Army life with flying colours! VIEWPOINTS.

RECENT letters about army colour blindness tests reminded me of my own experience with such a series of tests.

National service for me started in September 1956, at the age of 21, following deferment to enable me to finish my apprenticeship. The Welsh regiment was my first port of call and Dai Dower, well-known boxer, was in the same intake (sleeping in the bunk above me as I recall) Two weeks later we were in Derring Lines, Brecon, and I had the notorious army colour blindness test - as many know, a circle of different size and colour dots with a number secreted among the dots.

I couldn't distinguish any number(s) so I was promptly sent back to Cardiff to see a private specialist in a large house on the corner where Howard Gardens met Newport Road. It housed a consultant called Sir Percy Thomas, I think.

The tests consisted of a similar set of pages with coloured dots and a beam of light which shone down from the corner of the room in front of which some coloured bits of tin foil passed, and I was asked to identify the colour of these bits of paper.

Apparently I didn't get one correct. The army graded colour perception in those days using numbers 1 to 4, with 1 being perfect, 2 being normal, 3 meaning you can't tell the difference between traffic lights and 4 meaning you can't tell the difference between black and white!

Subsequently the number 4 was entered into the colour perception box in my Part 2 Pay Book and I was transferred from the Welsh Regiment to the R.E.M.E, which always seemed rather stupid to me.

Still I can't complain, I ended up as a Corporal in the Battalion Pay Office.

Doug Bragg Spencer St Cathays, Cardiff