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From 1942 to 1943, I was a balloon operator (see story 7850621), and when they didn’t need us any more, I decided I wanted a clean job. I became wireless operator.

It took 6 months to train. They kept telling us it should had been two years. But it was just Morse. We learnt a bit of the electricals, but we never used that, it was all just mechanical. I was 5 months at Blackpool, and one month at Compton Bassett. We had a marvellous instructor, and I go to 22 words a minute. I can still do Morse now: I hear letters in all sorts of everyday noises.

In the photo, I’m on the 3rd row up, 8th from right. We were nearly all of us ex-balloon operators, which was unusual.

We were asked if we would like to go to a camp where we just received Morse, and didn’t send any. They didn’t tell us what it was. I liked receiving better than sending, so that was good.

So I was sent to Chicksands Priory, near Bedford. It was an old priory, but that was for the officers. We were in Nissen Huts again.

We were intercepting the Germans’ radio signals. All our signals went by teleprinter to Bletchley, where they were decoded.

We couldn’t tell anyone what we were doing, not even our parents. We could just say that we were wireless operators. Americans used to take us dancing, and they’d ask, ‘What sort of bombers do you have at your station?’. We just replied that it wasn’t an air base.

We sat in pairs, and worked round the clock, 2-10, 6-2. If it was a very important station, Berlin perhaps, we had three on it, and we called that a 3-tier or 3-tiler.

The Germans were a class of their own at sending, they were perfection. It was wonderful to listen to — it was the rhythm. After the war I had to listen to French Morse and it was all over. I covered many stations, and it was always like that, they were all trained the same.

Their HQ didn’t have a callsign, unlike the British. But we learnt by sound who was saying what. The Germans changed all their callsigns every day at 1am. We’d get the new ones, but I said to my partner, ‘One of these days we won’t get the new one.’ But we always did. They must have thought they were clever changing them, but we always got them. I don’t know why we were never bombed, because we had terrific aerials there.

I was on once and I got a Q signal as the signal was fading. I got the sergeant out, and asked what it meant. It was QTP, ‘I’m leaving port’. He said to hang on to it, so I moved my dial. But usually we stayed on the same station the whole session.

We were always told to report plain language immediately. It never happened until we landed on D-Day. They’d put on our sets where they thought we were covering, to make it more interesting. My station was Cherbourg. I got a message in plain language, and I saw the word ‘Fuhrer’. The sergeant read it out to me: ‘Fight for the Fuhrer, fight to the last man.’

(Transcribed by Joachim Noreiko)

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