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In 1940, after the fall of France, an invasion of Britain -codenamed Operation Sealion- was thought to be imminent. I had just left the Royal Naval College Dartmouth as a Midshipman and was waiting to join the Naval Engineering College at Keyham in the Dockyard. We were given two months leave that summer because the evacuation of the college to Canada was being considered.
My mother, widowed when my father was lost in HMS Courageous in 1939, offered her house in Mannamead for billeting. One of her guests was a Lieutenant Commander RNR, the CO of a mobile anti tank unit for the protection of the Plymouth area. This consisted of four Commer armour plated lorries. A single barrel 1921 Vickers Pompom was mounted on the back. Although fully manned with gun crews there were no drivers available. Three other Midshipmen, Andrew, Beveridge and Mungo, lived in the area and as the four of us held driving licences, with their agreement, I volunteered us as drivers.

Sent to HMS Drake, we were issued with tin hats and Smith and Wesson revolvers and sent to the small arms range at Trevol after which we were posted to the Breakwater fort for Light AA training. This involved a picket boat trip each day in company with a motley crew of Merchant seamen mainly Polish.
The training consisted of maintaining and using the armament on the fort: air cooled Lewis guns, four barrelled Vickers machine guns and single barrelled Pompoms. A target was towed south of the Breakwater by a small aircraft from Roborough airfield.

As qualified gunners we then joined the unit in Devonport Barracks as drivers. Our first experience was to be stationed at Roborough airfield, where the Gloucester Gladiators stationed there used us for practice attacks. Quite a frightening experience. We were then stationed at the old gun emplacement at the Blockhouse, Stoke, for a few nights.
Fortunately for us the German invasion of Britain did not materialise, as we would have been unlikely to survive an encounter with a tank. At this point the Germans started to use magnetic mines to block Plymouth sound, dropping them from aircraft, and our role was changed to that of an anti-aircraft battery.

The Dockyard cleared the mines by towing a raft —at a respectable distance- with a large coil of cable on it powered by the tug. When the raft passed over a mine the magnetic field from the coil would trigger it. The raft usually disappeared in a shower of the debris and the tug would go back to the Dockyard for another one.

Warships were demagnetised against these mines by a coil fitted around the hull to neutralise the magnetism in the hull. A luxury yacht, the Ceto, had been requisitioned by the Admiralty and was equipped for this purpose.
The captain was also billeted with my mother so I was able to go on board. There was a story that in the Mediterranean the Duke of Windsor had used it with Mrs Simpson we tried out all the beds to get any vibes.

To lay the mines, German aircraft flew in from the French coast low down to avoid our rudimentary ‘radio location’ as it was then known. They approached Plymouth sound across Bigbury Bay, around the Mewstone and dropped their mines in the sound before any aircraft guns could be brought to bear.
The unit was dispatched to various possible vantage points around the sound to catch them at low altitude —the pompom being eminently suited for this.
The unit eventually finished up in a field beside Picklecombe Fort as giving the best field of fire.

The gun crews lived on a site but we midshipmen worked in four watches and when off duty used the CO’s staff to get back to Plymouth. Midshipman Beveridge had his own motorbike but sadly was killed in as accident on his way home. He is buried in Western Mill cemetery. Waiting for the planes the long night watches were enlivened by the stories from the old shellbacks that did much to complete our education. I had the misfortune to miss the few occasions when the battery went into action, but one night it was reported that a barrage balloon had been hit. Over the years the credibility of this story was suspected by my family as an old sailor’s tale.

In the ‘90’s my wife and I were returning by boat from the Isles of Scilly. We spent sometime in our favourite harbour, Fowey, enjoying the hospitality of the Royal Fowey yacht club. Talking to a couple of similar age I started exchanging war experiences with him. He had been a Royal Artillery and when I asked where he had served, he said that he had had a very boring war in command of anti-aircraft battery at Fort Bovisand.
He said that the only excitement they had was when a barrage balloon had been hit. The cable was cut and the balloon drifted across the sound to his battery. The gunners were unable to catch the handling lines from the balloon but could not control it as the wind was lifting it up the cliffs to Staddon Heights. A Lance Bombardier had his leg tangled in a line and was carried away over the cliff top. Expecting the worst, they eventually found him unhurt in a gorse bush at the top. He had been high enough to look down on the oil tanks on fire in Turnchapel.
So my story was confirmed
Eventually the saga ended in September when we were recalled to the Engineering College and the serious business of training as Engineering Officers began.

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