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Initial Royal Artillery Recruitment Training at Oswestry and first deployments 1940

George Johnston was called up on Sept 12th 1940 into the (R.A.(A.A.)) (i.e. Royal Artillery (Anti Aircraft)). (Note in sequel 'Ack' was the British shorthand for 'A', cf. US 'Able', which got introduced as well as the Americans couldn't say the British system).

He did the two month initial training at Oswestry (Sept/Oct 1940) to form a new Battery (the 366th Battery). (George was with this Battery until he managed to escape to become a gunnery instructor. ((Later the 366th Battery arrived in Europe at D day plus 2 hours: the battery had little to do, and their 3.7s were used as Field guns. They had no casualties for a long time, until they started mine clearance activities.)) ) (The weather was very warm: hot weather with no rain, and the earth was like iron.) The first fortnight was basic military discipline, square bashing and the like, though some of that continued every day. The rest of the time they were trained as gunners, to form a new battery. To speed the training they were tested in different abilities: the basic split was between instrument operators and gunners (i.e. between intelligence and the heavy brigade). George went into the instrument section, which divided into rangefinder operators and predictor operators (gun control side). George became a No1 Predictor Operator, so he controlled the Predictor team, which may have had something to do with him being promoted to Lance Bombadier (1 stripe) in the 8th week. The course covered aircraft recognition, a lot of PE, and the theory of gun control. There was some teaching about guns but not much, and how the instruments affected the guns - the predictor was directly connected to it.

After the 2 month initial training George then went for 1 month to a firing camp at Ty Croes, Anglesey. While there he did the job of GPO Ack (Gun Position Officers Assistant) at the practice camp. (At the end of this camp George did not realise the full duties of this job, but he was able to carry out drill. The army had the good system of requiring everyone to train a deputy. In training each officer had a GPO Ack who was an assistant - in peace time it was always the senior sgt, but in wartime the senior sgts were quite dim. George did this job in place of the senior sgt who was quite happy to be in charge of a squad to dig trenches: calculating where to point guns was beyond him.)

The Battery moved to its first active Gun site at Ilkeston in Dec 1940, with George as Predictor No 1 & G.P.O. Ack (Gun Position Officer Assistant). (Predictor No1 and GPO Ack were separate jobs: George had to do all the jobs on the predictor during practice, but at a shoot he normally did the No1. Every so often George was changed over to do the GPO Ack job, which was controlling the guns as well as the instruments.)

George, and his opposite number in the other section, obtained their second stripes (i.e. promoted to Bombadier) in week 9, a couple of days after their arrival: there was an urgent need for NCOs.

They were in action against enemy targets on the night of arrival. (The story got round in Ilkeston that they had brought a special gun with them which fired four shells at once, which was a testimony to their salvo firing. They all went off at once, as was the drill. The previous group had been there 6 months and not fired a shot. This start made them heroes, and raised civilian morale.)

George never thought about the implications of firing guns at planes at the time - it was always shooting at a plane, or at a target. He was never involved in hand to hand fighting.

The Ilkeston site was in an open field: this was where the shaving soap froze on your face. All the winters in the war were pretty severe. There was a Searchlight Unit next door: they were supposed to use their sound location to help us to fire but it wasn't very effective.

It was while at Ilkeston that George once cycled to Derby, and a raid started, and guns started firing. He then heard the tinkling of breaking glass in the greenhouses as he rode past a market garden. He then saw little sparks of fire as the shell splinters hit the road surface all round him. When he looked at the firing log the next day, he realised that the shell fragments had dropped from his own guns.

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