大象传媒

I cannot forget the memories I have of standing on the platform of the radio transmitting masts. As a member of a crew of maintenance men, one of our duties was to examine rockets and firing cables to ensure they were free from corrosion or damage, and the firing cables had no external faults on them.

Communications were carried out be semaphore, which meant we could have a good view of the channel, harbour, coastline, and inland to Manston. These memories don鈥檛 fade with age. I would like to have visited the site again for a look round for bomb and shell craters, but I believe souvenir hunters got the lot.

I could have sounded the Last Post on my trumpet!! Which leads me to the Swingate Swingtet, which I was part of, and we played old time, waltzes, tango, rumba with a spot of jive and foxtrot with the help of saxophone and trumpet. All the band members were Radar Operators or Technicians, but members kept changing due to personnel being posted to other stations.

Just before I was posted to Southend-on-Sea, the saxophone player got pneumonia, which caused a bit of a problem, I don鈥檛 know if the band carried on or not when I left Dover. Those days, we were ordered to say nothing to anyone about what we did or saw. A number of personnel seemed to be in civvies and part-uniform, and after a few days, would have other items of uniform. We, the P.A.C., and the ground gunner, got the impression that they had done no basic training, but had been brought into service in a bit of a hurry to fill in when the W.A.A.F.s were withdrawn from the area.

The shelling began one midsummer day in 1941, early morning. After a few rounds, the German gunners had got the range of the station, near 1200 hours. One shell hit the rocket control post 鈥渘ot much damage鈥� in front of the aerial masts, which seemed to be the targets. Half an hour later, they put another one at the end of the aerial mast compound, close to the concrete road which could be seen from the Duke of York鈥檚 school gates. It was after this last round (it took about 20 minutes to re-load) that a corporal from the Ground Gunners had been sent out to us with orders to stand down and go to deeper shelter in the Receiver Compound 鈥� previously used as a domestic quarter for the WAAF鈥檚. A telephone link from this compound had been laid so staff from the block houses could call and ask for weather conditions. This had been cut by shrapnel so we couldn鈥檛 be given the order that way. A sad end to that day was to be told that a Welsh lad, known as Taffy, died on the way to hospital. He and a group of W.O.Ps and others, were waiting for the station transport wagon to take them to the new domestic compound near the Swingate pub, a regular day run, and he was the only one of a group of six to be hit by a piece of shrapnel.

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