ABSTRACT
Within two weeks of leaving school, John Arden was conscripted into the British Army to do his ‘National Service’. Despite his determined cheeriness when he arrived at Oswestry Barracks, he was passed fit only for ‘lines-of-communication’ duties, not service on the front line. After some months he was transferred to the Intelligence Corps at Uckfield in Sussex. In 1950, the Korean War broke out, and Arden’s notification of demobilization failed to arrive. With Korea looming, there was a minor panic, but his father contacted Frank Collindridge, the M. P. for Barnsley, who was able to track down the paperwork – mislaid by an incompetent bureaucrat – and Arden was discharged. Arden’s attitude to soldiering and war seems to have been consistent for the rest of his life, though it was to cause some drama critics problems which did not help in the reception of his plays.
