Michael Fryer joined the National Service at 18 and after completing basic training, he chose to specialise in bomb disposal with the Royal Engineers. Later, he was deployed to Korea and boarded the HMT Lancashire for the journey. He flew into Korea on a Globemaster, then took the train to Seoul. He travelled to the frontline, joining up with the 55th Field Regiment, based at the 38th Parallel. Michael's duties included bomb disposal along the Imjin River. During the Battle of the Hook, he also took on the dangerous task of transporting ammunition to and from the frontlines. The Chinese forces swarmed over the hills, only to be cut down by machine gun fire. He fondly remembers his Rest and Recuperation in Incheon and Tokyo. This was a time for soldiers to rest, eat nice food, and experience Japanese culture. Whilst in Tokyo he stayed at The Kookaburra Club in the Ebisu Camp. Michael was demobbed in June 1953, he travelled home aboard HMS Fowey. Returning home was very hard, and later in life he realised he had been suffering with PTSD.

Ishbel had experience with the University Officers Training Corps (OTC) and the Territorial Army (TA) before she joined the WRAC in 1985. She had trained as a pharmacist at university and it was only after graduating she considered joining the army. She recalls Crusade Eight as the first major operation she worked on alongside the local infantry unit. Ishbel describes how in this role, aside from escorting VIPS, most of the women would take on administrative work. She was then posted to C Company in Grangemouth as a Platoon Commander and comments on the changing atmosphere surrounding women's treatment in the early 1980s. Ishbel also describes how in the OTC and the TA women were afforded more opportunities, such as weapons and armed combat training, whereas the WRAC were only just introducing weapons training. From this point Ishbel underwent a series of role changes within the army; she traveled to Sandhurst, Catterick, Cyprus, Northern Ireland, and London where she completed her Masters in Administration. At Porton Down, she revisited her pharmacist experience and worked with scientists to develop pharmaceutical and technological military defences. Ishbel went on to become an Adjutant General in Bosnia, the Balkans, then a Lieutenant Colonel in Cyprus and a medic in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Reflecting on the WRAC, Ishbel feels that it gave her the grounding to begin her wider military career. An inspiring interview, we thank Ishbel for her incredible stories and for being a trailblazing woman.

George Reynolds tells the story of his military career, where each memory is as engrossing as the next. Following in his father’s footsteps, George enlisted in the army in 1937. Not long after, in 1939, he was off to India, where he had become both a stand out signaller and a skilled equestrian.   By 1941, his regiment found themselves embroiled in battle against the invading Japanese army. Troubling times followed; the Japanese succeeded in their occupation, George among the 80,000 taken as POW.   He was first put to work in a Singapore prison, where he detailed his starved but tanned condition, a result of outdoor work. After being shipped off to Taiwan in 1942, George recalls his torturous experience in a copper mine, where he faced the threat of beatings, malnutrition, and sickly skin, all at a level he had never seen before.  I’m sure you’ve gone through a roller coaster of emotions engaging with George’s story, but he closes on a powerful note. Following his liberation by the American Navy in 1945, George was plunged into a moral dilemma – how was he supposed to feel about the people who had hurt him?   To hate them, he says, was akin to a “cancer eating away at him”. At once, there and then, he decided to “forgive but not forget”. This ultimately underlines the hardiness and determination of a soldier, who, after seven long years away from home, was favoured to live to tell the tale.