Part I

Born in 1923 in Wheatley Hill, a mining village 7 miles from the city of Durham. Early reader, read anything that came to hand — newspapers (Daily Herald, Reynold's News), labels on foodstuffs, boys' weeklies (Ranger, Triumph, Boys' Magazine, Modern Boy, Gem, Magnet, the numerous D. C. Thomson publications, mostly given by or borrowed from friends and friends' parents) but never very interested in the so-called 'Comics' with their picture strips humorous or dramatic. Fell under the spell of H. G. Wells after reading his 'Tales of Wonder', and thereafter went through every Wells book on the shelves of the local public library, despite the adult section being entirely taboo to 'juniors', under the pretext that they were 'for my Dad'. My mother died when I was 8, and the world seemed to become a drearier place than I had thought it, the recurrent tinge of greyness never completely fading away. Infant and junior schools were excellent, with good teachers. Passed the 11+ exam for the grammar school in Wingate. Teachers substandard, 2 or 3 perilously close to subhuman.

Second World War happened. Left school at 17. Thrust into men's department of draper's shop in Wheatley Hill as counter assistant. Sacked for spending too long in the toilet reading U.S. S-F pulp magazines.

Briefly worked for Food Office issuing and amending ration books. Then a stint with the local explosives factory as driver's assistant, delivering dynamite to coal-mines throughout Durham county and Yorkshire.

Applied for and was accepted by the Auxiliary Fire Service in Sunderland. After weeks of waiting, on a sudden whim and without consulting anyone, I cycled to Durham and volunteered for the R.A.F. as aircrew. I was under the call-up age, but at their discretion the Services could accept volunteers.

Soon I was in Blackpool and in a bright new world in startling contrast to the dreary hopelessness I'd left behind. Basic training, marching, walking through a room filled with poison gas, throwing a live hand grenade (only 1 as they, like everything, were in short supply), shooting on the rifle range with the 2 or 3 Enfield rifles (relics of the Great War) available to the 50 or so members of our squad ('flight' in R.A.F-ese). We mostly trained with dummy wooden replicas. There was no clamour to get one of the real rifles — the replicas were much lighter...

After basic training spent weeks turning to months in Pool Flight kicking respective heels awaiting posting for 'real' training with aircraft. Even the joys of Blackpool, the private hotels and boarding houses we lived in, the wonderful food (they didn't seem to know about food-rationing) the landladies provided, finally began to pall under a general sense of frustration. (We had after all been nourished by the boys' weeklies on deeds of derring-do...) A friend and I sought an interview with the C.O. It was the old story — plenty of men, no aircraft. As yet. Later we were sent for and offered a post on a very hush-hush (Pavlovian urge, here) Air Ministry experimental project. This turned out to be radiolocation — later 'radar', but mobile, so the whole unit could be moved fairly rapidly to a fresh site.

So it was back to the classroom, with the teachers the Cambridge boffins who'd invented the thing.

Fast forward to Nov. 1942 and the Allied invasion of N. Africa, in which contretemps our unit was involved.

Disembarked from the troopship at Bône (now called Annaba), the most advanced port for the Tunisian campaign, and marched (The Army personnel, who outnumbered us many times over, marched, while we — er — walked) into the town in a fairly individualistic manner, each of our little group complete with kitbag, gas kit, Sten gun (poor man's machine gun) & 2 pouches of ammo., emergency rations, and an air of wondering what to do for the best. Soon realised that none of our technical equipment or indeed any of our transport had arrived.

Were 'housed' by the army with perhaps a frailty of interest and/or judgment in a huge concrete tobacco warehouse, beautifully white and probably the most conspicuous building in Bône.

The first night was sufficient to convince us of the error of someone's ways. Nobody had mentioned that the port was bombed nightly, and what an attractive target our billet made. I would never have believed a concrete floor could throw you (includes me!) a foot and more into the air, then subside. Amazingly, no one was killed in the warehouse despite destruction all around.

After that we felt it was every man for himself, and as dusk approached, and against orders (Army), we walked up into the hills — soon to be joined by a refugee-like line of troops of all varieties — and slept or tried to sleep in the open, keeping our heads well down in deference to the mosquito whines above us — of anti-aircraft guns not insectivorous origin. With ground sheet underneath and gas cape (illegal usage, of course) over us to cope with the very heavy dew, uncomfortable as it was, it beat being bombed hands down. Plus we had a spectacular view of the nightly firework display, which entertainment we would most gladly have relinquished.

In time our equipment and new unit members arrived and off we trundled into Tunisia, setting up our stall in a wood near the little village of Souk El Arba, 2 or 3 miles from the fighter airfield whose job it was to deter the bomber aircraft that daily made Tunisia not a nice place to be in.

Our task was to locate 'bandits', as enemy planes were called, on our screens, and by radio-telephone (RT) to tell our pilots their location and the correct flight of approach in order to intercept. We gave the pilots the vector, i.e. the direction to turn the plane, and also the height to take them above the bandit, as well as crucially behind. The usual sequence was the pilot reporting a 'visual', a brief wait, the clatter of machine guns with the usually inevitable result.

When these Spitfire and Hurricane pilots, full of congratulations, paid us a visit to 'see how we did it', we had little doubt as to who deserved the praise. They were at the sharp end; we were only technicians. Sadly, we learned one day that German paratroopers had attacked a unit like ours in another part of Tunisia, completely wiping it out, and all the equipment — except the desired secret parts — had been pushed over a cliff.

Eventually with the British 1st Army, of which we were hangers-on, coming from the west, and the 8th Army pushing Rommel across N. Africa and finally into Tunisia from the east, the Germans surrendered on May 7, and we had the pleasure of being amongst the first Allied troops in Tunis. Of course the army had done all the hard work — we had the role of interested observers.

It was an eerie experience driving into Tunis while a seemingly endless cavalcade of open trucks packed sardine-like with German prisoners looking unheroically hangdog drove, it appeared, themselves in the opposite direction, towards the prison camps. Every dozen or so vehicles a lone British Army motorcyclist turned up, this apparently constituting the guard!


End of Part 1.