大象传媒

Helped to start and close No1 Plotting Officers School (job to produce ATS op. officers to release men from A A batteries to the field - trained about 800 in a little over a year.

Then George was posted as an Instructor to Oswestry (to the same regiment as his initial training unit, the 210th) On arrival there, George saw the Regimental Adjutant, and he posted George to one of the batteries, which had no recruits - they were waiting. When George walked into the office the battery Sergeant Major was Sergeant Major Irons who had been George's Squad Sgt when George was a recruit. They had a chat. An ATS clerk brought tea. Then the bell rang: he said "That will be the OC". He went away, and later he came back and said "Here is your chair" (his chair) "you take over from me". He was to take over another battery. He said "One bell, the Major wants you, two bells its the battery clerk". A little later one bell went so he went in: it was Viscount Chetwynd, George was with him quite a time, and they started this Plotting Officers school. George had been sent as a War Office Gunnery Instructor and George acted as Chief Instructor more or less the whole time. There were commissioned instructors but George was the only Gunnery School Instructor until quite near the end, when there was really hardly any need. By this time there was a force of Sergeant Instructors and it was running. He was Jimmy Leighton, actually a Sergeant Major, not an Ack I.G., a Sergeant Major Instructor In Gunnery, and the Senior Warrant Officer in the whole of Oswestry camp. He was very nice, but only there as they couldn't find him a job anywhere else. He was able to live out: he suffered from ulcers but could still instruct.

When George arrived there were no recruits. Viscount Chetwynd had been nominated to start the new unit. There was only him, George, a battery clerk and a couple of ATS oddments: it was ATS administration. It was No1 Plotting Officers School - the first one - we set up the organisation and took in 60 recruits, women officers, mostly newly commissioned, 60 every 6 weeks and they did a 3 month course. These young women mostly to begin with were not related in any way to Ack Ack batteries - a lot of them came from transport services or administration. Many had only done the minimum requirement in the ATS to be considered for commissioning at all - some were not much more than 19 or 20 years old and knew nothing. The job was to redress the shortage of Officers in 1942. When ATS batteries were formed they were static batteries. Originally any male battery could have been ordered overseas at any time in the mobile role. The 3.7 ack ack gun was an excellent field gun, a more expensive field gun than the ordinary 25 pounder. But when they got ATS in they were home service units. The idea was that the command post officer was to be ATS, which released officers from the Ack Ack base units to active roles in the field. We trained 700 in the year. They had to do quite a lot - putting them through 2 things - both the basic training that the ATS girls had to do, and more than that. This was more demanding than the normal training which George had had.

(In George's own training, George only had the haziest training on the actual guns. In order to turn out a battery in 3 months from scratch they trained a command post detachment, which was mostly predictor work, and they trained rangefinders, heightfinders and spotters. The gunners did not do any of the instrument work, in fact its doubtful if many of the gunners ever did get onto instrument work - occasionally someone would have to fill in. Then the MT section - everyone was supposed to a second job eventually - but this was not in the initial training. They trained Predictor Numbers, Height finder operators and things like that separately. So, for example, Ron Steeples from Derby, whose parents ran fish and chip shop at bottom of St Thomas Rd Derby, and who survived war. He was a range and height finder in initial training but when most of the action was night, with radar, he became George's deputy - he came as George plotter reserve and when George left the battery he took over as GPO Ack, much to his surprise as he reckoned he was not bright enough. He became a Sgt in the end and went with D-Day landings and through into Germany.)

But these girls that we were training were going to be operationally in command of the girls in the command post. They had to be able to check their examination of equipment etc. and had to know all the jobs. We had to train them on predictors, in height finding, to understand what happened when the information went to the guns. They would not be operating them but they had to know it. They also some idea of what happened with the radar - and then train them to be plotting officers - i.e. they had to be able to work on the plotting board. And on top of this they had to continue the normal military drill - i.e. make them into soldiers - by doing square bashing occasionally to keep them fit. We also took them to a firing camp for a day to learn what things sounded like when guns fired. Three months was intensive. We found that extras were needed - e.g. to teach the 4 rules of decimals. In heightfinding, you needed to check the instrument, but you can't do it without the mathematical knowledge to take 10 readings and get the mean. We discovered they could not do it. Chetwynd asked what should be done about the problem; George said he would have to do some elementary arithmetic with them. Every course thereafter had a couple of lessons on arithmetic such as moving decimal points! They needed this for corrections on the guns for wind etc. And they did not have to do much about it so long as they knew where to go with these slide rules. Some of them wanted to know what happened. They were mostly pretty intelligent. This continued for about 12 months. We trained 800, and about 700 successfully completed. The school then came to an end because there were then enough ATS officers trained. It was a crash course really.

The camp at Oswestry was called Park Hall Camp, which was actually nearer to Whittington: the bottom end of the camp was more or less in Whittington. There was a railway junction (Oswestry, Whittington and Geboen) The Railway went from Oswestry to Geboen and then Chester, a branch line joined there, while a third line went to Park Hall, and Park Hall camp, which then had a station. A shuttle service served the camp.

George was at Oswestry for a year, and he had one day off each week while running the plotting officers school. He walked up the Llangollen canal from Whittington, otherwise he took the bus to Chirk (there was a mining area beyond). He walked across to Llangollen. Walking across the aqueduct gave a curious feeling of being unprotected, as there was (and still is) a railing on only one side. Once hias wife Mavis came and walked it too.

While at Oswestry teaching the ATS, George used to go out for a 1.5 mile run before breakfast to maintain fitness.

Rations were generally rather poor in Derby: this may have been due to the fact that there were always a lot of visitors to the various factories.. There were always a lot of eggs and other difficult to get items in Oswestry, as they could be got from the local farms.

About Jan 1944 went to Llandrindod Wells to OCTU (for 7 months - the last month George was back in Oswestry again!). The school was coming to an end anyway and George started to ask questions about what had happened to his earlier application for commissioning. George had not bothered while the school was going, as he felt it was something he could do, it was like being in school. There were 2 OC's a chap called Prior, after Chetwynd went off to command a battery. Prior was a good chap. George got involved with the Garrison's Amateur Dramatics too while there. And George did some voluntary things, there was spare time once the school was off the ground, such as improvisation in making of equipment.

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