The journey down to Plymouth was the longest rail trip that I had ever
taken alone and I was eager and excited about it. I was travelling with
all my kit of course and I was learning how to stow it without
interfering with other passengers. As we pulled away to the south-west
from Temple Meads station the familiar scenes around Bristol gave way to
the flatter country of north Somerset and later on to the red soil of
Devon. At Plymouth North Road station I detrained but I have no memory
now of how I reached South Raglan Barracks in Devonport. The barracks
were typically army, grey, spartan, uninviting and ugly; my spirits
sank. I was allocated quarters in a small room together with six or
eight others; beds consisted of three bed-boards on two low wooden
trestles augmented with three "biscuits" for comfort and the whole
ensemble was completed with four blankets.
I was directed to join a GOR team and shown the ropes as it were. The
GOR was located on Mount Wise in the end room of Hamoaze House. A large
map of the south-west of England had been painted on an expanse of dark
blue linoleum, this formed the plotting table in the centre of the room;
to one side a dais accommodated the GCO and also the naval anti-aircraft
liaison officer (NAALO) for this was a combined operations room. We
signalmen sat around the plotting table waiting for something to happen.
Assorted naval petty-officers, Royal Artillery gunners and bombardiers
made up an eight-hour shift.
As in Bristol one signalman sat with a head-and-breast-set permanently
connected to No.11 Fighter Group at Uxbridge and the routine was much
the same. Those doing the plotting made up wooden blocks with plastic
chips of letters and numbers to indicate the identity, size and height
of a particular plot adjacent to a coloured arrow, green for friendly,
red for hostile, showing the location and direction of the aircraft.
This was quite an improvement on Bristol's coloured pins. There was
another improvement too, the Post Office type switchboard was replaced
by two wooden desk mounted units, each fitted with 10 switches and
indicator lights. Every switch and light combination was connected to a
gun site or a searchlight station and any combination of sites could be
called individually or simultaneously. Each site acknowledged receipt
of a message by pressing a button, this caused the appropriate light to
glow in the GOR. In this way messages could be broadcast to all sites
at once; those sites whose lights did not glow were contacted again
individually and the message repeated. Frequently in the heat of the
moment gunners would forget to acknowledge causing some irritation and
on one occasion an exasperated GCO ordered me to reprimand the
miscreant. Having got the official blessing I proceeded to do just
that, translating his order into the vernacular most effectively; I was
rewarded with most obsequious apologies elevating my rank to that of
"sir". Later I discovered that my correspondent was a major, outranking
our GCO, fortunately he didn't know who I was.
These tasks were performed in the RAF by WAAF's and we were told from
the beginning that we would be replaced eventually by the ATS but by the
time I left Plymouth in 1942 they still hadn't taken over. It was quite
a boring job at times and most of us hoped for something more
challenging.
The Line Section's work was a little better, they went out daily,
running more lines and repairing those damaged in air raids; in our
detachment there was no establishment for a draughtsman but the Line
Section wanted a record of the routes of all their lines and so I
drifted into the job. Armed with a one-inch-to-the-mile Ordnance Survey
map I produced the necessary drawings; it was also alleged that I marked
the locations of all the coffee shops in the area but there's no truth
to it. Phone lines across the country followed whatever path was most
suitable, using twisted Don8 cable that was attached to any convenient
feature, trees telegraph poles or buildings. In the case of the line to
Fort Tregantle I spent a day with others on a fatigue party digging a
trench across the road in which the cable was to be buried. A call went
out to the local populace asking for empty cotton reels; these were to
be used not specifically as insulators but rather as attachment points
offering less fretting to the cable than a nail alone would do.
The GCO's varied in rank but I don't remember seeing anyone above the
rank of captain, on the other hand two of the NAALO's were
lieutenant-commanders, a couple were lieutenants in the "wavy navy" and
one was a Canadian, a lieutenant in their "wavy navy". He was a breath
of spring, light hearted and humorous and compared to our lot relatively
undisciplined. Commander Bond was, I think, a serving officer but
Commander Staples had been recalled from retirement; he was a gentle,
polite father figure, at least that's how he appeared to me. One
lieutenant was Viscount Trapraine who was responsible for producing the
plotting table map. I heard of him after the war as being a member of
the crew of a square-rigged sailing ship. Another lieutenant was Vivian
Ellis, composer of Bless the Bride.
Plymouth was ringed around with anti-aircraft guns, Rame, Down Thomas,
Wembury, Crownhill and Tregantle come to mind as being equipped with
3.7's, while other sites such as Bovisand and Staddon Heights were more
lightly armed. The GOR had lines to all of them as well as lines to
some searchlight stations. In addition to the army sites the navy
augmented the fire power with the guns on Breakwater Fort and the guns
of any ship that may have been in dock at the time. The cruiser
Newcastle seemed to be in the area for an unusually long time and she
had a Walrus flying boat, a most ungainly craft with a pusher propeller.
In the early days we took advantage of the lack of action by organising
mock air raids for the benefit of the Plymouth air defences. Orders
would go out to all the guns, "This is a mock air raid, repeat, this
is a mock air raid," and the Walrus would be sent aloft to add a
degree of realism to the exercise and coordinates would be broadcast for
the preparation of a box barrage. On one occasion while the exercise
was in progress the GOR received a hostile plot from Uxbridge and
hastily a new order was given out to all the gun sites, "Cancel mock
air raid, real raid in progress, repeat, cancel mock air raid, real raid
in progress," and we waited for further information to come from
Uxbridge. The guns however were restive and took action on their own,
their target was the unmistakeable lumbering Walrus. I wasn't on duty at
the time, I was in the barracks; I heard the sirens and the shell bursts
and looking out of the window saw the Walrus high-tailing it up
country. It made Roborough aerodrome safely though the real raid never
materialised. Later on real raids did materialise but by that time we
had moved our billets to Bowden Battery, near Crownhill though for a few
months we were ferried to and from Hamoaze House by lorry.
As part of the 5th AA division our shoulder flashes, issued about that
time, were about two inches square with a sky blue background; pointing
downwards was a black four-engined bomber in silhouette with red flames
coming from the four engines and one from the tail. Very pretty and
prophetic.