Bowden Battery was built on the side of a slope that fell away to Crownhill on the north; on the south side it was walled and moated but it was considered to be protected elsewhere by the commanding view it had over the valley. The other three sides were partially walled with low banks of earth. Within these confines the floor was of earth with grass sprouting in the patches not heavily travelled. The cookhouse backed on to the southern wall; it was a shed type with a corrugated iron roof and outside there were two boilers for water. All the habitable buildings were Nissen huts. Entry from the road, Fort Austin Avenue, was by way of a drawbridge, over the moat which was dry in those days, then through the eight-foot high corrugated iron gates. The drawbridge was never raised, I sometimes wondered if it ever had been, it seemed fixed.
Just inside the gates on the western side came the Company Office while a little further west was the CO’s hut. Three buildings that were not Nissen huts were the shed type ablutions and, at the extreme eastern end, the latrines, one for the other ranks and one for the ATS. Overhead traversing the length of the fort were the high tension cables of the electricity grid system and on damp days touching the metal parts of vehicles parked beneath them would produce a mild shock.
On the northern side two tunnels, maybe 75 feet long, had been cut, one at each end, going downwards following the slope of the hill and ending in small rooms each commanding a view over the valley. In the small room at the end of the western tunnel the Instrument Mechanics, Len Elliott, Cyril Smythe and Johnny Barker had their workshop where they repaired phones and radios and where they detected faults on the phone lines.
Nissen huts for our accommodation were dotted around. We were fairly comfortable in our upper and lower bunk beds though the huts could have been better heated; the tortoise stoves were not really up to it when the daily ration of coal was mainly small coal or ‘slack’. To persuade a stove full of slack to come to life someone opened the top of the stove and added a half cup of petrol, nothing happened for a moment or two as the petrol seeped down to the glowing embers at the bottom and then there was an almighty bang. All the stove’s apertures flew open and a bewildered soldier came in to inspect the damage as he had seen a 10-foot flame emerge from our chimney, however nobody was hurt.
I’ve heard it said that we had AA guns at Bowden Battery but that is not true, certainly not up to the time that I left in 1942; true there were some concrete slabs but these were bases for guns or mortars intended to repel a land based attack of the 19th century, well before aircraft had been invented. The only troops there in my time were of the Royal Corps of Signals, the odd Royal Artillery gunner or bombardier and some Royal Ulster Rifles doing guard duties. Initially the GOR shifts were taken to Hamoaze House by lorry but after a while the GOR was moved to Fort Austin though we always knew this fort as Egg Buckland Keep.
For this new location we were to have a new plotting table and it fell my lot to make it. This time we used green lino; the main coastal features were in white paint as were the large grid squares but for the grid sub-divisions I used a ruling pen and white ink, this made fine straight lines more easily but they had to be renewed occasionally due to the rubbing of the plotting blocks. In this new location we required no transport but marched to and fro, a relatively short distance.
Shortages of many items were now beginning to make themselves felt in Britain, army boots and leather for their repairs for one thing and somebody realised that lying idle throughout the country were the shoes belonging to the men who had been called up. It must have caused a severe shock to all the Colonel Blimps but it was decreed that the other ranks would now be permitted to wear shoes when off duty. There was one proviso however, they had to be black, just in case the other ranks got confused with their betters. Another shortage concerned watches or rather watch glasses. Unbreakable types were not in general use at that time and all types were difficult to obtain. I got over this by using a draughtsman’s ink spring-bows to which a snapped portion of a razor blade had been attached. Circles were scribed out on the transparent material of goggles anti-gas and then broken out. Since the QM and a lieutenant both had watches needing glasses I had no difficulty in getting a few goggles anti-gas diverted from the QM store. Nearly all of us smoked in those days and our favourite brands were not always available; matches were also in short supply so we doubled our stock by splitting them lengthwise with a razor blade. Swan Vestas were the easiest to split.
A sentry was stationed at the drawbridge; during daylight hours he was armed with a stick but at night he had a rifle and fixed bayonet, the rifle though had no ammunition. The total Signals complement, GOR, Line Section, assorted clerks, QM stores personnel and others amounted to about 80 I guess and for this number we had six rifles, two SMLE’s, a couple of Canadian Ross rifles and two American .300’s made in Springfield. All ammunition was very limited. However, later, probably sometime in 1941, someone at a higher level decided that we should not be defenceless and a blueprint arrived one day showing how to make raid party truncheons. There were two types, the first consisted of an 18-inch length of stirrup pump hose loaded at one end with concrete and fitted with a thong at the other. The second type was more lethal if one could get near enough to the enemy; it used an 18-inch length of electrical conduit to the end of which was welded a discarded gear, any old gear would do as long as it was sharp, heavy and pointy; in fact we were now armed with maces reminiscent of the middle ages and chronologically more in keeping with our Victorian surroundings. The blueprint had arrived at the same time as a length of stirrup pump hose and no time was lost in manufacturing type number one only to discover later that it was intended for incendiary purposes and not raid party truncheons. Too late, we couldn’t put it back together again but we did have some fun out of the exercise by trying out the effect of the first type of truncheon on our tin hats; after a few blows the concrete cracked and fell out while the tin hats emerged unscathed. We didn’t risk trying out the second type. A friend of mine in the RAF told me that on one station the ground crew were similarly equipped though in their case the bayonets were welded on to 5-foot lengths of electrical conduit; he said that when they came on parade it looked like the Monmouth Rebellion all over again.
I don’t recall much about our meals, with one exception only. Every Thursday over a long period a new cook came to us. She didn’t appear to be ATS and I would do her no injustice if I guessed her age as being between 30 and 40, older than the rest of the cookhouse staff. I found out very little about her except that she was Cornish but she made the most delicious cornish pasties, the real thing and they were so large that one was quite sufficient for any growing lad. We only ever saw her on Thursdays and we all looked forward to those days. The regular cookhouse staff came under ‘Jackie’, Corporal Jackson and she and her girls were billeted in a private house nearly opposite Bowden Battery in a road running parallel with Fort Austin Avenue. There were about eight of them I think, of whom Mary, Ginger and Minnie from South Wales, Kitty from Cornwall and Sylvia from Dewsbury are the ones who stay in my mind. Jackie was very solicitous for her charges and she meticulously recorded the dates and times of their social engagements together with the names of their escorts.