From a young age Ali knew she wanted to join the army, and was part of the new 1984 revolution of women that went straight to training at Sandhurst Royal Military Academy. Ali describes the developments in training, such as compulsory weapon exercises and more intensive physical fitness. She was posted to 10 Company Aldershot where she took on administrative roles in welfare and career management. Ali was then taken to the Royal Green Jackets, then the Light Division Depot at Winchester. She describes this as the point in which her ambition for a military career took over and she began to dedicate herself entirely to the army. From here she was posted to the NATO camp in Sennelager, the Grenadier Guards, and Hohne for gunnery training where she began to understand Soviet tactics in the Cold War. When the Gulf war broke out in 1990 Ali knew that the WRAC was coming to an end. She was initially told that as a member of the WRAC she could not go to the Gulf, but she was grateful that the orders changed. In her interview she gives an incredible description of her experiences on ground operation. Ali continued to serve with the Adjutant General Corps and left as a full Colonel responsible for training across the whole of the army.

Tony was brought up during World War Two and was conscripted into the Army, aged 18, in July 1950. The Korean War had begun and, after training, he was dispatched there via Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan. At the front the weather was cold enough to freeze weapons and several men got frostbite. He was terrified when he had to use a mine detector and relieved when the Royal Engineers took over this duty. Later his platoon was hit by mortar fire and took heavy losses. At the Battle of the Imjin River his unit, with tank support, attacked a Chinese held hill. He remembers a tank destroying a bunker at point blank range. Later he caught dysentery and spent time in a hospital. When he returned to duty the war had stabilised and, by the end of the conflict, he thought he had become a good soldier although always frightened of capture.

John volunteered for the RAF just before the start of WW2, but failed the vision test and instead joined the Army. He was assigned to the armoured corps and soon after he volunteered for Special Operations Executive. At the time parachuting was not mentioned and John thinks that if it had been he would not have volunteered! During training he specialised in Signals and learned unarmed combat and parachuting, which he was not too keen on. He was scheduled to parachute into France before D-Day but the mission was aborted at the last minute. Instead they dropped after D-Day, from a Short Stirling bomber. Due to a storm the pilot could not find the drop zone but they parachuted anyway. Three days later they met their French resistance contacts near Dijon. Here they received knowledge of a German troop train passing through. John contacted HQ and the information was passed to the RAF who bombed it. During this time he could see German radio detector vans trying to find their precise location. Later he and the Resistance attacked troops guarding Marshall Petain, the Vichy collaborator, as he tried to get to Switzerland. During this time the British stayed in uniform to avoid execution if captured by the enemy. On his return to Britain he was sent to jungle training school and then parachuted into Burma and during this period he was shelled by ‘friendly fire’. His unit fought the Japanese and they eventually met up with the British 14^th Army.