大象传媒

Chapter 3 鈥� 鈥楾he Battle of Britain鈥�

It must have been in May of 1940 that we said goodbye to Yorkshire and made our way by rail to Portland Bill in Dorset to man a gunsite on the very tip of the Bill just inland of the lighthouse. We were sent there because the Luftwaffe had adopted an unacceptable habit of crossing the Channel at nought feet, popping up over the Bill and bombing the naval shipping in Portland harbour. Our presence was supposed to encourage them to maintain such a height as to give at least some warning of impending attack and I think that in this respect the tactic was successful.

I said that we went south by rail, but this didn鈥檛 mean catching a train in Sheffield, on the LMS (London, Midland and Scottish) line to St. Pancras, crossing London to Waterloo and catching a Southern railway train to Weymouth. No, we entrained on a special troop train in a siding somewhere on the outskirts of Sheffield and began a tortuous journey of several days across England, stopping in sidings for a variety of reasons, not least to give priority to other rail traffic, so that we arrived in Weymouth feeling more than a little fed up and decidedly dirty. I speak with feeling because I made a number of such journeys whilst I was in wartime Britain and none were in any way other than quite miserable. One that I remember in particular was when a Sergeant and I were detailed to escort a prisoner from Rotherham to the Glasshouse at Aldershot. At that time this was the Army鈥檚 military prison and its name, actually its nickname, was derived from the fact that the central part had a glass roof. We arrived early in the morning after travelling all night without even a wash and feeling decidedly scruffy. I can still see the large prison doors with a small wicket door in one side. I suppose the Sergeant must have rung the bell because suddenly the wicket door opened and there appeared the most vicious looking character I had ever seen with a face looking all the more threatening by a large scar running from the eye to the mouth. I was told to wait outside, which was certainly OK with me, and the prisoner and Sergeant disappeared into the black maw of the prison. I think I was outside for more than two hours and the only light relief was when a lorry arrived to be let into the prison loaded with logs. In what seemed no time at all it reappeared loaded with little sticks of firewood. Soldiers sentenced to 鈥榙etention鈥� in the Glasshouse, usually for a minimum of twenty eight days certainly had no wish to repeat the experience.

The summer of 1940 enjoyed fine weather which was just as well as we were living under canvas. We slept in bell tents, another relic of WW1, and these were designed so that in plan they formed a circle with twenty eight triangles of canvas rising from a two feet high skirt to the peak of the central tent pole. The idea was that one such tent would accommodate twenty eight soldiers, one to each panel, but it was hard luck on the poor unfortunate that had the panel that incorporated the 鈥榙oor鈥�, particularly on the night after pay parade when most of the occupants had been to the pub! Happily we were only required to allocate about half that number to a tent and as by that time I had risen to the rank of Sergeant I recall that I shared a tent with no more than three others.

It was here and now that we experienced our first action against the enemy and actually fired our guns. I don鈥檛 recall that we actually hit anything but hopefully we were regarded by the enemy as another hazard to be considered. What we did have was a grandstand view of the Battle of Britain and I well remember lying on my back in the sunshine and watching a dog fight develop in the sky above me and at other times when it was cloudy of listening to the rattle of machine guns on high and now and again watching some poor unfortunate aviator of either side falling beneath the clouds and into the sea. One of these, a German, wandered into our camp one day having baled out of his stricken aircraft and swum ashore. He was in a pretty sorry state poor devil. We also had the frustration of seeing our convoys in the Channel being attacked by the fearsome Junkers 87 dive-bomber and yet being out of range of our guns we could do nothing to help in the ships鈥� defence.

It was here again that we were daily appraised of the intensity of the battle and of the courage of the 鈥楩ew鈥� when we listened on our telephones, which were linked via our Gun Operations Room to the R.A.F operations rooms, to repeated messages given in an accent bordering on the laconic, announcing that eighty plus, a hundred plus or more 鈥榖andits鈥�, were about to be intercepted by our fighter aircraft. It was, indeed, an awesome sight to see these massive formations of enemy aircraft approaching the coast and then to see what really was a handful of Hurricanes or Spitfires diving in to the attack.

We had the occasional day off of course when we went into Weymouth, a town that I knew well from my school days in Dorchester, and my best memory of those days was when we spent a shilling (5p) at one of the better hotels to enjoy the luxury of a bath. It seems odd sitting here to be reminded that, whereas nowadays we feel slightly mucky if we go for more than a day without a shower or a bath, in those days when the norm of most people was to bath once a week, we soldiers often went several weeks with no facility to do other than to have a wash.

My worst moment in that summer was when I had gone onto the mainland to get something from Battery HQ at Wyke Regis and watched with horror as my gunsite was subjected to a direct air attack from the enemy. It really did look horrendous as plane after plane dropped their bombs apparently right onto the guns, but you can imagine my relief when I got back to the gunsite to find that the only casualties had been a couple of cows in an adjoining field.

Up until now we had had to rely on our height-finding machines and predictors which together, and dependant upon the skill of the operators, determined, or perhaps more truthfully estimated, the range, elevation and bearing necessary to train our guns on enemy aircraft. Then one day there appeared on the gunsite two strange looking vehicles. Each, of much the same size, consisted of a wooden cabin on wheels, and as we watched with interest a group of nerdish looking soldiers proceeded to erect an array of aerials, which we later learned to refer to as antennae, on the side of each cabin. They then proceeded to deploy cables to link up with the guns and this had us seriously baffled. In charge of the party was a Sergeant and so secret was the equipment that not even the Troop commander was allowed inside the cabins although we did have to be told that this was a new and more effective way of laying our guns. It was, of course, our first acquaintance with radar then known as RDF (radio direction finding) equipment, which quickly became known as GL (gun laying) equipment. When some of us were eventually allowed to get inside the cabins we found that one housed the transmitting equipment and the other the receiver. The transmitter had a number of huge radio valves that really did look awesome when they were switched on and almost appeared to be on fire. Indeed it was said at the time that the operators in that cabin were afraid of becoming sterile and it was not until one of their number went on leave and put his wife in the family way that this canard was put down. Its purpose was to emit a series of pulses in the shape of a wide beam (the pulses just like those produced by the magnetron of a microwave oven) which would hopefully be reflected from an aircraft flying through the beam, or 鈥榣obe鈥� as it was more correctly named. The inside of the receiver was, though darker, much more benign. It rather resembled the slot beside a church organ which in the old days, before electric pumps were introduced, was occupied either by an old age pensioner or a small choirboy whose job it was to raise and lower a wooden lever which operated a pump to the organ pipes In the case of the receiver to the GL however, it housed a couple of cathode ray tubes on whose surface appeared a ghostly green horizontal line and when an aircraft was detected by the transmitter a pulse appeared to break the symmetry of the line. As the aircraft got nearer the pulse moved from right to left and by following it with a cursor the operator was able to relay to the guns the sort of information, range, bearing and angle of sight that had previously been predicted by our now more obsolete equipment. I doubt whether it was anymore accurate but it was the start of a new age.

Whilst I was on Portland Bill my Troop Commander suggested that I should apply for a commission which would raise my status from the rank of Sergeant (a Non Commissioned Officer) to the dizzy height of 2nd Lieutenant (this and the rank of Lieutenant being referred to as a 鈥楽ubaltern鈥�) and which would involve a five month training course at an Officer Cadet Training Unit (OCTU). I knew, however, that one was not eligible to apply until one was eighteen and that proof of age would be required to support the application. So, I had to come clean and tell him that I was still only seventeen. He said, 鈥淥h well you鈥檒l have to wait a bit won鈥檛 you鈥� and I thought that was that, but imagine my dismay when the very next day I was told that I had to report to the Brigadier; to me at that time a personage not far below God Almighty. With boots and brasses properly polished I reported at the appointed hour and was marched into THE PRESENCE who turned out to be a rather elderly looking gentleman with white hair, a very red face and a white walrus moustache. The interview was short and to me, who was rather expecting to be arraigned on a charge known as 鈥榝alse attestation of papers鈥�, happily sweet. It went something like this:-
鈥淲hat are you doing in the Army me boy鈥�
鈥淭he same as everybody else I hope Sir鈥�
鈥淏loody good show. Bloody good show. March him out Sergeant Major鈥�
And that was it!

It was in late August that we quit Portland Bill and made our way, slowly, by train again, to Biggin Hill in Kent where we were to provide the air defence of that famous Battle of Britain airfield. Sadly we arrived the day after the airfield had suffered a direct air attack which had had an horrendous effect including a direct hit on an air-raid shelter which was occupied by some sixty WAAFs most of whom were killed.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.