But to get back to August 1938; the round-up of civilians who were now to be embodied was not without its humour, in the early hours of the morning Reg Pinnel happened to meet one of his flock in the Kingsdown area and told him of the situation. Len was on his rounds delivering milk; his milk float was of a new type, battery driven at a walking pace it allowed the roundsmen to walk by its side starting and stopping as necessary and obviating any muscular effort on his part. Len took his orders literally, left his milk float where it was in the road, went home, changed into his uniform and reported to HQ. Then he phoned his employer and told him where he could find the milk float leaving it up to the employer to mollify all the irate customers.
In December 1939 I returned from Filton to Worral Road and for three months became a member of a GOR shift. We had no plotting table but instead a map of south-east England hung on one wall, we of course were south-west but I suppose that south-east was better than nothing. Coloured pins were used to mark the position of planes. Information on aircraft activity was given to us over a permanently manned phone line connected to No.11 Fighter Group at Uxbridge and the lucky man who was given the job of listening sat in the middle of the room on an office type swivel chair wearing a telephonist’s head-and-breast-set doing nothing but waiting. As soon as the ringing assailed his ears he answered, “Bristol,” and then yelled to the rest of the group, “Operations,” at which they were supposed to get ready to relay any incoming information to the gun sites by phone. While I was there I don’t recall any plots coming from Uxbridge that concerned our area. The shout of, “Operations” was also supposed to alert the Gun Control Officer, GCO, of the Royal Artillery who then stood by his wall map, coloured pins at the ready, waiting to give some relevant information to the gun sites; however this was the time of the ‘phony war’ and the boredom was considerable.
MY GOR SHIFT, WORRAL ROAD, 1940.
I think it was in the early days just after we were embodied that we were given our medicals, it was a bit of a joke really, a cursory once-over with the stethoscope and an eyesight test on a standard eye chart at a range of five or six feet; for a hearing test the MO stuck a pocket watch in my left ear, “Can you hear that?” “Yes,” I replied, then in my right ear, “and that?” “Yes.” “OK.” And I had passed. And apart from the time of my final discharge from the army when they were trying to make sure that I couldn’t make any post-war claims for incapacity and the times when I was discharged from hospital that was the only medical examination I ever had.
One possible advantage of being stationed in Bristol was that I could go home when I was not on duty but home was a fourpenny bus ride from Worral Road and this double journey together with ten Woodbine cigarettes cost me a day’s allowance (I was getting two shillings a day but was allotting one shilling a day to my mother who incidentally never spent it but saved it up for my return). I usually went home after a night shift and so was rather tired and not very good company; after a month or so of this routine I decided that I would be better off away from Bristol and applied for a transfer to Plymouth.
The war was not very old before the Post Office started to get concerned over the loss of some of their key personnel to the forces; it was one thing to have their employees playing at soldiers in their own time but quite another matter to lose some of their qualified staff on a semi-permanent basis. So just before I went to Plymouth an arrangement was made that allowed the Post Office to claim back all their employees who did not have an army trade. The army could see all their Territorial signal units being drastically reduced and took swift action. In a blanket approach army trade ratings were given to as many members of my company as possible, not only Post Office employees; I was called before Captain Sommerville.
“You are?”
I identified myself
“I believe you’ve been spending your drill nights at the Post Office, is that correct?”