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This story was submitted to the People's War website by Susie, on behalf of Robert. Robert fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I was a joiner by trade and worked in Bridgeton before the war. I was called up in 1943 and sat an exam, similar to a Higher, to see if I could get into signal school. There I learnt about coding, deciphering, sending and receiving Morse Code, and wireless telegraphy. In the class of twenty I was the only person who had a trade, the rest were clerical workers, but I managed to pass third from the top of the class. My friend, Quentin Bissett, a headteacher, suggested I apply for a commission but I wouldn’t.

Instead, I became Coder One on the HMS Whelp. Communications are the most essential part of the ship, you have four or five wirelesses and are the voice to the bridge and the rest of the fleet. The HMS Whelp was a destroyer and therefore always in the front line, scanning the sea and air, so if anything was going to be attacked it was us.

In the wireless office you worked on watches: evening watch - 8pm to 12 am; middle watch — 12am to 4am; morning — 4am to 8am; then from 8am to 12pm you were off to wash, prepare food etc. You had an allowance of 1 schilling 11p a day for food, and were paid this as part of your wages. There were thirty six men on a mess deck and these were the people you would eat with. I was in a miscellaneous deck made up of telegraphists, coders, signalmen etc, all torpedoists and seamen would stay together. There were 242 men on board the HMS Whelp altogether.

You were called to your ‘action stations’ when you were in the middle of an engagement. We would be under attack from kamikazes and it would be mayhem as throughout it all you are still in communication with the UK and the nearest allied country. When the alarm sounded men would man the sets, take the signals and then pass this information to me. In battle, control would be with the Battleship King George V, men there would get orders from the admiral and then signal the whole fleet. I would answer those, and then speak to them when we were going to manoeuvre. I was given this role because I have good diction and I was not a panicker.

Another part of this role were the codes that had to be checked every day. These were kept in a steel case and if we had been torpedoed my first priority would have been to see that this went over the side of the ship. The steel case had holes to ensure that it would sink.

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