Simply 'orrible

"National service was a complete waste of my life," he once wrote. "I was 16 stones and built for the building game, not a sentry box. The feeling was mutual. We were surplus to requirements."

When they got out, he says, he was so bitter and twisted he didn't even stand for the Queen at the pictures. "It took three years, and I'm a monarchist."

Many still remember national service, or sign up vicariously through Lads Army. Ivan nearly fell off the back of a lorry: he was Britain's last ever conscript, a military tail-end Charlie, and hated every minute.

"I stopped watching Lads Army, it was really annoying me," he says. "Maybe it was a short, sharp shock but they were only there for a month and even then could go home if they wanted to."

Ivan's principal protest at the conscription charges - a Churm offensive, as it were - may have been the two gladioli, nurtured by tea dregs, which he grew in a battered Bratwurst tin on the second floor window ledge of his German barrack block.

"Their purpose was twofold. They were my symbol of freedom and as they flourished they became a prominent two-fingered gesture, another non-confrontational way to antagonise."

Private enterprise, perhaps, but he was demobbed a lance-corporal.

He was born and raised in Bridge Place, near Bishop Auckland, began a building apprenticeship and had his call-up deferred for three years until he completed it.

"We were resigned to national service, knew it was coming, but didn't know it would be a personal thing. National service was a fight for survival; we were scapegoats, really."

The call came in November 1960, the order to report to Aldershot barracks - 20 to a billet and naught but a pot bellied stove for their comfort. Ivan had only ever once been as far as London, for the 1950 Amateur Cup final.

"We were lambs to the slaughter, only with less resistance. There were no heroics and the only fighting I saw was in the NAAFI queue.

"Day by day experiences weren't governed by yourself in any shape or form. Life as you knew it was taken from you. All you were left in control of was your bodily functions, and sometimes only just."

Soon they were familiar with every squaddie's NAAFI acronym - No Ambition and you can guess the rest - soon wise to what they put in the tea. "Shergar would have been about the price of a donkey if he'd swallowed any of that stuff."

The chief tormentor was a company sergeant major they knew as Fred - "a walking joke whose grey cells had been replaced by pages from a War Department manual" - the principal work was cleaning vehicles which were in any case to be mothballed.

"We spent month after month cleaning every square inch, mainly underneath with scrim cloth and kerosene."

Sometimes they'd also be on picket duty, warned about the IRA and armed with a pick axe handle. "I could imagine approaching a chap armed with an M16 and asking him if he wanted a head full of splinters."

The day he arrived was the day they announced the end of that necessary national institution. Two others followed him through the barrack gate, were interviewed by the television and told they could go home.

Ivan was last man of millions, if not necessarily a virgin soldier then certainly an innocent abroad. Nearly two years later, demob calendar colouring in nicely, war minister John Profumo announced that because of the situation with the Berlin Wall, he and his contemporaries would have to serve another six months - extra time and penalties, as they might have said on the football field.

When Profumo was subsequently exposed by call girl Christine Keeler, the army game for once seemed funny.

"We'd been absolutely devastated. Vera Lynn was the Forces' Sweetheart but Christine Keeler became ours. He sh***ed us and she sh***ed him. If I'd had a photograph of her I'd have stuck it on my locker. I'd still like to meet her, even now.

"They can't even detain terrorists for 90 days and we were given 180 with no more money, no leave and no time off for good behaviour."

He now lives with his wife Joan in South Church, just a mile from where he was born. They married at Christmas 1962 after he arranged compassionate leave.

"He'd done a six year apprenticeship, three night classes a week," says Joan. "Just when he was going to start earning decent money, they whip him away.

"I still think they ought to have national service for all those yobs who no one seems able to control. The problem is all the human rights people and do-gooders; there weren't any human rights people when Ivan did his national service."

Ivan has written his memoirs, so he his son will know all about army life, has extended the house and built a garden bridge which spans 12 metres and weighs 25 tons - "a retirement project" - with help from his friend Alan Marsh.

Though it took time, he's no longer bitter and twisted. "You can't bring national service back because you might be training terrorists. No-one knows who's who any more.

"I know we were lucky we weren't being killed at the front. Different camp, different sergeant major, I might have enjoyed it, as others did."

In the event, says the last of the pressed men, he spent two and a half years in jail.