"We went to Brecon by train in spring of 1946, with our sandwiches, 18-year-olds who had missed the war but called up for two years national service.

It was a slow train that stopped at every station. It crawled so tortuously up gradients that you could get off the front coach, pick a bunch of flowers and safely get aboard at the end.

Nobody tried it, not wanting to be proved wrong and looking a fool so early in an enforced army career, but we ate our sandwiches before we arrived at Brecon.

It was all of 40 miles from Cardiff. The sun shone, a rare treat. We saw horses galloping away from the train, in freedom. Somebody said they were wild horses but he was probably hooked on Westerns.

We went to Brecon Barracks, depot of the South Wales Borderers, or 24th Foot, of Rorke's Drift fame. Never have so many Victoria Crosses (11) been awarded on a single day in the one action.

The soldiers - even the youngest ones - looked fit and professional and we felt very much like civilians.

The barracks looked forbidding and it was with relief we were told we were going to Dering Lines, on the outskirts of the small town for our six weeks basic training.

The language of our instructors was foul and the repetition of the sexual action verb and noun washed over us the first few days like a cold shower. Then we were into it ourselves, not wanting to be nonconformists.

Most recruits were Welsh but there were a couple of Irishmen and a Scotsman, who had signed on as regular soldiers, and who had been living rough on the streets of London before they joined up.

They had a togetherness that could quickly erupt into anger against one another, especially when the one Irishman taunted the other about his only testicle.

The red-haired Scotsman ran around the barrack room in a rage one night, waving a bayonet, but he could also be maudlin. A not unkindly sergeant who found him in tears was told after he had placated him that he was lonely, and did not want to be with a bunch of Welshmen whose ways and accents he could not understand. He vanished shortly afterward to a Scottish regiment.

There was a Virgin in our barrack room, blond-haired, thin, and timid. He was doubly unfortunate in that he was also prone to making mistakes. All of us - but especially Virgin - got tired of the weary dialogue that went like this, whether it emanated from sergeant, corporal or sergeant major:
"What's your name, lad?"
"Virgin, sergeant."
Virgin, V-I-R-G-I-N, V-I-R-G-I-N!"
And then, when the non-commissioned officer, had been assured of everyone's attention:
"You must be the only virgin in Brecon, lad."

We endured the other cliches: the only time you can hit an officer and get away with it is if he calls you a bastard; and reassembling a Bren gun when a "male section" could not be inserted quickly enough into the "female" - "If there was a bit of hair around it, you'd find it soon enough lad."

We learned to smoke and we drank. At weekends the girls came from Merthyr and went to the pubs. If we, and they, drank enough we could be found sitting on one another's laps, but the nco's were wrong; by our reckoning there were lots of virgins in Brecon, including most of the 18-year-old soldiers.

As we neared the end of our six weeks training we were hauled in front of a selection officer. I told him I wanted to go into an infantry regiment. I really wanted to be a paratrooper but could not envisage summoning up enough courage to jump out of an aeroplane.

He told me that with my background I should rather get an office job. I said I had worked in an office, and that I would probably do so for the rest of my life, but while in the army I wanted to do something different. He smiled.

At the end of the six weeks basic we took our corporals out for a night, drinking beer in a pub on the banks of the river Usk. Our army-weary West Country sergeant declined to come. He said we were wasting our money, giving the corporals a free night out. He said they did not care about us. We took them anyway. When the cash ran out, the pub manager became surly and made it plain he wanted us out. We left, still thinking the world was not a bad place.

I went into The Welch Regiment. My mother was appalled. She said it was full of roughies. I said Uncle Bert (my father's brother) had served in The Welch in World War 1 and he was not a roughie - quite the contrary. Bert had lost an eye during the war, but, with little education, had become a director of a ships' chandlers in the Cardiff dock area. Another uncle, Paddy Flavin, had also been a member of The Welch in the war.

Our platoon sergeant was as reprehensible as our previous sergeant had been honest. Women were mere objects. A married man, he bragged about his alleged conquests in full, and sometimes nauseating detail. Of principles, he had few. He made me a section leader but I knew it would not last. He sensed my lack of respect and appointed someone else, hoping for my humiliation.

There was solace in young friendship. Pete Turner was a solid young man from Canton, Cardiff, John Williams, a deceptively wiry but tough soldier with a sharp tongue from North Wales, ever reliable, and Roy Heaven, a handsome, olive-skinned Swansea boy who aroused my envy with his marksmanship with rifle (all seen above).

One summer evening the four of us ran from our battle course camp at Cwm Gwdi to the peak of the highest mountain in South Wales, Pen-y-fan. We stood there in the evening sunshine and looked across the mountains, valleys and lakes of our country. They were beautiful moments in our youth, health, friendship and love of Wales."

Article by Glyn Williams