大象传媒

After I finished my basic training in Devizes in Wiltshire, I was sent to Liverpool which was a guns site. Following that I came down to Lord Mountbaton's Estate in Nursling, in Hampshire. We weren't allowed into the main house, but we stayed in Nissan huts in the grounds along by the river. Later on the Durham Light Infantry were also stationed nearby.

I was a radar operator, and I had to maintain the radar transmitter, clean the power unit and make sure it was full of fuel, as well as searching the skies for enemy planes.

When we weren't on duty we would have dances. The big dances were on a Sunday night in the soliders Mess. Although we had to wear our uniform it was a chance for us to let our hair down and have a dance with some of the sailors who were docked at Southhampton or Portsmouth. Although the sailors looked good in their uniforms I still prefered the army lads - they looked even better.

One of the things my radar group discovered was strips of silver sheeting (a bit like tin foil) that was known as windows. The German planes had dropped it near the transmittor to try and block the radar signals. We realised what the Germans were trying to do and reported it to the senior officers, but they didn't believe a word of it.

However later on other radar sites also reported the same thing, and eventually we were believed, but not before time! Had we'd been a group of male radar operators, I suspect they might have taken our findings more seriously!

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