by Jim Golland
In 1941, I was due to be called up. Recalling what I had read about life in the trenches in the first world war, I decided that the army was not a safe place to be. So, having got a Higher School Certificate in three arts subjects, I volunteered for the RAF, expecting a posting to something important and Top Secret in the Intelligence Branch.
Instead I found myself in Signals. My last Physics lesson had been at the age of 14, and amps and ohms were a mystery. I enrolled at Cardington in the airship hangars, and after initial training at Redcar, where we were taught the art of square bashing and the importance of thumbs down the seams of the trousers, I went to Cranwell, where we learnt to paint the stacks of coal white in preparation for an inspection by the Air Commodore.
From here I was sent to Bradford, to study as a wireless mechanic for four months at the technical college. A friend whom I had met at Redcar was with me and was a great help as he had worked in the radio department of Harrods and knew about the insides of those strange devices. I was able to help him with the mathematics involved in working out resistances and amperages. We had a huge board on which was mounted an exploded radio set, so that we could learn the rudiments of electricity, magnetism and radio and see what the components did and how to test them. It remained a mystery to me for ever afterwards, though I found the theory fascinating and wished we had done more at school, with perhaps a little less Latin.
When I qualified, I was sent to Wellesbourne Mountford, near Stratford-upon-Avon, which was a training base for pilots learning to fly Wellington bombers. Most of the time was spent in servicing the radio sets in the control tower. They rarely went wrong, which was just as well, and usually the only fault was that the WAAF operators had forgotten to switch on when they came on duty, or had not checked that their accumulators had been re-charged. These WAAFS were in great demand as partners for the trainee pilots, who were able to charge their accumulators frequently, so poor LACs like me didnt get a look in.
The sergeant had run a radio repair shop in civvy street and was needed to keep the portable radios in the Officers Mess in good order. We worked a 24-hour shift, with every other day off. Having slept in the section workshop all night, it was great to come out in the morning sunshine, have a shower and breakfast and get on my cycle to Stratford, a few miles away.
I would have a coffee in a cafe and then go on the river It was a pretty cushy time, really. Whilst there, I celebrated my 21st birthday with friends at a local pub. Although this may seem strange to readers of this magazine, I had rarely drunk beer before and I still have no idea how many pints I downed that night. I do remember, however, getting on my cycle to return to the camp. I had forgotten that the road turned through a sharp right-angle and I maintained a steady forward direction, landing up in a ditch. Never again, I thought. I still dont know how I reached the base.
Occasionally the Wimpeys would crash and we would have to go out on guard duty, protecting the wreckage from souvenir hunters. The pilots were at a fairly elementary stage in their training, doing circuits and bumps, flying round the drome and practising landings. I once had to go up in a Wellington to fix a duff radio and I can still remember my nausea at the smell of the coachwork and the claustrophobic atmosphere. My eyesight had precluded my being a pilot anyway, but this experience convinved me I wasnt missing anything glamorous. I dont think I managed to sort it out at all. The radios on the planes were called something like 1082s, replaced by TR9s later. They had huge valves and coloured coils; but then I never did understand them.
After a course at a base in Gloucestershire, where I learnt of the dangers of having more than half a pint of the local cider, I was deemed fit to maintain a Standard Beam Approach signalling transmitter that guided the planes into land. When the set broke down they had to close the aerodrome, and once when the sergeant went on leave the transmitter went out of action. I took out the instruction manual and as I had been taught, started to test every one of the hundreds of components in sequence. It took me a week to discover that it was the fuses that needed replacing.
For some obscure reason, I was sent back to Cranwell to study on a course for a Type-X machine. This was the secret coding machine that was our answer to Enigma. I took voluminous notes and we had to remember the name of each tiny part, every one of which would have at least four words like check balance retaining spring gudgeon pin . I became quite good at finding faults on it and went back to my station qualified to service a Type-X machine. Unfortunately Wellesbourne was not an operational squadron and they didnt have one. I never saw one again except in a museum. The RAF was rather like that.
After a couple of years of this quiet war, I was made up to Corporal and posted to West Drayton, No.1 Signalling Unit. Here I was to take charge (!) of a fitting party. Half a dozen of us would be sent out to various spots, mostly along the south coast, to erect and equip an aerial mast to transmit VHF signals to fighter planes for D-Day. One man would be an aerial erector, used to swarming up 90-foot towers, and the rest of us would work in the transmitting room. Wiring had to be very neat: you never took a cable from socket to set in a direct line, but along the skirting board, and up the wall all at right angles, with a fixing cleat every nine inches or so. I became quite proud of the tidy shapes and patterns we made We visited several seaside resorts, including Eastbourne, Bournemouth, Brixham and Salcombe: if only the beaches had not been covered in barbed wire and tank traps!
In the winter of 1944, when V1 rockets left smoke trails high above Essex, I worked at North Weald aerodrome. I vividly recall the task of trying to repair an aerial on the fuselage of a plane: it was made with stainless steel and soldering this was an art beyond my poor abilities as special fluxes had to be used. I expect I fixed it with insulation tape. It was freezing at the time , and my fingers stuck to the metal. There was no hot water in the wash-basins. I was at a low ebb. War was beastly, after all.
In 1945 I was seconded to a factory in Cumberland, to learn how to make crystals. These fragments of quartz would vibrate at a set rate and were ideal for keeping the frequency of radio transmissions stable. We had to learn how to grind our own crystals to the required dimensions, so that operating frequencies could be changed at will to fool the enemy. We were to be given a little caravan to use as a portable workshop, and I was kitted out to join the invasion fleet about to land on the beaches of Japan. I was lucky in that, whilst on my way out there, someone dropped a bomb on Hiroshima and the adventure was called off. I was posted instead to the Middle East.
In March, 1946, I travelled there via France and Egypt. We had left Newhaven and sailed to Dieppe, where it rained non-stop for what seemed like forty-eight hours. Eventually we boarded a train that travelled at break-neck speed toward Toulon. I still marvel that so soon after the War, French engineers had their trains running so fast. Whenever we stopped, French peasants would surround the train asking for cigarettes and soap. Unfortunately my French was not too good, and I exchanged my spare soap for only 13 Francs when I thought I was asking for 30.
Eventually we woke up to find ourselves in some kind of fairy-land. After the rain of Dieppe, the sun was shining on the hills from a cloudless sky. The houses were all pink and we thought we were in paradise. At Toulon we saw the sunken wrecks of the French fleet that had been bombed by us to prevent the ships being used by the Germans.
We crossed the Mediterranean in a little cargo boat, in which we were kept below decks because of the stormy weather. We rolled and pitched and the scene was like an emigrant ships steerage quarters in the 19th century: food plates slid from one end to the other of the mess tables and the smell was pungent, as most of the servicemen on board were sick. The food was repulsive and I dont think many of us ate anything.
In Egypt, we camped at Ismailia. The beggars were out in force, asking for money for limoniady and hardly boiled eggis. We were warned about the likelihood of thefts from our tents by silent-footed arabs. It was the first time that I had ever left England and the experiences were all so strange - the heat, the slow passage down the Canal, the camels, the waiting to hear our eventual destination from the posting camp. I was sent to Aden, from where I was to be posted to a remote island off the southern shores of Arabia.
As I was by now close to my demobilisation date, this posting was soon cancelled and instead I had a spell in Aden, where I learnt to swim, enjoyed classical music in the open-air concerts given in the extinct crater of a volcano and suffered a premature hair-loss through the excessive heat. I recall vividly one night when we came back from the cinema to find our hut had been invaded by locusts. The Somali bearers enjoyed themselves swatting them, sweeping them up into piles and roasting them. To them, these were a great delicacy, like having several tons of caviare dumped on your doorstep
Whilst in Aden, I was invited to dinner at the home of the British Councils agent. It was probably the first time I had been to a full five-course meal with attendant sherry, wines and brandy, and I unwisely consumed a great deal of alcohol The after-effects made me remember my 21st birthday and I became a relative teetotaller for the best part of my life. I was in charge of another transmitting station, this time for broadcasts to planes on their way home from India to England, mostly carrying demobbed troops. Luckily the fuses never blew and all I had to do was to sit in the air-conditioned transmitter room and read.
In Aden and earlier at West Drayton, I had attended various educational and vocational training courses, and I had been recommended to seek employment after the war as a teacher. I was lucky enough to get a place at St. Edmund Hall, Oxford, to read English, for which I was interviewed by the Principal, Mr. A. B. Emden, who was then an Able Seaman on leave. I didnt have to pass any entrance exams because of war service. Talk about ill winds! After five years in barracks playing cards and listening to dance music, the culture shock was tremendous. But here at last, I felt I knew what I was talking about. It made quite a change.
Jim
Golland
First printed in the Old Gaytonian, 1999