The Beginning or From Here?

In my blog I told of the beginning of a love story but there is an earlier beginning than that. The original story tells of the adventures of three young men who have to join the Army because their country demands that all young men attaining the age of eighteen must serve two years National Service. Some are deferred until they have finished an apprenticeship or have finished a college or university education usually by the age of twenty one. What happens to them during that two years varies. Some return to civilian life virtually unchanged. Some are changed just a little by hardships they had not expected and others return with a watchfullness that shows in men that have experienced the sights and sounds of death. Some don't return at all, they die.

You have a choice. Through my words you can experience all that they did or you can read a version of it that has almost no nasty parts. These young men, mostly working class men, had their naivety drummed out of them and discipline drummed in. It was not their fault or even their instructors fault that a sometimes macabre sense of humour settled within them too. It was laugh or go mad. Oh, yes. Some of them fell in love and a few were saved by it.