I was born in a little village called Farnham which is near Blandford and after I left school I worked on my grandfather’s farm; he was a tenant farmer on the River’s Estate.

As I worked on the farm, I could have got out of National Service but I decided that I would give it a go. I had friends who'd been in a few years before me so I had some idea as to what was involved. I was actually 19 when I went in and I trained at Exeter. I was in the 1st Devon and Dorsets.
I had to go by train from Blandford Station, up to Templecombe and then to pick up the London train which was going down to Exeter.
It was very different to what I was used to and very disciplined but I think I coped well with it.
After passing out, I went to Cyprus to meet up with the regiment there. We went by troop ship, on the HMT Dunera. I did have bit of sea sickness across the Bay of Biscay, both ways, but other than that, once I got on the Mediterranean itself, it was alright. We came back on the HMS Oxfordshire.
I became a PRI clerk working for the President of Regimental Institute. I was actually based in what they called headquartered company and we were in Polymedia camp which was just outside of Limassol. We also went as a battalion group to Libya for 5 weeks on exercise.

“It was very different to what I was used to and very disciplined but I think I coped well with it. ”

— Colin Smith

I had quite a good job and enjoyed it in Cyprus. We only worked in the morning, from 7am to 1pm.

We were office based and when the regular soldiers came out to stay with their families, we would loan them some money until they got what was called a disturbance allowance. They would borrow this money actually from the regiment and then they were supposed to pay it back when their money was allocated to them.
Most afternoons, if we wanted, we would be able to go to the beach and there was a truck that would take us to a beach not far from where RAF Akrotiri was, about an hour from the camp.
I think we were paid 25 shillings. We’d spend most of that but I did save some to enable me to come home for a month for my 21st birthday. One or two of my mates went to places like Israel and Egypt for a holiday.
One of the ironic things which I remember is that the day when the Greek troops all came into Cyprus, they were all coming in on trucks with guns, and of course, the English being English, we were playing cricket alongside the road as they were going past.

One of the other things which I did was to show cinema films.

Not actually in the camp itself, but I used to show them in the Officers’ mess on a Sunday evening and on occasions I did it for the Padre and the wives club. The funny thing about it was that you could almost draw a line across the floor between the Devon and Dorset wives. They didn’t seem to get on at all. I once had to spend the night underneath the screen, using it as a tent.
When my time came to leave, I’d had enough. In fact, they were running the National Service down when I came out because I actually came out a month earlier than I would have done.