National Service gave me my wife!

An interesting life, by anyone’s standards. But it is for an entirely different reason that he is now making the news.

At the age of 82, David is one of 18 former servicemen who has been chosen to front a National Lottery-funded project called National Service Remembered.

As the name suggests, it is all about celebrating National Service - those two compulsory years in the armed forces that so many British young men faced post-war.

National Service came to an end 60 years ago. David was conscripted in the final year, 1960. And while he himself never fought overseas, he believes it is a period of Britain’s past that's well worth remembering.

Some people may have hated their National Service. For many others, it was a formative experience.

And David? “National Service was just something that you had to do,” he says. “For many, it was a positive experience, broadening horizons. But we must remember it was not all ‘Carry on, sergeant’. People died."

'We'd have done anything for each-other': David Ryan (right); and with his comrades in camp

David, who now lives in peaceful retirement in Shropshire with his wife Heather, grew up in Tang Hall and went to a local primary school.

He then went off to grammar school in Redcar, where he joined the Cadets.

It was only after he had graduated from university, in 1960, that he was called up for his national service.

He joined the Royal Artillery and was posted to Gobowen, near Oswestry in Shropshire, for his basic training.

It wasn’t the most exotic of postings, he accepts.

“Most of us wanted to be sent somewhere exciting, like Germany or Singapore!” he says.

But he did at least have a brief posting in Folkestone. It was the height of the Cold War - and he likes to joke that at least on his watch the Russians never got a foothold in Kent.

He and his colleagues also did some artillery training in South Wales, on the Pembrokeshire coast, firing shells out across the Bristol Channel.

It may not have been especially heroic. But he says his national service instilled in him and his fellow servicemen - some of them very young - a sense of comradeship and discipline.

For many of the young men who did their basic training with him, it was their first time away from home.

“Some of them were crying for their mums that first day,” he says. “Which was OK!”

National Service brought together young men from all different walks of life, he says.

“I’d been to university, the guy in the next bunk had just come out of jail, and there was everything in between.”

But within a few short weeks of training, they had been forged into an unbreakable unit. “We would have done anything for each other!” he says.

He’s delighted that the National Service Remembered project, which is being run by the not-for-profit organisation Same but Different with National Lottery funding, is remembering what he believes was a hugely important period of the country’s cultural history - all through the eyes of the men who served.

David Ryan with his comrades in camp

“Anything that gives extra light to our history is useful,” he said.

The National Service Remembered project, to which David has contributed, was put together largely by photographer Ceridwen Hughes, the founder of Same but Different,. She has combined striking portraits, video interviews and written narratives to bring alive conscripts’ experiences in a powerful online exhibition.

David's story is one of 18 that is told. After completing his National Service, David Ryan and Heather had to decide what was next for them.They opted for teaching - and Heather saw an advert in a Sunday newspapers which said teachers were wanted in New Zealand.

They shipped out, via the Panama Canal (at the New Zealand government's expense), did their teacher training down under, and spent three happy years there. Eventually, however, they returned, and got teaching jobs in Scunthorpe. Heather rose to become a headteacher and then head of a teaching union. Eventually, after several years teaching French and Spanish, David also became a teaching union official. Eventually, in 1997, the couple moved back to Yorkshire - to Melbourne, in the East Riding to be near to family. David worked for a while as parish clerk in both Melbourne and nearby Elvington.

The couple have now retired to Shropshire to be near to Heather's family - though their daughter Sally, a teacher, still lives in York.

David admits that he gained many things from his own National Service. But the most valuable of all, he says, was... a wife.

He met Heather at a garrison dance while doing his basic training. They recently celebrated their diamond wedding anniversary, and have four children and 12 grandchildren.

But while he enjoyed his National Service, he believes it should firmly remain a thing of the past.

“I’m not one that thinks you should bring National Service back," he said. "But for our time, it was useful! And marching in the countryside was a nice place to be. I even remember sleeping under a tree one night!"

Visit the National service Remembered online exhibition at samebutdifferentcic.org.uk/nationalservice