Denis Leeman

Tony Ryan is a young intelligent man working on a building site in Yorkshire and he hates it. It’s the late nineteen fifties, a time when a two-year period of National Service was compulsory for young men on reaching the age of eighteen. Packing in the building job, Tony joins the RAF and is sent for basic military training. However, before going he meets Peggy, the beautiful older sister of his best mate Dave, and they fall in love. Peggy, just divorced in America, has returned home after many years living there. Tony goes off to the RAF but Peggy, who is fifteen year’s his senior, has created a local scandal and returns to America leaving him heartbroken.

Passing his training and posted to another camp, Tony meets a woman his own age, and thinking Peggy has deserted him, falls in love again. He tries to forget Peggy, but fails and finds he loves both women. This is a story of sex and violence, love and hate, comedy and tragedy – and even more sex – and is powerfully evocative of National Service life at that time. The love triangle eventually, climaxes.