大象传媒

In December 39, I was sworn in as a Sergeant Wireless Instructor in the Royal Artillery and given the King's shilling with a book that the attesting officer said would tell me how to keep my feet clean. Needless to say it didn't. This took place at the Territorial drill hall in Deansbrook Rd., Edgware, northwest London, where the writer Godfrey Winn joined the Navy as a seaman to endure and record subsequently the horrors of the Murmansk convoy PQ17. His book "PQ17" is well worth reading. I had unknowingly enlisted in the techniques of radar of which I was unaware as it was a secret although by then the Germans had better radar than ours.

In early 1940 the authorities were setting up a vastly expanded army centred on the Territorial Army, and the fag-end of the regular army, the best of which was the BEF in France. Thus it was mainly novices running affairs. It was a miracle we survived. UK anti-aircraft defence was mainly provided by the TA, and this formed the core for the expansion needed for wartime. The effect on me was that I was never with the unit to which I belonged, I was always attached to some other unit and like a stage army I was always on the move, to give an impression perhaps of larger forces than actually existed. I was posted to Dover, Hoo in Kent, sites in Edinburgh, Aberdeen, and London. Nevertheless, I managed to train various radar operators.

At Dover that was my first posting I was attached to a TA unit at Swingate Camp to the east of the town, this was 88th Heavy Anti-aircraft Battery that was manned for eight guns but had only four. Therefore, half the men ploughed the fields and scattered while the rest manned the guns, week and week about. Later on the spare half went off to form cadres for new units being formed as the expansion of the war time army commenced.

This unit was raised by TA volunteers from Dover and the surrounding area and was mobilised at the start of hostilities. After several months the unit was almost as it was in peacetime, within walking distance of Dover and this must have seemed a very cosy way of going to war. In fact a bus arrived at the camp to take a 24 hour leave party to town every afternoon.

I came into this as something of a cuckoo in the nest and an unpleasant reminder that there was a war on, and changes lay ahead. Also there was this new gadget to detect aeroplanes, another disturbance of established life. So I was not exactly welcomed. Also I had jumped into the army as a sergeant whereas my fellow sergeants had served for years to reach this rank. During my time with this unit there were no air-raids so I had no chance to show the advantages of radar.

This unit did well after I was posted away as the prowess of the Dover AA gunners is mentioned approvingly in an account of the Battle of Britain. They really were in the front line as the neighbouring RAF Chain Home radar was pasted when the Luftwaffe tried to smash the 'eyes' of the RAF along with its airfields. Some of the high masts for the aerials of the CH station were in place after the war and were a convenient support for microwave dishes for Anglo-French radio links in more recent times.

This was a depressing posting, the site was on the top of the 'white cliffs of Dover', and sea mists swirled over the place accompanied by the mournful bellowing of sundry lighthouses on land and lightships in the Channel. The bleating of flocks of sheep accompanied by the melancholy clanking of a nearby cable railway carrying coal to the port of Dover added to the gloomy atmosphere.

An unusual event was the visit to the site by King George VI who inspected the radar set with my operators and me in it. He was most smartly turned out as a Field Marshal. He said that Mr. Watson-Watt had explained the system to him, but regrettably before he could really get into his stride an air raid alarm was given and he was hustled off the site. It was a false one otherwise I might have spoken to the sovereign, who knows?

This was in early 1940, before the war had really started, then I was sent to the 'Chinese' village of Hoo near Rochester to join a school where radar operators were trained. I was amongst a team of instructors who had been gathered together since before the war.

It was an odd time, the war raged in earnest now and I could see the smoke from the fires in Dunkirk. Fighters came over doing victory rolls and the radio was full of bad news, but I went on instructing new radar operators and mooched around Rochester and Chatham now and again. I was allowed 12 hour leaves and occasionally a 24 hour pass, thus was able to go home occasionally.

Before the Blitz started I was posted to Scottish Command and I didn't see Dover again until 1945 when I was astonished at what had been constructed in the vicinity of Swingate Camp, but that is not my story.

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