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.
BOWDEN BATTERY
In the mid-1800’s with Trafalgar and Waterloo not too far in the past and with French intentions uncertain it was decided to fortify vulnerable portions of Britain’s south coast. The minister responsible for this was Lord Palmerston, also known affectionately or otherwise as Lord Pumicestone. I think it was when he was Prime Minister that he arranged for the building of strong points around Portsmouth and Plymouth. Those forts around Portsmouth are not known to me except for Southsea Castle but I'm more familiar with the ones around Plymouth. Forts were erected to the west, north and east of the city centre and the Citadel dominated the entrance to Plymouth Sound. To the west there was Fort Tregantle, to the north Crownhill, then on the east came Bowden Battery and Fort Austin, while in the Sound there was Drake’s Island and Breakwater Fort.