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Mike Prince IJLB circa 1973, wrote these words for his own web site following one of his many biking trips.

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Oswestry, just up the road and over the border back into England, was where I spent my time from the age of 15 to nearly 18, as a boy soldier in the Infantry Junior Leaders Battalion (IJLB). I spent those years in this area and hadn't returned since leaving in 1973.

Many of the place names locally were very familiar and I also remembered some of the places by sight but much of it had changed in the intervening 33 years. Only to be expected.

Chirk aqueduct. This is exactly as I recall but then I don't imagine that other than pulling it down, it would be hard to change! After practicing in a local quarry we had to abseil from the aqueduct. Going down the pillars was not too bad once over the parapet but abseiling in the "free" space between them was a little more fraught.

I remember being perched with my feet on the top of the arch and standing out as near horizontal as I dared with the abseil rope braked.

At this point you had to release the brake on the rope while simultaneously pushing out and away from the stonework far enough to avoid swinging back into it as you fell, not re-applying the rope brake until you were sure to be beneath the arch.

We used a double rope. Two ropes passed through a carribener and down to the ground. If you got it wrong and let go of the rope or something equally disastrous, two of your comrades were stood below with one rope each. They would have a split second to run out and away from each other pulling the ropes apart, thereby slowing your decent. I never saw this safety system put to the test!

The point of such exercises was not just to provide some physical confidence, the staff also monitored leadership qualities and any reticence was marked down as "questionable moral fibre".

The canal was then in sporadic use but now there are holiday narrow boats chugging along it all the time. I dare say that a good deal of restoration has been done in the past thirty years but it does look nice and would be a fairly pleasant, soporific way to see the countrysiide.

Oswestry was next on my list, only a few miles away, much closer to the aqueduct and Llangollen than I had thought. Either the passing years have dimmed my memory or the journeys back then seemed so much longer in the back of an army truck.

Riding around the town of Oswestry, there was little that I remembered. It isn't that the town has changed much, more that I rarely went there when I was at IJLB. Few Junior Leaders did. You had to be in a certain stage of the training process before you could 'book out' of camp. The only time that you could 'book out' was a Saturday or Sunday afternoon and even then the obstacles placed in the way certainly dissuaded many of us from even attempting it.

In order to leave the camp you had to present yourself for inspection to the COS (Company Orderly Sergeant), a member of the training staff. There were strictly enforced standards of dress, collar and tie, suit or at the very least a jacket, shoes (highly polished) and hair cut (very short). Not only did you have to meet the dress conditions but you had to be smartly turned out too. Often you'd be turned away to present yourself again later with trousers or something better pressed, even completely changed.

This was in the early 1970's when most young men sported long hair, jeans and t-shirts. The only fashion that could be followed with these restrictions was 'Skinhead' but even they didn't wear ties! If you removed your tie there was a strong chance of being spotted "improperly dressed" by members of staff in town. This would definitely lead to being put on a 'fizzer', (charged) and an appearance before the Company Commander. Fines or more severe punishments were at his disposal.

As the Skinhead fashion morphed into the 'Suedehead' faze, Tonic or Two-Tone suits (still no ties) and Crombie overcoats made blending in easier except that Suedeheads grew their hair longer! We didn't just have short hair, it was cropped by the regimental barber, known unsurprisingly and not very imaginatively as Sweeney Todd! I often wondered whether he was happy in his work. He was never required to demonstrate any tonsorial skills beyond running an electric clipper over the heads of his customers! Perhaps that was the limit of his barber skills and why he had the job?

Park Hall Camp was huge in those days. At that time there were fifty-four infantry regiments in the British Army (severely reduced following the re-organisations of the late sixties) and all were represented at IJLB. The camp itself sprawled over a huge area and had at least four parade squares, one, Wingate Square, named after General Orde Wingate of WWII Burma Chindits fame, was the main parade square and reputedly the largest square in a UK barracks.

The accommodation was wooden huts known as Spiders (albeit six-legged ones!) because of their layout and all the buildings were 1914-1918 vintage. They were renowned for their combustibility because of the many years of creosote on the exterior and layers of gloss paint inside. Fire point buckets and stirrup-pumps abounded (highly polished of course) and Fire Drills were frequent.

If there was a Fire Drill, the 'old sweats' learnt that it was advisable to grab a bucket or stirrup-pump. Everyone had to don their tin-hat, no matter what state of dress (or undress) you were in and your rifle, then 'fall-in' outside to be double-marched to the square until the drill was over. If you had a fire bucket in your hands you avoided being paraded on the square and could hang on at the company lines ready to fight the expected conflagration with a stirrup-pump until the fire-picket ran from the guardroom pulling a red cart with some canvas hoses in it!

If they ever made it to a fire before the spider had burnt down, the picket would be useless because the red painted tin hats they had to wear would bounce up and down so severely on your head as you ran towing the cart that there was a very real chance of being concussed before you got anywhere near the blaze.

As I rode towards the camp I realised that much of it had gone. I knew that IJLB had moved in the mid-1970's to Shorncliffe but wondered if parts of the place had been moth-balled. Park Hall Country Experience (whatever that is) now stands where the Guardroom and battalion offices once were.

The lower square is now laid out as a car park, part of what was once the Officers Mess is now the clubhouse of Oswestry Rugby Club and... these buildings now stand where the Quartermaster stores, the Fifty-four Club and the EL Wing once stood.

The lower square is now laid out as a car park, part of what was once the Officers Mess is now the clubhouse of Oswestry Rugby Club.. Every day and sometimes several times a day, we were marched down the road to the left. Where the trees at the end, on the left are, stood the Armoury. This road lead to the Education Wing, the sports fields (sports were Monday, Wednesday and Friday afternoons plus Saturday mornings), the swimming pool and the church. As we were marched to Church Parade every Sunday, it meant we had to pass down this road every day that we were here.

The significance of this was that the approaches were in sight of the Guardroom where lurked the beast that was the Provost Sergeant and his sadistic minions, the Regimental Police. These were among the few IJLB staff who had not themselves been Junior Leaders at some stage and harboured, if not nurtured, a deep dislike for 'Junior Bleeders'. Their sole purpose in life was to catch Juniors doing something they shouldn't, hopefully something heinous enough to warrant a custodial sentence in the guardroom where they would be at their mercy for the duration of the sentence.

I'm not suggesting that the RP's were abusing their positions or that they did anything unlawful. They remained within the rules and regulations but did exercise them to the letter.

The regime that any "defaulters" met on incarceration was so draconian that it certainly deterred many from pushing the boundaries just by reputation alone. Those that did default never re-offended. It's been an experience that has stayed with me and led me to my belief that modern prisons should model their regimes similarly. I'm certain that it would deter our growing recidivist criminal culture.

Before reaching the Guardroom on this road, we had to run an even more dangerous gauntlet because it passed the Regimental Sergeant Major's (RSM's) office. During most of my time there, the RSM was WO1 ('Harry') Hooper, Coldstream Guards. Think of the classic figure of an RSM, a great bull of a man with a haircut "down to the wood" and a voice that defies description. RSM Hooper, J/RSM, Inspecting Officer and 'Stickmen' (Cheshire Regiment if I recall?)

'Harry' (as he was always referred to by us, out of earshot obviously!) used to sit with his office door open so that he could watch anyone passing. The smartest and most soldierly marching anywhere in the world was routinely performed along that particular stretch of road!It was hugely entertaining to be marching along there when new recruits, (known as red-arses or sprogs), ambled along without realising that they were like flies drawn into a spiders web. Harry would bawl from his office like some terrible biblical voice from the heavens, this would throw the red-arses into utter confusion and terror. We could enjoy the spectacle because we too had experienced the same thing at some stage.

These are the only original buildings left that I could find. The three large wooden buildings were from the right, the Battalion Assembly Hall, and two Gymnasiums. Between where I was standing to take the photo and the buildings once stood the Battalion HQ offices and the Sergeants Mess. Beyond were the cookhouse, Tactics Wing, NAFFI, barbers shop, Skill-at-Arms Wing, Signals Wing, Medical Centre, four Company Lines of four "spider" blocks each, a thirty metre range and the massive Wingate square with its huge open sided Drill-sheds at one end. All gone. Gone too was the swimming pool, church, Education Wing, Z Company (where all new recruits spent three months before joining their respective companies) and a whole second camp known as the Lower Camp, which half-way through my time there was re-opened as a Junior Soldiers Wing.

I found the CO's house and some of the Officers Quarters. Now privately owned.

At its peak, Park Hall Camp housed nearly two thousand 'boy soldiers' plus all the training and admin staff needed to keep the place functioning. Goodness knows how many boys entered training there and left as young men over the years of it's existence as IJLB and later the additional Junior Soldiers Wing.

As Junior Leaders, our instructors were never less than sergeants in rank and they were mainly selected for having been ex-Junior Leaders themselves. This gives some idea of the timescale that the place operated.

Many of my contemporaries found their time there to be a make or break experience. It was an extremely regimented and highly disciplined experience at a time in our lives when most adolescent males are going through some kind of rebellious stage. Needless to say any rebellion was soon knocked out of us!

Often over the following years I'd bump into an ex-junior from IJLB on some course or another. There was a sort of bond between us that superseded any Regimental differences. It was without doubt some sort of rites of passage experience and like many former National Servicemen who bitterly hated their experiences at the time, now I see just how beneficial that time was.

I was saddened to see the old place now. I know that time moves on and it would be completely unreasonable to expect to find it unchanged. I knew that it had altered drastically from my conversations with Hillary and Mike in Merida so I was prepared.

I wanted to linger and explore further but the limited access was frustrating. Most of the areas were fenced off and the A5 now passes right over where D Company lines, my home for two and half years, once stood. D Company was a little separated from the other company lines by the MRS (Medical Reception Station) and the Signals Wing. It stood on a slight rise and was known in my time as 'The Happy Heap on the Hill.'

Echoes of the Passing Out Parades, images of the beaming grins of those who had just Passed Out and were no longer 'Juniors' but now Regular Soldiers, their proud parents and the general air of relief at having survived, flooded back.

As I re-started the bike, I could hear the RSM's command, "March on the Passing Out Junior Leaders", and the Junior RSM's reply, "Yes Sir! Passing Out Junior Leaders, by the centre, Quick March!"

Riding back to Llangollen and the campsite, I found myself humming "The Orange Sash". It was always played by the Corps of Drums to march on the Passing Out Platoon. I've always suspected that it was the only tune they could play!

Back at the campsite in Llangollen, sitting in the tent with the wind howling down the valley and the occasional heavy showers, I felt quite comfortable in the knowledge that I didn't have to get out of the shelter and take my turn at sentry lying down next to a GPMG or standing-to at dusk and dawn!

I could just lie in my sleeping bag, listen to the radio and drink the beers left to me if I chose. Thinking back to those far off days in IJLB, this was luxury indeed!

Mike Prince