大象传媒

This contribution was submitted by Ray Merrett to Edgar Lloyd. It and the rest of Mr. Merrett's story are added to the site with his permission.

I joined the Air Force in Cardiff ..0614 Army co-operation South Glamorgan squadron ....my number was 818159 and I joined up in December 1938 or Jan 1939...and went to camp in July 1939 to Folkestone with them. Up until that time we used to go to Cardiff Splott airport which was the big base for 614 and co-operation squadron every Monday night, Thursday night, Saturday afternoon and Sunday. That went on with the war on horizon right up until the summer - arguing in politics in things like that. In August 1939 I was already in the RAF down at Glamorgan airport...which was in Splott. On the Wednesday night I was sleeping in a feather bed with feather pillows at home and the following night I was down in Cardiff sleeping on a bag of straw for a bed and another bag of straw for a pillow. I'd been called up. And that was it and I was, as I saw it, grown up overnight. Because I was an only child - I had a brother and sister but they both died young -so I'd been brought up as an only child and they were reasonably endowed with money...my father was on the railway and had a reasonable job..we never wanted for anything at all. There was a lot of poverty about and a lot of people were unable to get jobs. I was 18 and working in a barrister's office as an articled clerk in the hope that in September I was supposed to be going from the Cardiff to the London office to eventually become a barrister. But I suddenly found myself in uniform and life changed a bit. I didn't fancy to go back to law in any case when I came out but decided that eventually I would, although while I was in the services in Palestine I took a correspondence course on electrical engineering and was getting on very well with that until I joined this particular squadron 3232 servicing commando units and having joined that my other things had to go by the board. I don't know what I thought of the services. I thought it was an extremely good thing as a training ground for anybody and everybody because you met so many people of different calibres, different characters, different accents and different colours....and as a result of that one of my best friends was an Indian, his father was a judge in India and he was a solicitor in India.

When I was called up we spent a couple of months in Cardiff then went to Yatesbury and that was to train as a wireless operator properly. I'd been doing the weekend stuff and all, so I was doing pretty well with Morse code and things up until then but then I was sent to Yatesbury - a wireless school - in Wiltshire. I had a bit of a knock about in Yatesbury and eventually ended up in hospital and the rest of the mob from 614 that went down there were posted up to Scotland. I was in hospital so couldn't go...so when I got out I finished my course at Yatesbury and then followed them up to Scotland. So I went up to Scotland to Grangemouth. The place we could go for a walk from Grangemouth on a Sunday for a pint if we wanted one was about four miles down the road. I had one night first footing on New Year's Eve - went to a dance somewhere outside of Falkirk and we met two girls and they took us home ....and when we got home the house was full of people. And they'd run out of wine glasses and we had tumblers and everybody that came into the place topped the damn things up and when it was time to go home at four o'clock in the morning we were canned up ... with whisky or wine, but that was a good night out!

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