大象传媒

The account given below was taped and transcribed by my brother Robert Baxter a couple of years before my father鈥檚 death in 2004. My mother Barbara Baxter has given her permission for me to post this slightly edited account on the 大象传媒 web site. My father did look at a copy of the transcript and said that there were a few errors. Where I have been able to identify these I have made changes and I have removed some repetition.

William Baxter RAF Serial Number - 1449088

Cairo - December 1943
I was back in Cairo for Christmas 1943. They鈥檇 almost got Rommel out of North Africa and they were dividing our unit up - one half to stay in the Middle East and the other half to go to Italy. They divided us up according to the climate we鈥檇 been working in. Those who had been working up in the western desert went to Italy; those of us who had worked further south stayed - so I stayed.

There I worked on a big remote receiving station which was dealing with high speed transmission. It was outside Cairo close to the American base about another 6 miles beyond. We used to get equipment from the US quartermasters stores. That鈥檚 where I got a brand new vehicle! I had an American Dodge 500 hundredweight and it was clapped out. I spoke to US MT officer and he took one look at it and gave me a brand new vehicle - changed the number plates over and stood me to a free lunch as well!

We got sent to Aden to go over to Italian Somaliland to build radio stations. That was partly to support the route to India and partly to serve the Wellingtons stationed there that were searching for Japanese submarines out in the Indian Ocean. The particular station was Scushiband (?) they鈥檇 had an incident where an aeroplane couldn鈥檛 find the airfield. The only way they could contact it was via India! In the end they lost the plane.

To get down to Aden involved another boat trip down the Red Sea. I remember embarkation. They had a rule - you can only go up the gangplank once. But we had all this kit - not only our personal stuff but all our tools. Being the Army they had to think really think hard before they鈥檇 let us make several trips - and everyone else鈥檚 embarkation had to wait! I also remember the food on the trip down was really rough. None of the other NCOs complained - they were really green (just out from England!). Eventually I met an RAF officer and I told him - he sorted it out. After that, the food got much better! When we arrived in Aden, the army made us disembark with them - and parade. Then three trucks showed up just for us - that showed them!

Aden - December 1943
Aden itself is built in a volcanic crater 鈥� it鈥檚 not down by the coast. But we were billeted down on the shoreline at Steamer Point. The only problem was that the sun heated the hills behind and the breeze at night blew the heat into our billets. (Aden was on of the only two stations that were under RAF command - the other one was Habbaniya in Iraq). The other problem was that the equipment we should have had, got sent to India by mistake - so we were six weeks kicking our heels. So we used to go swimming and we also used to borrow a 鈥榃haler鈥� sailing boat from the Air Commodore - going out through the minefields. But we got a bit fed up. So I had a word with signals officer and asked him if there were any jobs he wanted doing. He said they鈥檇 got a directional finding station - but it wouldn鈥檛 work 鈥渨e can never direct a plane in correctly鈥�. So we got a plane to fly around sending out morse code - and we found there was a deflection all one way. Next day we had a good walk around the site and we found an area that looked like it had been dug. So we got a gang of natives and there were about 500 tin petrol cans buried there. We got them dug out and got the equipment going.

Italian Somaliland
After six weeks we flew to Italian Somaliland in a Hudson to Skushiband. The equipment had come up from South Africa. There we worked with a British civilian (a builder/surveyor) who was responsible for building the radio station. There we quarried the stone for the building by blasting stone out of the hillside. We had Indian carpenters and Arab masons - they had to be kept apart because of different religions. And we had Swahili labourers. We had to feed them and pay them. While I was there I flew over to Socotra where we had another fitting party - but no NCO - to check on progress there.

Then I got a message to go back to Cairo, so I flew back to Aden and from there got an Indian troopship back up the Red Seat to Cairo.

Back in Cairo 鈥� Feb 1944 鈥� Sept 1945
Here I was working back on the receiving station 鈥� known as a diversity station. This was part of TME (Telecommunications Middle East), which was our base station. TME consisted of a receiving station and transmitting station both connected to TME itself where the operators would receive messages (signals came out on tapes which were then transferred them to plain language) and key messages to be sent out via the transmitting station.

For the receiving station, we erected about 70 odd masts and receiving sets there was a lot of work to do. To get a constant signal, you 3 aerials all connected to 3 individual sets and the signal was combined (you don鈥檛 get fading of signals). We needed that for the high speed morse we were sending. For example, the circuit to England has six aerials 鈥� 3 for day and 3 for night because you had higher frequencies at day and lower at night, because of the changes in the ozone layer. We had similar aerials set up for Delhi and for South Africa.

The main purpose I think was to prepare for the war against Japan 鈥� because we were still building them long after the Middle Eastern part of the war was over.

Having got all these masts up and all these sets going 鈥� this would be well into 1945, they decided to change all the masts for much taller wooden ones 鈥� 110 feet plus. They were wooden so they wouldn鈥檛 disrupt the signal. They were actually surplus radar masks. Some were collapsible with one section inside the other. So we got them all laid out, and then we had to winch them up 鈥� that was a hell of a job. We got the first one stuck half way up. But the remainder were all pre-fabricated 鈥榝lat packed鈥� and we got these from big maintenance and munitions depot south of Cairo called MU111, which was inside some caves.

The big problem was erecting them. I managed to get an instruction book from Cairo and we had all the diagrams photographed to hand out to people. Then came the question of where to get the manpower from. Someone suggested using the men from the South African transit camp close by who were doing nothing. But when I got there to collect them it turned out they were all aircrew 鈥� nothing below warrant officer. I was still only a corporal! And as it turned out there were more than I needed. So I made a deal 鈥� some to work on the masts and the other I gave a lift to the tram to Cairo 鈥� they were happy with that! But as it turned out they were a bit ham fisted 鈥� if something didn鈥檛 fit they鈥檇 bend it until it did - so in the end we replaced them with some RAF radio operators who were surplus.

I remember one of the operators was a brilliant animal impressionist 鈥� and he later turned up on TV. I think he was called Jimmy Edwards. (But not the TV comic). He used to make the tea for us 鈥� and he drove the Egyptians crazy with his impressions!

Another major problem was with our land-lines. Because the lines between TME and the Transmitting Station lay under the American Quartermasters stores and they kept ploughing the ground up and cutting the cable 鈥� so no one could key out. We got round that by using a VHF radio telephone which we鈥檇 found in a warehouse. No one knew what to do with it, but I鈥檇 read about it in a magazine and I realised there should be two units (they come in pairs). Eventually it was found 鈥� in Palestine 鈥� and it was brought back. It was a six channel unit and we split five up into three so we had 15 channels. So we were able to use them as key-in channels for 15 circuits. We put it between TME and the transmitting station beyond the American camp 鈥� so no more problems.

Life in Cairo
One thing I remember when we got back to Cairo in 1944 was that WAAFs and ATS had arrived. Unheard of! Things were looking up!

It was easy to get to Cairo. We took a truck down to Heliopolis and then got a tram into Cairo. It was pretty fast. Right where you got off there was a coffee bar where you get iced tea and coffee. We used to go to the services clubs. The best one for a time was the New Zealand Forces Club. You could get nice hot baths. There were plenty of cinemas. I remember the Opera Cinema where you could eat and watch the films at the same time. But later on the RAF had a club called the Rosalyn Tedder Club. There was another good organisation called 鈥楳usic for All鈥�, and that had tea rooms and music programme and reading rooms. I also saw Donald Wolfitt鈥檚 touring party doing Shakespeare.

There were a lot of areas that were out of bounds, because of anti-British feeling. If you went there you鈥檇 get a knife in your back. We had maps with the out of bounds areas.

While I was in Cairo I was promoted to Sergeant. I didn鈥檛 see much of my commanding officer though.

Palestine and the accident - Sept - Nov 1945
I went up there first on a survey well after the European war was over. The Jewish and Arab fighters were cutting the Key-In lines (which were land lines) between the transmitters and the receiving stations/ camps/ aerodromes so the idea was to install a similar VHF radio telephone system to the one we鈥檇 installed in Cairo. (I鈥檝e got a map with all the different stations marked on). I then came back and prepared to go up with my unit in November.

It was while we were travelling up to start the job that I had my accident in the Sinai desert. I remember it was November 15th 1945. There were six of us in one vehicle coming down through some mountains. I was driving. There was a terrific bang and the vehicle shook and starting veering across the road. I was trying to keep it on the road because there were big ditches on either side, and then all of a sudden it went over sideways. We rolled over twice. We were lucky because we鈥檇 put a steel frame in before leaving Cairo to create a canopy and that took the whole weight. But the door opened as we went over, my leg slipped out, and as it slammed too it held my leg by the knee and my thigh got broken. The truck was laying on its side, so to get myself out, I tied my legs together with my tie and hoisted myself out that way.

This is the end of the tape recordings although we all remember Dad telling us stories about his time in hospital and coming back to England to a period of rehabilitation before he was demobbed and went back to work at London Transport. There are a number of souvenirs from his time in the Middle East but he always regretted that his accident meant that he had to leave some of his trophies behind in Egypt.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.