Mixed dormitories where super-fit young men share bunk beds with equally well-toned girls, inevitably forming close friendships – and occasionally becoming romantically entwined.

Early morning runs along pine-clad trails, followed by refreshing dips in pristine waters. Camping under the stars for days on end, sustained only by comradeship and wholesome food foraged from the forest.

Listening to the cream of Swedish youth describing their lives as national service conscripts, last week, against the dreamy backdrop of a sun-kissed lake, there were times when I wondered whether I’d been misdirected to some New Age Scandic summer camp.

The only reminder that these Norse newbies had been dragooned here to learn the art of modern warfare came from the distant crump of automatic rifles being fired on the practice range.

Nevertheless, they were mightily impressive specimens. Should the dreaded day come when Sweden and Britain fight side-by-side as Nato allies, you’d certainly want them beside you in the trenches.

Swedish national service conscripts Alva Branden, left, Alexander, Harald and Birger Norman at the Stockholm Marine Regiment’s base in Berga

Before visiting the Stockholm Marine Regiment’s base, I had remained to be convinced by Rishi Sunak’s election pledge to reintroduce national service in Britain after a hiatus of more than 60 years. Though the Prime Minister envisions it as a ‘transformative’ experience for British teens, I leant towards Keir Starmer’s mocking view – that it would merely create a ‘teenage Dad’s Army’.

However, after closely observing the Swedish model of conscription, upon which Sunak’s plan is said to be based, it seems to have many pluses.

And while most British teenagers seem appalled at the prospect of sacrificing a prime year of their lives for king and country, if they could see what military service entails, I reckon a good many would gladly swap it for their meaningless lives in dead-end streets.

Of course, not all young Swedes are dutiful patriots eager to serve. I will come to these sceptics and shirkers later.

Yet when the Stockholm government brought back the draft in 2017 to offset a worrying shortfall in the armed forces, dread and dismay spread through high schools from the Baltic coast to the Arctic Circle. Today, surveys show, more than 50 per cent of teenagers see conscription positively.

The four marine conscripts I met last week – whose nine-month course will end with a passing out parade next Friday – are certainly among them.

Though she felt trepidation when she joined up, Alva Branden, 20, has gained so much from her training as a minesweeper sonar operator that has enlisted for a full-time military career.

Alva Branden, 20, has gained so much from her training as a minesweeper sonar operator that has enlisted for a full-time military career

Her first day was a real ‘culture shock’. She struggled to accept and understand the orders barked at her in military jargon and baulked at rigid rules such as making her bed in the right way. As she tried to stand correctly to attention for the first time, she recalls, her legs turned to jelly.

Today, however, Branden is not only a more confident person but feels ‘safer’ – because should Sweden need to defend itself, she would be able to ‘do something’ rather than standing by helplessly. Since the Swedish armed forces now burnish a ‘gender neutral’ policy, she would fight on the frontline.

Branden also feels she has benefited from the enforced intimacy that comes with barracks life.

In the British military, men and women are billeted separately. Since the Swedish forces don’t distinguish between sexes, however, men and women – the only two genders that are recognised – not only share dorms but sleep in the same bunks (‘the guys always take the top one’, she smiles).

Given the furore that erupts in Britain whenever gender issues arise, one can well imagine the nightmare that all this would cause. The civil liberties brigade would have a field day. Yet Branden quickly overcame her blushes and says her privacy is always respected.

Among her platoon, she has formed lifelong friendships. Hers are platonic, but – perhaps too candidly for her senior officer’s liking – she adds: ‘I know some people who have got together. I don’t know if it’s encouraged, but they fell in love. It’s bound to happen.’

Standing ramrod straight beside her, Birger Norman, 20, another conscript who has signed up for a career in the marines, nods in agreement.

‘You become so close when you spend nine months with people, seeing them through every stage of the day, and through hardships, such as sleeping out in the cold, having to find food and wood for the fire,’ he says. ‘We have become like a family.’

A family, of course, is exactly what many troubled British youths are missing. Some compensate by joining street gangs. Might they avoid that miserable fate if national service provided an alternative?

As my visit to the marines’ base was organised by the regimental PR, cynics will reasonably assume that they rolled out the keenest and most impressive recruits. Nonetheless, I’m in no doubt that their uplifting views were genuine.

My one disquieting observation was that, while about 20 per cent of Sweden’s 10.5million population are from ethnic minorities, the conscripts I met were all white native Swedes. Nor could I see many brown or black faces when I passed a square-bashing exercise.

Choosing his words carefully, a spokesman for the Swedish Defence Conscription and Assessment Agency later admitted that Swedish-born youths tended to be ‘a little more positive’ towards national service than those from migrant backgrounds.

Though Sunak cites the Swedish system as a blueprint, in a crucial way it is very different from the one he has outlined. Under his plan, those who can’t – or won’t – join the military will carry out other public duties, for example helping hospitals or the emergency services.

In Sweden there is no such option. As their 18th birthday approaches, every young man and woman in the country – about 100,000 each year – must answer an emailed questionnaire designed to assess their physical and mental health, personality, and attitude towards serving in the armed forces.

The questions are highly personal. and some seem rather irrelevant. Respondents are asked whether they use drugs, for instance, and if so, how often. And whether they have bullied anyone, or readily accept orders from their schoolteachers.

This year, 28,000 successfully passed this stage. They were summoned to a miliary centre for further IQ and fitness tests, after which 8,000 were picked for national service. By 2032, this number is projected to rise to 12,000.

Unlike in Sunak’s plan, however, the rejects will not be required to serve the country at all.

Paradoxically, therefore, conscription in Sweden is mandatory but also competitive. While some teenagers who wish to serve are rejected because they fail the questionnaire or tests, others, to whom the idea is anathema, are made to join up.

When it comes to enforcement, there is another fundamental difference between the Swedish and proposed British scheme. Home Secretary James Cleverly has admitted that Britain’s refuseniks will not be punished (though their parents could be), yet in Sweden they face fines and even imprisonment.

According to the Swedish Peace and Arbitration Society (SPAS), which campaigns against conscription – and sends ‘peace coaches’ into schools to ‘educate’ children on how to build what it calls ‘a sustainable peace’– seven people were jailed in 2022 for violating conscription laws.

Rebecca Lindholm Schulz, the society’s expert on military conscription, told me she had been approached for help by a young man who became so distressed after being conscripted that he suffered mental illness and fled from his unit.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine and Sweden joined Nato, Lindholm Schulz claims, the attitude among many young people has shifted markedly.

They now realise that a call up puts them at risk of fighting a real war. And whereas some may be willing to defend Sweden in its hour of need, they would object to fighting for a Nato partner such as Poland or Turkey, as would be their obligation in the event of an attack.

Rebecca Lindholm Schulz of the Swedish Peace and Arbitration Society says the Russian invasion of Ukraine has changed attitudes to national service among some of Sweden’s young

(This was precisely the caveat put to me by Malte Mogensen Drufva, 17, a gifted handball player from the southern town of Lund, who was otherwise proud to have been selected for this August’s intake).

Reports of victimisation in Sweden’s national service might also be turning young people against it, Lindholm Schulz believes. In 2021, hundreds of conscripts were sent home from one training base on safety grounds amid allegations of sexual harassment by senior officers.

The previous year, 17 per cent of conscripts claimed to have been mistreated by superiors, in a defence ministry survey, with women and LGBTQ+ recruits more likely to be targeted.

Even so, among the 8,000 youths selected for national service last year, just 200 – one in 40 – expressed a strong reluctance to be drafted when answering their questionnaire.

Peace campaigners are wary of advising young Swedes how to fudge the official form to avoid conscription for fear of being prosecuted. But in Swedish high schools, the most effective ruses appear to be well-known.

Since keenness is gauged on a scale of 1 to 9, we might think that marking oneself as a 1 – the lowest score – would preclude you from being picked. Yet as most rising 18-year-old Swedes know, this is not the case.

If their answers to other questions suggest they are made of the right stuff they are still likely be chosen, no matter how unenthusiastic they may be.

Nor does it work to claim you suffer from ADHD or any other psychological condition. Medical records are rigorously checked. Interestingly, however, those who say they have ‘trouble sleeping away from home’ appear less likely to be chosen. At least, that is the view of teenagers I spoke to.

Venturing to areas such as Skogas, a tough Stockholm suburb that became notorious last year when a 15-year-old gangster walked into a sushi bar and shot dead a rival of the same age, such deception is deeply engrained.

For this is one of the modern estates where many migrant families are housed, and – at a time when Sweden’s multicultural experiment is so palpably failing – duty and patriotism are too often seen as dirty words.

Hopping off an e-scooter, on which he buzzes between startled shoppers in the mall, a 16-year-old lad of Palestinian parentage tells me how he intends to avoid national service by exaggerating a slight rib injury incurred in a kick-boxing bout. If that fails, he shrugs, he will simply go AWOL.

‘Why should I fight for these people when they call me an evil gangster and say I don’t belong in Sweden, even though I was born here,’ he snaps, gesturing towards the older, mainly white Swedes in the shopping complex.

‘Yeah, f*** Sweden!’ his cousin, of a similar age, interjects menacingly.

National Service as it was: 18-year old triplets Allan, Brian and Dennis Kirkby reported to North Frith Barracks, Hampshire, following their call-up in February 1953

Two more young men, one Kosovan, the other a Palestinian-Swede, tell me that they wouldn’t fire so much as a water-pistol on Sweden’s behalf. Why? Because it supplies arms to Israel.

Their visceral loathing for the country that has given them, and their families, sanctuary made one despair. But then, as a Skogas youth leader remarked tellingly: ‘How can we expect them to do national service if they have no sense of national identity?’

Extrapolating the attitude of these young ingrates to that of similarly disaffected youths in many British towns and cities brought home a glaring flaw in Sunak’s proposal.

It is that the very people who would benefit from a disciplined, purposeful, communal regime, but are likely to dodge national service, won’t be forced to serve.

If the system is to work for the good of all, rather than only those who are already dutiful and patriotic, then surely no one should be allowed to put two fingers up to it (as surely many would) with impunity?

Happily, hostility to Sweden and its values is by no means universal among young people on the estate, and some are keen to repay the state’s generosity.

A baseball-hatted 17-year-old told me how his father – a political refugee from Bolivia – had wanted to show his gratitude to Sweden by joining the army, but his application was declined. When he was conscripted a few weeks ago, he was delighted to be able to ‘honour’ his father by serving in his place.

Equally impressive was Yasser Echelh, 18, who was born in Italy, to Moroccan parents, and arrived in Sweden aged eight with no knowledge of the country’s culture or language.

Eloquent and personable, with an Olympian physique, if Sunak does get the chance to launch national service in Britain, he might wish to fly this young man to London as its poster-boy.

Keen to serve in Army is Morrocan-Swede Yasser Echelh

Already selected to be a group leader in radio communications when he joins up in August, one marvelled at his thirst for adventure, and his desire to push himself to his mental and physical limits – or ‘test myself to the maximum’, as he put it.

The more so when he earnestly commiserated with two friends whose applications were turned down (one had flat feet and the other declared an allergy to fish) and admitted to having one gnawing reservation about leaving home for the first time: ‘I’ll really miss my mum.’

Having visited the marines and seen the calibre of the young people who will become his surrogate family, I feel sure his homesickness will be temporary.

Starmer may snigger, and Sunak’s plan clearly needs fine-tuning. Yet I leave Sweden with the growing persuasion that national service could indeed positively transform a generation – even without the stunning Scandinavian scenery and genderless bunk beds.