Rachel Webster served all over the world with the RMP (Royal Military Police), including deployments in Northern Ireland during The Conflicts and in Afghanistan during the 2001 allied invasion. After completing an apprenticeship in welding she wanted to join the Royal Engineers, but she was laughed out of the recruiting office for being a “girl”. After some consideration, she decided to join the RMP instead. She completed her basic training with the WRAC (Women's Royal Army Corps), and did further training with the RMP before being deployed to Germany. In her interview she discusses the challenges of being a female within the military and the challenges of trying to keep up with the frontline military units she was supporting. She talks about her experience of integrating herself into a very male dominated space, and how she became someone who the men could confide in during difficult times. Rachel talks about being deployed to Bosnia and Kosovo with the Green Howards, remembering it as her toughest deployment. The atrocities she witnessed over there are something that she has never forgotten, needing counselling when she returned home to help her emotionally come to terms about what she witnessed over there. One of her proudest moments was deploying to Iraq in 2003, where she helped build a local girls' school, impressing the Iraqi men with her welding skills and forming strong relationships with the locals. After being put up for commission, she supported 1st Battalion, The Rifles in Afghanistan as a regimental admin officer, the highlight of her career. After 24 years, she left the military for a new challenge.

Rowena Patrick MBE trained at the WRAC College in Camberley and began her long military career in the WRAC in 1969 at the age of 23. Employed with the Royal Army Physical Training Corps at Aldershot and then Shrewsbury, Rowena was responsible for rewriting the then-outdated syllabus for women’s military training in the WRAC. As a keen mountaineer, Rowena’s new syllabus included adventurous survival training for both men and women, including rock climbing, ice climbing, and walking in all weather in the UK and abroad. In 1976, Rowena was posted as a grade 3 staff officer in the Ministry of Defence to the Directorate of Army Training in Guildford. During her career as an Army Major and Commanding Officer, Rowena worked alongside Wrens and members of the WRAF. Rowena remembers several IRA bombings that occurred in the 1970s and her experience with the SIB. Rowena also recalls, with pride and sadness, marching at Lord Louie Mountbatten’s state funeral in 1979. From then, for two and a quarter years, Rowena worked in Brunei for the Sultan of Brunei on loan service with the Royal Brunei Malay Regiment. Whilst in Brunei, Rowena carried out physical training, forming the Women's Army of Brunei. Back in England, in 1985, she became employed with the Royal Corps of Signals in Blanford. Rowena resigned from the WRAC in 1992. She went on to work for The Burma Star Association; in 2012, Rowena was awarded an MBE for her outstanding contribution and services to the veteran’s association.

George Talbot was a young lad when WWII broke out and so had to wait until 1940 to enlist when he was just 18 years old. George recollects how he volunteered for the airborne division and joined the 52^nd Ox and Bucks Regiment where he trained in gliders. It was an intense training regime, including an assault course so tough he says Rambo would have struggled with it, but George believes they were better for it. George recounts how the initial excitement of leaving England for the first time soon dissipated as they flew over the smoking French battlefields. Soon he and his glider were down, battered and broken, but safely in France. What follows is an in-depth, and at times graphic, account of George’s campaigns in Normandy, the Ardennes, the Rhine and onto Palestine including a very close shave with a German tank, the awful effects of a phosphorous bomb and the relentless shelling from the Germans which would have mentally ground them all down was it not for the camaraderie of the men. George shares a valuable account of the day to day experiences of troops on the ground and looks back on the loss of his youth as a sacrifice, but one ultimately worth making.