The Unlikely Corporal

Non-Fiction

Pages: 58 Ratings:

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1953 to 1955… I’m in the army now!

Two years of peaceful life in Scotland are about to be exchanged for two years of National Service in the King’s Own Scottish Borderers.

I had never played with toy soldiers as a boy, but with thousands of others aged 18, I am to become a fighting soldier through 12 weeks of infantry training.

Faced with dying for one’s country is no joke to citizen soldiers. Safety, serving with a typewriter in the army orderly room rather than with a rifle against the enemy, is a windfall.

Stripes earned in battle are valued more than those earned through administrative know-how while the rifle is locked up.

A wife or sweetheart wondering why her fit and healthy partner is at home when his country demands even more fighting soldiers can be heartbreaking.

Bill Fairbairn’s full-time journalism career since 1950 took in stints in Britain, France, Africa and Canada. His first job, at age 15, was on the Jedburgh Gazette, in the Scottish Borders, near Hawick, where he was born. He went on to daily newspaper and radio work in England, Africa and Canada. He edited and wrote for the Sun in London, the Scotsman, the Montreal Star, Radio Canada International (CBC) and Legion Magazine. Bill worked and taught journalism full-time on the aboriginal reserve near Kamloops, British Columbia, and evening class journalism in Ottawa. He spent five years in the 1960s in Africa as a journalist.