大象传媒

This contribution to WW2 People's War website was received by the Action Desk at 大象传媒 Radio Norfolk, with the permission and on behalf of Albert Grieveson and submitted to the website by a volunteer.

I was born in June 1923, and enlisted in the RAF in February 1941, just before I turned eighteen. I was passed to train as a Pilot Air Observer but asked to be re-mustered to ground staff. I did my square-bashing at Blackpool and then went to RAF Cranwell for radar training. In radar we were all known as 鈥渢he 60 Group鈥� 鈥� I don鈥檛 know why.

In September 1942 I was posted to RAF Navidale at Helmsdale in Sutherlandshire, Scotland. On New Year鈥檚 Eve 1942 I spent the night in the transit camp at Scrabster just outside Thurso, and sailed to Orkney next morning, New Year鈥檚 Day 1943. It was the first sailing for three days because the weather in the Pentland Firth had been so bad, and it was rough!

I was based at Crustan, on Costa Head on the north coast of Orkney. The camp consisted of a collection of Nissen huts situated on the top of a cliff and was very basic. Toilets were buckets with a seat on top. There was no water supply other than that pumped from the valley below, and if the little Jap pump broke down that was it - we didn鈥檛 have any water. There was no hot water. If we wanted to we could walk down to Birsay Hotel, on the edge of a loch, and pay a shilling for a hot bath, which was expensive.

We were radar plotting, working a three-shift system. We got a day off once a month if we were lucky. Not that it mattered, because there was nowhere to go except Kirkwall or Stromness 鈥� not exactly the high life.

When I went to Orkney it was classed as a nine-month station. At the end of nine months you could 鈥� in theory- request a move to the mainland. But 70 Wing, of which I was part, was crafty. If they moved you before the nine months were up they could send you anywhere in the north of Scotland, Shetland or Hebrides. Eight months and two weeks after I arrived I was posted to Rosehearty near Fraserburgh in Aberdeenshire. Again, the rule was that after six months you could be posted back to one of the islands, or overseas. I was posted overseas.

I travelled by bus from Rosehearty to Inverness (there were no trains) with all my kit, then by train to London and on to Renscombe Downs Dorset. The good thing was that in Scotland all servicemen on trains were met by ladies dishing out tea in jam jars, bars of chocolate and a few cigarettes. You left the jam jar under the seat. Civilian passengers looked on with their tongues hanging out.

At Renscombe I became part of a mobile radar unit called a type 14. There were eighteen or nineteen of us including the CO, pilot officer, cook, driver, nursing orderly, mechanics and general duties. After training we were kitted out in khaki, army boots and webbing and given rifles and fifty rounds of ammunition. I think we were more danger to ourselves than to the enemy. We moved to RAF Chigwell. We were very lucky, because then it was a bomber group dispersal unit and consequently they didn鈥檛 want to know us (the two commands never mixed) so we spent alternate periods of thirty-six hours in camp and thirty-six hours in London where any money saved in Scotland was quickly spent. Then our radar equipment was issued to us and we were sent off to the south coast. For about two weeks we were stationed on the golf course at Hastings (where we became honorary members of the golf club) and then onto the cliffs at Seaford, where I celebrated my twenty-first birthday. Then we waited.

D-Day arrived. We went to Gosport and boarded a landing craft. By now we were attached to AMES (Air Ministry Experimental Station) 15-130. We landed on the Mulberry (man-made harbour) at Sword Beach in Normandy shortly after D-Day. We drove to a base in the middle of a field somewhere in the British sector and set up our equipment. We were under canvas of course. I discovered that you could get quite comfortable on a straw-filled paliasse placed in a furrow. For some reason 鈥� I don鈥檛 know why 鈥� we were moved to the American sector. We went one day and came back to the British sector the next 鈥� long enough for us to have a meal and scrounge about 200 cigarettes from the American PX stores.

We then moved through the WW1 battlefields. I remember Vimy Ridge. We passed through St. Aumer and carried on to the outskirts of Calais, where we lived in old rat-infested wooden huts. We operated just outside Dunkirk. Dunkirk was occupied throughout the war and we covered it with aircraft coming in with food and medical supplies. At that time we were with the Mosquito squadron. Its code name for the interceptions was 鈥淟imestone squadron鈥�. We were there until just before Christmas 1944, when we moved to a chateau outside Amiens. We were there for Christmas.

In about January 1945 we left AMES 15-130 and moved to Den Haan near Blankenberge in Belgium, where we lived in rather comfortable bungalows and were attached to AMES 15-083. We operated with them for a while and then three or four of us took over a naval radar station on the top of the casino and for a short time became AMES 66-001.

Towards the end of the war we were moved to Louvaine and then to Diest on the Dutch border where we had to 鈥渄ope鈥� (clean and tidy up) all our equipment with a special type of paint and hand it over to the Belgian army.

Then we came back to England, by boat from Ostend to Tilbury. We were posted to Thame in Oxfordshire, where those of us arriving from overseas lived in packing cases, rows and rows of them, each with three beds in a tier. A big marquee where meals were served had been set up in a field. This was taken down after a while and we had to eat in camp.

We began to retrain, probably for the Far East, but the atomic bombs put a stop to that.

In November 1945 three of us were posted down to Portland Bill. We got a notice from the warrant officer saying 鈥淵ou lads shouldn鈥檛 be going. We鈥檒l see you back here again.鈥� He was right. We were back in Thame two weeks later.

A week before Christmas 1945 I got two 72-hour passes together and went home to Hartlepool for Christmas. I had been posted to 73 Wing HQ at Boston Spa and told to report on December 29th, which I did. I went into the guardroom and was told that I was posted - to RAF Stenigot, near Louth in Lincolnshire. I arrived there next morning, the 30th, to be told, 鈥淵ou鈥檙e posted.鈥�
鈥淲here to this time!?鈥�
鈥淪toke Holy Cross, near Norwich.鈥�
So on the 31st of December 1945 I arrived at Stoke Holy Cross, my third station in three days. I spent New Year鈥檚 Eve there alone.

I stayed there until I was demobbed, in summer 1946.

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