Stan Yates was a boy brought up in Darwen who thought he might become a dentist but instead joined the Army. Service life enabled him to travel the world, serving in the Parachute Brigade and the Gurkhas, living in Malaya and Germany and visiting Nepal, Jamaica, America and Libya. In this memoir he recounts with humour stories of his experiences both funny and painful and the odd quirks of Army life. His family life was often disrupted by frequent moves but he and Sheila, his wife, survived the upheavals. He left the Army as a Lieutenant Colonel and after a spell as an Emergency Planning Officer in the Scottish Borders he is now retired and living happily with Sheila in Northumberland. "I didn't know I had idle eyebrows until the Sergeant Major spotted them....."