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This contribution was given by Dick Allen to Edgar Lloyd and is added to the site with Mr. Allen's permission.

I went up to Cambridge in 1939 to do what is normally a three year course…but because the war had started it was telescoped into two years. So it was summer 1941 when I finished. Then we had interviews with the various Government departments to see what we should do, and as soon as I admitted that as a boy I had built radio sets as a hobby, I became a radar officer more or less whether I’d wanted to or not….because they were pretty short of them at that time, so I was given the choice of being a radio officer in the navy or a civilian scientist with the RAF. Since my father was a regular naval officer, naturally I chose the Navy. My father had captained a Destroyer, he captained a flotilla leader at the Battle of Jutland. In due course I was called up to the Royal Naval barracks in Portsmouth when we had a number of other university graduates and other people and we had a fortnight in which to learn how to be Naval Officers, instead of the two or three years or whatever it normally takes, after that we had one week revision of general radio theory and I think it was about a year to learn all about radar…which takes two or three years again now in peacetime…then we were let loose on the Fleet!
The training was mostly in Portsmouth, we had a week based at Douglas in the Isle of Man where they had some small ships…they were yachts I think in peacetime…with radar sets fitted so that we could practice operating them as a ship.

In due course I was posted to HMS Adventure which was a cruiser about 4,000 tons, which was refitting in the dockyard at Liverpool. At that stage my rank was Acting Sub Lieutenant - because of my age, I think. At the end of the training course in Portsmouth we had a passing out exam and I think I came second in the class…someone else failed the exam altogether, but he was promoted to Lieutenant the next day because he was older! I was in the RNVR which was called the Wavy Navy because of the wavy stripes we wore.

HMS Adventure had one radar set which was really a gunnery fire control set, but we had to use it for general purposes. When the refit was finished we moved to Lochalsh where the mine-laying fleet was based and we used to go out laying mines somewhere off the north east corner of Scotland, which could be very rough indeed.

After a while there we moved down to Southampton to get ready to go to Northern Russia ..however going back North through the Irish Sea we had a collision at night, because of course during those days ships sailed without any navigation lights at night because of the war. The radar set wasn’t operating, and wasn’t really suitable for avoiding collisions anyway…and we turned back and returned to Southampton. I then left the ship and was appointed to Portsmouth where I had a job in the dockyard on the staff of Captain D…the captain in charge of the destroyers. We had a flotilla of Hunter Class destroyers which were small destroyers, they didn’t carry any radar officers on board so I was shorebased. The ships had radar operators, but they were purely ratings trained to operate radar sets, they couldn’t do any maintenance or repair so I was responsible, or partly responsible, for the maintenance….I was about 23 at the time.

I was shorebased, but the ships used to go out in the English Channel providing support for coastal forces MTBs MLs, things like that which used to have scraps with the Germans in the Channel most nights.

Then later on I was posted to HMS Carlisle which was a gunnery cruiser, an anti-aircraft cruiser, the normal ships guns had been removed and we had twin four-inch anti-aircraft guns, cannons, things like that….she was refitting in Liverpool dockyard, and the radar sets were being installed by the local shorebased staff, and in due course we were sent out to the Mediterranean. Initially we went to Oran in Algeria, then we moved to the other end of the Mediterranean, based in Alexandria. Basically we were escorting convoys up and down the Mediterranean…Gibraltar, Malta, Alexandria. We didn’t see much action then …Then when the invasion of Sicily took place, we took part as an anti-aircraft guard ship, initially at a bay somewhere near Catania. We did have some activity then…air raids used to come over most evenings, and we used to fire back. I shall always remember the noise when these air raids took place…you could here the noise in the distance gradually building up until your own guns took part and the whole ship shook and the noise was really deafening….and of course it would gradually die away again. At that time I thought I might find myself ashore in Italy in due course so I started learning Italian…..but I never did get on shore! We moved from Catania slightly further round the island to nearer Palermo ..I think the armies had just crossed the Straits of Medina. Then when we were no longer required there we moved back to Alexandria and we were escorting — we used to make sorties into the Aegean Sea at night, rebel forces used to go in there supporting amphibious forces which used to land little boats on the Greek islands. Generally speaking we’d go in under cover of darkness and go out again while it was still dark. One night we were told to stay in there, and not come out so early…we were near the island of Kos, and of course the Germans didn’t welcome us there by any means and we were dive-bombed and hit by several bombs. The ship didn’t sink we managed to get back to Alexandria, but the ship was badly damaged and most of the ship’s company were drafted away to other jobs. I was initially moved to the local base staff — to the radar office in Alexandria — and then moved on to Port Said where I was put in charge of the port radio office in Port Said. The job there was basically dealing with merchant ships that were converted to troop carrying…they were liners in civil life and they mostly had radar sets on board under the charge of the ship’s radio officer. Generally speaking they didn’t know much about radar so it was my job, when the ships called in at Port Said, to visit them and give them what help was needed. I lived in lodgings …there was a pension…it was called the Pension Suisse …but it was run by a Greek! The European population was a few British, and a lot of Greek and French speaking people …and the visiting forces again were British, French and Greek. I remember they all had their own songs which they used to sing in the evenings after they’d had a few drinks and you could recognise the nationality by knowing what the song was. There were three little French …destroyers I suppose you’d call them….I remember going to sea in one of these ships and the movement was pretty violent and I was thoroughly seasick and I remember one of the French sailors saying to his mate…Les Anglais son malade!! I could have killed had it not been for how I was feeling at the time.

I was in Port Said for about a year and caught scarlet fever and was moved from there to a military hospital in Alexandria which in peacetime had been a European boys’ school. I was moved out to a convalescent camp at Abukir in the desert for a while. It was hot in the daytime but very cold at night. A lot of staff at the camp there were Italian prisoners of war, who were very happy to be there, they weren’t in the least bit interested in the war. . Then after that I was sent up to Beirut , which in those days was a delightful place, and was working in the dockyard there. Then I was moved back to Alexandria on the base staff there for a while. While in Alexandria I lived in lodgings owned by a lady of Hungarian origin. She was classed as one of the French speaking people but she was Hungarian Jewish I think, and she had a couple of spare rooms and used to let them out to servicemen or other people. They said that if you divided the economy of Egypt into three then one third of the wealth would be owned by two per cent of the population, another third by say five per cent and the remaining third divided amongst all the rest who were very poor. There were a lot of thieves about — you had to keep your wits about you — but you could understand why. Eventually having been abroad about two and a half years I was due to come back to Britain by a system which they called Ledlock which meant you went by sea to Treflanc…..then across France by train to Dieppe I think it was. And I remember the train travelling across France looked like it had come out of the Ark, they were old German rolling stock and someone found a label on one giving a date of manufacture that was at the end of the 19th century sometime. However we got back home and after some leave I was appointed to the radar experimental place at Whitley in Surrey — well it was divided between Whitley and Hazelmere — attached to a party of about four of five radar officers whose job it was to install the latest thing in radar test in ships. I spent most of the time travelling up to Glasgow installing radar in HMS Vanguard which was the last battleship to be built by the British Navy. She was being built and fitted out in John Brown’s yard at Clydebank. (sister ship of the KG5). Then we were living in lodgings somewhere in Glasgow …I remember to get to Clydebank we had to travel through the Gorbals by tram, and I never went on the bottom deck of the tram anytime of the day without meeting at least one drunk on board. If you wanted to avoid the drunks you went upstairs. The other thing I remember about Glasgow then was the variety of scones and buns in the bakers shops. I’d never seen such a variety ….and variations on a theme. Then after I’d been there for a while my time came up for demob which was 1946.

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