England, 1955. After a sheltered childhood in a shabby Midlands town suffering austerity and hardship in the wake of five years of war against Germany, 18-year-old Michael Croft discovers that he is hopelessly ill-prepared for the consequences of receiving his call-up papers.
After undergoing the rigours of 1950s-style basic training, Michael and a bunch of fellow conscripts are posted to the Mediterranean island of Cyprus, where a violent terrorist campaign is being waged to oust the British.
He and his pals do their best to stay out of trouble, but there will be tragic consequences before their tour of duty is completed.
Here is a real goodie - Peter Saunders' book 'The Unknown Conscript'. The author, a perceptive journalist and wordsmith, makes the reality of National Service and the pattern of ordinary lives in the period of World War Two
live again. It will be a complete revelation to younger people. [...]
The middle section on the military training explores week by week and day by day the routines and training by the NCOs to turn them into a fighting machine, the brutality and the boredom and unlikely friendships. The mind-blowing horror (particularly for the sensitive and weak) is unforgettable.
No other novelist or writer has dealt with this subject. The third section on the active service is particularly poignant today because of the deaths of the young soldiers in Iraq.
Having related to the writer so much in the book, I might have liked him to have the last word. Do read it! --Wirral Champion, March 2010
"The Unknown Conscript" by Peter Saunders, a retired journalist for the Liverpool Daily Post, is a gripping story set in the only period in British history when there was universal conscription in what was regarded as 'peacetime'. --The Wirral Globe, 25 November, 2009
"Today we often hear calls for the return of National Service but what was it really like? Wirral author Peter Saunders tells Jane Haase how the experience shaped his life...
THE dark days of the Second World War may have been over, but young men were still being called upon to fight for their country.
Despite the defeat of Nazi Germany, the Labour government decided that Britain still needed conscription and passed the 1948 National Service Act.
Knots of youths became a familiar sight at Liverpool Lime Street and many other railway stations, looking apprehensive, clutching shabby little suitcases and travel warrants to the depots where they would undergo basic
training.
The Unknown Conscript is a novel set in that era and written by Peter Saunders, a retired Daily Post and Echo reporter who covered Wirral for 32 years. It is his first published book, at the age of 76, and is dedicated to the 2.5m young Britons who went into uniform for National Service, which
ended in 1961. --Liverpool Daily Post, December 9, 2009
