The Joint Services School for Linguists (JSSL) was founded in 1951 by the British armed services to provide language training, principally in Russian, and largely to selected conscripts undergoing National Service. The school closed with the ending of conscription in 1960, after which the services made their own provisions as they had prior to the opening of the school (and, to some extent, even during its operation). The founding of the school was prompted by the need to provide greater numbers of interpreters, intelligence and signals intelligence officers due to the Cold War, and the Korean War which had started the previous year. Training and accommodation locations Two of the school's sites — at Walker Lines, Bodmin, Cornwall, and Coulsdon, near Croydon - opened in September 1951. The Coulsdon site closed in 1954, and Bodmin in 1956. For a time in the early 1960s the school (renamed the Joint Services School for Linguists) was based at RAF Tangmere near Chichester in Sussex, where Mandarin, Polish and Czech in addition to Russian were taught. Training system The JSSL system was rigorous. It pioneered the application of intensive language training techniques which involved eight hours a day, five days a week staff-student contact, with regular after-hours homework. Lectures on the formalities of basic Russian grammar were followed by practical small-group tutorials which made frequent use of timed dictation exercises (диктовка). The later courses also pioneered the use of tape-recorders. A special 'JSSL Training Manual' was compiled and systematically employed in classes. In addition, lengthy vocabulary lists were issued and tough weekly tests set. Two consecutive fails could mean expulsion from the course. However, fails were surprisingly uncommon, perhaps because failed students were immediately posted to less desirable duties and locations. Selection criteria Teaching staff Russian tutors tended to be a mixture of White Russian émigrés and carefully vetted Soviet defectors. Among them were some odd and colourful figures, including an aged, wooden-legged "colonel of cavalry" who claimed to have lost his leg while fighting against the Reds in the Russian Civil war. Another, a mysterious 'Countess', always dressed from head to toe in black, "in permanent mourning' for the tsar and his family". One set of statistics from Bodmin listed the teaching staff as comprising: Probably the most important member of the teaching staff was Professor (later Dame) Elizabeth Hill, who was director of the JSSL through its period of existence. Non-training