大象传媒

John Martins War (Part 1)

I was born in Ashvale, Surrey in 1922. Before World War 2, in about 1937/8, my family lived in Dover, in a converted hotel, perhaps the tallest building in Dover. This was one road back from the esplanade and clearly visible from across the Channel. Little did we imagine that shells would whistle across that narrow strip of water. Soon after the outbreak of war my family moved to the back of the town. My father was a ladies hairdresser and owned a shop at the town centre, with family accommodation above it.

Round about 1940, when the shelling started, my father insisted that my mother and sisters moved away from the coast while he remained to look after his business. Whilst he was permanently waving a customer鈥檚 hair, a shell dropped on the shop and that was the end of his business. Fortunately no one was hurt.

I have many happy memories of my schooldays, which were spent, at Dover Secondary Boys School. (Later called the Grammar School.) My vivid memories of the school were the Remembrance Day gathering we had every year. Morning assembly was made up of the whole school listening to the names of former pupils who were killed in WW1, followed by an address and singing the school anthem some of which follows:

Forty years on when afar and asunder,
Parted are those who are singing today,
When you look back and forgetfully wonder,
What you were like in your work and your play.

Then, it may be, there will often come o鈥檈r you,
Glimpses of notes, like the catch of a song,
Visions of boyhood shall float them before you,
Echoes of dreamland shall bear them along.

Routs and discomfiture鈥檚, rushes and rallies,
Bases attempted and rescued and won,
Strife without anger, and art without malice,
How will it seem to you, forty years on?

Forty years on, growing older and older,
Shorter in wind, as in memory long,
Feeble of foot and rheumatic of shoulder,
What will it help you, that once you were strong?

God give us bases to guard or beleaguer,
Games to play out, whether earnest or fun,
Fights for the fearless, and goals for the eager,
Twenty, and thirty, and forty years on!

The years have rolled by and never was there a truer word. The climax was a last post sounded on the parapet outside, by the school Cadet Corp buglers. A taste of the future ahead for many of those boys. My schooldays were to have a great effect on my later life, extremely useful, although I did not appreciate it at the time.
My out of school hours were spent in two ways. Firstly during the weekdays, with a view to my planned future career, I toured the inland Dover harbour, studying the many types of shipping present. At the weekends, along with a friend, Frank Kemp, we set up a semi permanent camp on the cliffs at the Warren, Capel le Ferne. My friend worked for a local radio dealer and we set ourselves up with a portable radio and electric light. This was powered by disused radio HT batteries which had been heated up to provide a feeble light. So we passed our very happy, out of school hours.

I left school in 1936 and my choice was to join the Merchant Navy. With this in mind, my father reached an agreement with Messrs Hawksfields of Dover, the coal suppliers, to take me on a trip to the North East ports where they loaded coal. This was to give me some idea of what would be involved. The trip was not outstanding, but I recall that I was impressed by the expanse of the North Sea, not to be compared with the larger oceans, which I would meet, if successful. The diet on board was largely influenced by the astuteness of the ship鈥檚 cook, who provided a mainly fish diet, by trailing lines over the stern of the ship. My career at sea however, was not to be, because shortly afterwards, the Board of Trade rejected my eyesight for colour blindness, unable to tell red from green distant lights. Perhaps I was fortunate?

I was in touch with many organisations. Lever Brothers and The Crown Agents for example, were advertising widely for jobs in East Africa and the Gold Coast. I also tried the Ministry of Defence in Dorset, all without success. There was not much in Dover to be excited about. I finally ended up training with Boots the Chemists as an apprentice pharmacist. That would have been about 1938.

Early in 1940 I was offered accommodation in Orpington where there were more engineering jobs around in a safer area. I was living with a couple, on a housing estate opposite a modern school surrounded by playing fields. There were air raid shelters in the grounds. It was an open landscape and, during the day, we were able to watch the aerial dog fights of the Battle of Britain Fighters overhead. At night we could see the fires burning over South East London in the night sky. Early on, we were the targets of a landmine that badly damaged the houses with the blast. Along with other able bodied residents I helped to shepherd the very shocked locals into the safety of the shelters. All in our sleeping gear, we were able to see the funny side, as there were no casualties.

I obtained a post in a research laboratory with The Telephone Manufacturing Co. in Orpington and was involved in some most interesting avenues. Two that I recall, were something called a Secrophone which was a secure telephone system using frequency band scrambling, very useful in time of war! The second was the development of radio VHF transceivers using a new idea of two triodes, in push-pull, housed in a single glass envelope, with separate anodes to keep capacities to a minimum envelope with separate anodes for the tank coil. A new idea, but of course, now very much dated. Whilst working in Orpington I decided that it was time to visit my parents in Dover, so I borrowed a push bike and set off on a 50 mile trip. On the way, near Pembury I was knocked off my bike by an army lorry, but fortunately, after a visit to the local hospital, I was able to continue my trip. The return journey brought me to the daunting prospect of the long, uphill feature of Sevenoaks Hill, which just about killed me arriving home in the early hours.

It was a very exciting time for a young teenager, especially as I was now nearer to London with more opportunities
The wages here were hardly enough to support my riotous standard of living in a bedsit so I started to look elsewhere. At this time, mid 1939 that the 大象传媒 was seeking engineers, so I was bold enough to put my name forward without any real hope. This resulted in an interview, then nothing. So it was with considerable surprise that, towards the end of the year, a letter arrived, asking me to report to the 大象传媒 wartime station at Evesham, Wood Norton, known as 鈥淗ogsnorton鈥�, to start work on Jan 2nd 1941. Quite a surprise.

Thus it was that on Jan 2nd I was sat in front of a sound mixer, fading in and out of various Home radio progs, placing Big Ben and the Greenwich Time Signal in their correct positions and carefully noting in a log, times, to the second. Quite an experience. We lived in dormitories and then local billets, guarded by Home guards all the time and a password on the gates.

Sandy Macpherson was one of our local notables, playing a grand organ with an echo chamber in the basement, with records of bird noises to create a Chapel in the Valley effect. We also had a Salon Orchestra resident. The variety programmes originated in Bangor.
Soon we were instructed in the art of recording programmes. There were several methods used, all quite new to us, but we were quick to learn.
1; The first used a huge reel of steel tape. We could record up to 陆 hour of prog. These reels were as large as a car wheel and very heavy and setting up the steel pole pieces (recording was by magnetism) called for considerable skill to achieve the minimum background noise level. An interesting feature of this medium was that when the tape broke it needed the two ends to be butt jointed and a huge spot welder wheeled up to it to secure the joints. We then needed an electric grinding machine to smooth the two edges to produce a smooth and 鈥減lop鈥� free length of tape. It was an art and took considerable time and skill.
2; The second used 12鈥� and 16鈥� disks of glass or aluminium were coated with cellulose lacquer which could be cut into grooves with the modulation impressed on the groove. These could be played by a sapphire stylus at the same time as recording. Very useful.
3; The third was the most technical of the three systems. A system the 大象传媒 took from Radio Normandy and Radio Luxembourg. Kodak & Gaevert both produced this film: an acetate base, coated with an opaque black lacquer. A track was cut using a sapphire cutter in a moving iron armature. This could produce a bi-lateral sound track similar to that used by the 35mm film industry. Once again this was capable of instantaneous playback. The setting up procedure was very precise to get a perfectly balance sound track at the same time to look for chips on the sapphire cutter.
All these methods were used by the 大象传媒 throughout the war but were overtaken by modern 录 tape after the war when we discovered this in Germany.
I remember one incident of note. At 6 am each morning we had to replay a recording of 30 seconds, which was a Muslim call to prayer. Naturally we were more than a little sleepy when doing this and on one occasion when I had finished this chore I went to rewind the recording and found that it was already back at the beginning. It was obvious that the previous user had not rewound the film and I had played the recording backwards. Being in Arabic I was none the wiser and I was also pleased to find that I had not started a holy war. My late apologies.

This broadcasting area was also attached to a radio monitoring service. A number of wooden huts housed monitors people from all different countries and behind the complex was a high hill. On top of this hill was a specialised reception hut with various antennae outside. This sent the signals down the hill to the monitors who spent all day & night listening to the foreign stations in the hope of getting useful little gems. The transcripts were then despatched swiftly to the War Office
We experienced severe interference with these signals when the weather was damp and so a group of us were despatched up the hill with a portable radio to trace the cause. Behind the hill was a line of National Grid Pylons and we needed to tramp along this line, under the wires across the fields, looking for the source of the interference. It transpired that there was a cracked insulator where the current was arcing across and we were able to give an accurate explanation for the problem.

One big advantage of more or less living on the job was that every so often we had three or four days leave. The 大象传媒 operated a hostel for unattached staff in Grosvenor Square where the USA embassy was situated. Using this as a base we were able to sample some of the night life of London. There were all night canteen facilities at 200 Oxford Street (very reasonable prices) and the entertainment was provided by 大象传媒 Variety shows, which took place at The Criterion, Paris Cinema and Aeolian Hall, etc. Geraldo, Victor Sylvester, Band Wagon, Hi Gang, Danger Men at Work and ITMA were some of them. We took advantage of all these free adventures.

We were, at this time, deferred from call up due to the importance of our work.
However it was not long after we had learned how to do the job that young ladies appeared and it transpired that we were expected to pass on our recently learned trade to these ladies. We knew of course that, as women, they would never be clever enough to do the job! However by May of 1942 they became competent and we were no longer required, so in May 1942 I was enlisted in RAOC (Royal Army Ordnance Corp), (later REME) as a wireless mechanic. (Craftsman Martin 10589662).

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