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This story is taken from an interview with Marjorie Brown [nee Carrol] at the Ballymena Servicemen’s Association, and has been added to the site with his / her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions. The interviewer was David Reid, and the transcription was by Bruce Logan.
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I was a volunteer. We were all volunteers from here. There’s a bit of a history behind it. I was at Grammar school, and it was Senior certificate you did then. And the Ministry came round and the results of the Senior Cert, and they offered bursarys to Queens Uni if you had a certain subject, on the condition that you joined the Forces at the end of the course. Well, it was a 3yr course condensed into 2 years plus 2 summers, 2 ½ years. So we agreed to join up at the end of it. [this was] 1942-3. 1942. It was maths-physics, science subjects. We were trained in Queens. It was an engineers degree we got, concentrating on radio. So we joined up as Radio Maintenance Officers, RMOs. That was []. There was a lot of training before that. We went to Guilford. Queen’s Camp, Guilford, Surrey was the showcase for recruits. We were there a couple of months. Then we had pre-officers’ training in Pontefract, Yorkshire. And then we had officers training down in Windsor, in [] College Windsor. And then we had, that was officers training.
In Richmond, Surrey. Took about 6 months. And then we went, there was only about 12 of us. We were billeted out. I was
Workshop in Hartfordshire, Hemmel Hempstead. And I was based there the whole war, you might say. Between going courses here and there. We maintained, the workshop maintained the Ack-Ack sights, the gunsights round about. They brought in radar. Of course, the radar units they had then were big things like caravans, you know? Of course, they had to be brought in and fitted with automatic following or fitted with something. I just had to direct them back to their units, give them a plan for you were only allowed to use certain roads.
When the war finished we danced around the compound for a while, but there was no more work.
Then I was made education officer, getting fellers, because the fellers were all ... I was REME, Royal electrical mechanical engineers. I mean, all the fellers that were on that unit were all highly skilled tradesmen, you know. A lot of them actually had degrees. But the fact they had degrees didn’t mean they were made officers or anything. They were all highly intelligent fellows that were on that. My job was to get them out to, to get revision for their civilian job. So it was just getting units who were printers and all sort of things. I think it was 6 wks, a refresher in their civilian job
Right enough, they enjoyed that 6 wks. Great, because they used to come and after a couple of days they were back, they knew what they were doing. We had more trouble with the owners of the factories that we put them to because they were so useful to them, and all they were getting was their army wages. Practically very very poor, it was nothing. Between you and me they’re giving me presents, because as far as they’re concerned they’re nothing. If they get their army pay, and that’s all.
I was going to be an instructor on one of the courses. It was mathematics. And then I got the release to go back to Queens.
A teaching course, and at that stage I wanted to get into a job and that was it. So I got released a wee bit early, a class B release. So as to go back in Sept. I wouldn’t have been due to release until November or December, but then I got 3 months early to get back to Queens in September. The start of the year.

[radar advances]
Well, there wasn’t all that much, really. The searchlights finished. It kind of died out a bit. But the searchlights that we were practised on at the beginning,
The place I was, it was mostly repair work. The radar that they had on the gunsights.
These came in, they didn’t work, we repaired them and sent them back out again. Any research that was made, I would say it was made up in laboratories
We could either have joined up or we could have gone into research. Research was what you were talking about. I can’t remember, but there were certain places in England that they did research. I expect that’s probably what they were doing. But when you’re out in the field like we were, you’re just concentrating on what’s there. We didn’t do any testing or anything like that.

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