as the best tour she served whilst in the army. During this tour she witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall and contributed to the peacekeeping duties in Czechoslovakia. In 1991 Katherine recalls troops being sent to Iraq and the importance of her work behind the front lines in the rear party. She provides great detail of one particular mission which developed from an initial twenty-four hour drive to an almost three week task of shipping ammunition to the Gulf. From here she was posted to Northern Ireland where she worked as both a driver and searcher for IRA bombs. Following the disbandment of the WRAC Katherine returned to work in Germany with the onset of the Bosnian war, and worked as a driver until she left in 1995. Katherine's interview offers an insightful overview of different experiences of WRAC women and gives an authentic account of the many adversities women faced in the army.

George describes his WWII childhood in Cornwall, leaving school at 14 and working as an apprentice for the General Post Office (GPO). Conscripted into the army’s Royal Corps of Signals aged 19, he remembers training camp instructors’ hostility and his lasting camaraderie with trainees from all backgrounds. He recalls seeing other countries and nationalities for the first time during his 28-day journey to Korea, becoming emotional while reflecting upon his arrival in Pusan, where he saw refugees facing extreme poverty and the ravages of war. As a wireless operator, George drove reconnaissance vehicles around the Imjin River. At night, he scraped sleeping holes into hillsides or slept under the stars, always missing home but never frightened. He conveys the stench of war, the whistling of shell fire overhead, the suffocating heat of the dusty summer and the sometimes-fatal blistering winter cold. He reminisces fondly about the Korean nation and the feeling of returning home to Penzance. George’s depiction of wartime smells, sights and sounds show the enduring intensity of veterans’ memories even decades later. His interview highlights how, for some, deployment was the adventure of a lifetime that took them to otherwise inaccessible corners of the world.