大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War Site by Margaret Walsh of The Royal Star and Garter Home on behalf of Robert Stickland and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions

I had just been called up and was at Blackpool. I found out that I was to be put on a Morse course and was worried that this would be about flying and that there would be high losses.

We had civilian instructors - top fellows - who could send out 17 or 18 words a minute. We knew we would only need 7 or 8 words a minute.

We finished the course and 13 of us failed. We were brought together and asked if we would be interested in an electrical course.

I went to Uxbridge for the course. That suited me because I could get home at weekends. The course was for Parachute and Cable [P and C]. The main purpose of this was for defence against low flying enemy aircraft - either over land or sea.

We finished up on Norfolk at Horsham St Faith, where we had to lay out electrical lines, consisting of a canister which had a parachute inside, connected with strong piano wire. So in a line you could have 10 or 20 of these canisters. There would usually be 3 lines, so if you were unlucky with one there would be 2 more.

These lines would be laid out for defence for, eg a bomb dump, or other places the enemy would be likely to approach. The rockets were sent up electrically to a height of up to 600 feet. Should enemy aircraft be coming down less than 600 feet, the operator would send up one line of rockets in anticipation that the enemy aicraft would fly in and probably pick up one or two of these cables on the wings which when the parachute was opened on the cables would create a pull on the wings of
1 ton. This would automatically mean that the pilot would lose control eg a dive bomber diving on its target is already in a steep dive and picking up 2 or 3 of the cables it would automatically lose control.

Hitler decided to attack places of historical interest and they usually came at 8 at night. On one occasion we spotted the Germans coming towards Norwich. We were asked to send up every line that was possible. They went up like a rocket display. The Germans turned round and went back, but returned next day to see what all the business was about and to take photos. We were never fortunate enough to catch one although other stations were more fortunate. This device was used at Horsham St Faith for a period of 2 years but eventually American fighters took the station over and all the PA system was taken down - in other words it was 'US'.

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