Smith, Michael (2011) The Secrets of Station X: How the Bletchley Park Codebreakers Helped Win the War. London: Biteback Publishing.
The Air Ministry (1950) Radar in Raid Reporting. London (Confidential).
The Air Ministry (1952) Fighter Control and Interception. London (Confidential).
Winston Special Convoys in WW2 – 1942 Sailings.
www.naval-history.net/xAH-WSConvoys05-1942A.htm
Part 1
On Draft
CHAPTER 1
Embarkation
Saturday 25 April 1942
The last formalities at Wing HQ were completed. We were paid – a month in advance – notified about promotions, equipped with the last missing items of our home kit, ‘cleared’ and then dispatched to the Embarkation Personnel Centre at West Kirby (Fig. 1).
Being the first of the draft to arrive, we had time to look around and inspect the camp. What infinite dreariness! In the middle of a flat featureless landscape, a little township of gaunt dusty barrack rooms, separated from each other by dried cracked earth and dusty barrack squares. Our hut was coal-tarred on the outside – every inch of wall, gable and roof, so that it looked black as a funeral. The black tar had spilt and splashed over onto the green grass around the hut, and even clung to the door handles and left them sticky. At each end of the hut stood a broken, rusted stove, battered, empty, and down each side a row of scratched and marked double-decker beds, looking more like the furniture of a stable or byre than of a human home. Each bed had three square greasy little ‘biscuits’ (as we called the sections of mattress), four blankets, out of which the dust flew in clouds, as they were shaken, and one incredibly filthy pillow. No civilized man can imagine the filthiness of those pillows. They were layered over with grease – black – the blackness had begun to shine, as though someone had polished floors with them. At night-time, we had to spread a pullover or vest or spare cloth over them to keep them from contact with our heads.
So much for this cold sordid barn with its whitewashed walls peeling off, and its dangling lines of bulb-less electric fuse wires. Nothing could have been more cheerless. But the ablutions surpassed it in dirt. There were a score of handbasins, but not one had a plug. Apparently the plugs had vanished long ago, and the men had made a practice of stopping up the holes with paper. Bits of sodden newspaper clung to the sides of the basins; more lay on the floor; more had worked its way down the pipes, and had blocked the drains so that the dirty water stood smelling and stagnant in the gutter. More paper, torn in patches of all sizes, littered the lavatory floors, or was trampled into the pools of water and urine. And more urine stood and stank in the gutter of the urinal.
It was a repulsive place. One had always to fight against a shock of nausea at the first sight and smell. Yet, as more and more of the draft arrived, spirits rose. By supper time the hut was full of a noisy crowd arguing backwards and forwards about everything. By bedtime the talk had become a babel of complaint, jollity, and scurrility.
We were the perfect breeding ground for rumours. Not one of us knew where we were bound, what chances there were of being exempted from the draft, when we were to be kitted, how many days we would spend at the embarkation centre, and what we should have to do here. Anyone who had any experience of embarkation, anyone who had been on a draft before, anyone who had or claimed to have the least shred of inside information – the minutest suggestion of ‘gen’ – was listened to eagerly.
‘You’ll get another leave. Of course you will! We’ll be waiting about here for bloody weeks yet, man. You see, they’ll send us home again.’ said one man, and our hopes soared. But five minutes later another could be heard discoursing to a knot of eager listeners,
‘Christ, no! You’ll get no bloody leave! One of these nights, you’ll be confined to camp, and before morning you’ll be off, and nobody’ll know where.’
So we went from hope to despair, from anxious foreboding to almost pleasant anticipation. I remember listening to one young chap at tea, saying;
‘I’ve just had a letter from one of my pals, and believe me, it’s bloody terrible. He says you spend every damned day spewing here and spewing there, and running from the bucket to the side of the ship. Not for me! Not for me! You see, tomorrow I’ll be out of this bloody racket.’
He made me laugh, as we all laughed, to hide my concern (I’m of a timorous nature). But half an hour later, a corporal was holding forth and I caught him saying,
‘I’ve just met those fellows that are back from overseas – and England – they spit on it! This bloody place, they say. Let them get back to Palestine. One of them says he’ll do all his 21 years there – if they’ll let him go back once he has seen his folks.’
And so we see-sawed in our opinions. We were all the more ready to catch at straws because we were cut off from reliable information – and left idle. We paraded at 8.45 every morning – to troop back into the huts, to wait. Once we were called out and told to prepare for an FFI (Free from Infection) inspection. We stripped to the waist and stood in a long line along one side of the barrack room. As the doctor passed we dropped slacks and raised arms. He went past like a whirlwind. Almost 40 men were inspected in 30 seconds.
Monday 27 April 1942
For lack of anything better to do, I’ll describe the scene in this hut this afternoon. We were supposed to parade at 1.45 pm after dinner, but no NCO has called us out, and we have drifted into our own little activities. Half a dozen are asleep, lying on their backs in the bunks. I can see their chests rising – very little and soundlessly – as they lie. They look peaceful against the background of flapping window curtains. Four or five others are writing letters – and the rest are split into two card parties. In the corner in front of me eight are playing on the bottom deck of a bunk – all bent inwards to the cards, and talking fairly quietly. There are three noises – the intermittent wooshing of the wind, buffeting the corner of the room; the voices of the men – ‘Twist me one of them’ – ‘I’m happy’ – ‘You wouldn’t think it was bloody possible, would you?’ – ‘Bust’ – ‘Jesus wept!’ – and the clinking of the money as the pennies and small silver are thrown into the kitty. Every now and then someone will walk in and throw a loud remark among the players. ‘You aren’t bloody players! They’ve got four pound in the kitty next door!’
But he provokes few answers, and the busy half-silence descends again. Then someone calls out loudly ‘On Parade’. A few, taken in by the joker, roll out of bed, or look up from their cards, or put down their letters. But the joke has been played so often, he is like the boy who cried ‘Wolf!’ No one heeds him now.
So the afternoon wears on and on. The sun moves perceptibly round. Soon another day of ‘bugger-all’, as the men call it, will be finished.
Fear
Some men are not easily frightened.
You should see the good spirits of all these fellows
Leaving their wives and children, perhaps for ever
To run the gauntlets of submarines, sharks, drowning and God knows what.
But, as for me, I’m a perfect coward.
I’m damned if I can face all these things with equanimity.
All my days are apprehensive,
And I want nothing more than to play with my child in the wood,
And to read to my wife out of some rich book in the peaceful evenings
– And let who will have the power and the glory.
Snatches of conversation:
‘Poor tack, isn’t it?’
‘It’s worse on the boat, they say.’
‘Hell!’
‘Yes – they give you a couple of slices of bread and you have to catch your own fish.’
Procedure when being posted overseas
1 Embarkation leave
2 Back to Wing – cleared – paid – inoculated – medically examined – given pay & service book
3 Sent to PDC (Personnel Dispatch Centre)
4 FFI and dental inspection
5 Hand in certain clothing – be issued with overseas kit
6 Waste most of day in barrack huts – occasionally doing fatigues or PT
7 Lectures – medical, on tropical diseases, and general, on how to behave on draft
8 Code number issued and put on kit bags
9 Inspection of kit bags by CO
10 Inspection in full kit and webbing, gas clothing
11 Confined to camp
12 Night journey in train
13 Embarkation
Monday 4 May
Went to Chester, which I liked very much (Fig. 1). Mean to write account of afternoon for Gwen.
Language
Synge has a most valuable preface to the Playboy of the Western World on language. What a contrast between the language of the Irish peasantry and the men here. A writer ought to be realistic above everything and true to what he hears. Here is a perfectly uncensored selection of conversation from this barrack room:
‘What the bloody hell’s that there?’
‘You’ll fucking get it, I know.’
‘Fuck me! One two three four five six.’
‘Where the bloody hell is that bastard tenner?’
‘Oh fucking hell! It’s in the fucking cards.’
‘A lot of fucking coppers and no bloody silver!’
‘Shove it up your fucking arse. Fuck me, look at this prick here.’
‘Coming to the boxing match?’
‘Oh, no! There’s only one man I know who’s a good boxer.’
‘Who’s that?’
‘The undertaker!’
When I come home
On that great day, being home again at last,
I’ll find you sitting, dearest, in your chair,
In that still corner where the sunbeams cast
Slanting magnificence across the air,
And on your rounded cheek and smooth brushed hair,
Then shall I see
Your neat hands turning easily
The pages of some book laid on your knee.
And then, being come again to that sweet place,
Seeing again the beauty of your face,
I’ll take that big red book where you and I
Have written all the lovely history
Of our most dear companionship, and there
Put down this prayer:
‘Tonight let nothing in this world take hurt
In all the land, let no child wake with fright
To hear its parents quarrelling in the night;
Let no bird mourn,
Its blue eggs broken, its nest all torn;
No tempest smash
The good boughs of the oak or of the ash.
In all the families
Of flowers and birds and beasts and men and trees,
Be armistice,
Because the feast day of my life has come
And – I am home.’
Scene: The barrack room of a Personnel Dispatch Centre: almost all in bed. One light still shining. Coffey comes in, talkative with beer. He begins to make his bed noisily.
‘I’m telling ye. There’s only one man going to win this war, and that’s Joe Stalin. Up with the USSR.’
‘Oh man, whisht.’
‘I’m telling ye. It’s the only damned country left that’s any good. Communism! That’s what we want in this country.’
‘And who’s going to bring it here?’
‘Aye – is McGovern and Jimmy Maxton1 – that lot?’
‘Wherefore not?’
‘McGovern’s a prick!’
‘I’m telling ye. They’ve got their ideals, them men.’
‘Och man, pipe doon. Once we get home we’ll be that pleased, we’ll stand anything after this bloody thing is over.’
‘It doesnae matter. I’m telling ye.’
‘For God’s sake, shut up and let a fellow get to sleep.’
‘Shut up! Put a sock in it!’
(Short silence; uneasy rollings and creakings of the frame of the double-decker)
‘I’m telling ye. It’s the working man that’ll have to win this war.’
‘We all agree – but for Christ’s sake give it a rest for tonight.’
‘I’ll shut him up.’
(Someone leaps out of bed and puts out the light)
(Darkness, and another silence…)
‘Up wi Joe Stalin! I’m telling ye. The USSR is the only…)
‘Shut him up, somebody. Hit him with a boot!’
(Silence at last. A few minutes’ pause, then heavy breathing becomes a snore. We all fall asleep.)
All this interminable waiting! We wait in long queues for breakfast, dinner and tea: we wait in the NAAFI for tea and the YMCA for chocolate; at the post office for mail; on the stations for trains; in the canteens at evening; on parades to be inspected; at the ice cream van for blocks. Everywhere we wait, wait, wait.
Someone has scribbled on the wall of the dining hall these pathetic words, ‘Died waiting’.
Continuing
We were ordered to parade at 8 pm for supper, then at 8.30 pm for final roll call. An interminable wait, all strapped, laden and weary with our equipment – and all for little purpose. Then a move. We marched with kit bags to a big drill shed, where we again lined up and waited. While we waited officers sauntered up and down the ranks – tantalizing, neat, free, elegant, leisured, unconcerned – blandly ignorant of our wretched frame of mind and distressed bodies. The men could barely stand it. Restless, they barked back at an insolent NCO – imitated his voice – booed, and began to sing over and over again, ‘Why are we waiting? Oh why are we waiting?’
Why indeed – but to wait is second nature now to us. We wait all day, for so little, so pitifully little a blessing. By and by, when more senseless rigmarole had been gone through and we were waiting again, one cheeky voice broke out with,
‘When this wretched war is over
O how happy I shall be
When…..
No more soldiering for me,
No more church parades on Sunday.’
His song was loudly applauded. But, oh my God the weariness!
And so it went on all the time. We waited again at the station, until the light had gone out of the sky, until a train arrived, departed and arrived again – and the Service Police were walking around with hurricane lamps, and we were sitting on the ground and in the gutters for weariness.
But en train, enfin!2 A long journey with snatches of sleep – waking to hear the train racing hard and metallic; then to realize it had stopped somewhere; then to hear it chuffing slowly – finally to find it gliding slowly, with a leisurely slipping movement through between warehouses and cranes – an unfamiliar landscape.
We had reached the port (Fig. 1).3
The troopship
Here are a few notes about the troopship written in the fine new fountain pen I have managed to buy for myself at the barber’s. I have never lived in conditions so primitive as those that exist on a troopship. In a space as big as a small ballroom, 16 yards by 16, about 250 men live, eat, sleep, work and store 250 kitbags, 250 rucksacks, 250 water containers, 250 gas masks. When we are seated at table, with our apparatus neatly stacked to right and left, the effect is admirable. But set these 250 men in motion, some finding towels, some looking for a stray overcoat, some washing up, sweeping up, changing shoes – and the effect is indescribable – hell is let loose. In these poorly ventilated quarters the heat is serious when 250 men are in motion. And the obstacles in the way of washing, finding kit, eating and cleaning up are so great that a day is spent on those simple activities which at home are over in a few minutes.
But do you know, I’ve just had a beer. I was typing for Pilot Officer or Flying Officer Drummond – God bless him – and he bought me my first ship’s beer – and I think it has gone to my head. I’ll go on with this later.
What a miserable send-off we had from our native land! As we paraded in the vast drilling sheds of our last land station, dejected with
long waiting and the certainty of leaving home perhaps for good, no officer or NCO spoke a kind or encouraging word to us. Our last homeland meal was an unsavoury dish of stew and thick cocoa, eaten in a cookhouse evil and repellent with its odours of unemptied garbage tins; and when we mildly complained, we were told by a cock bantam of a flight sergeant to eat it, or leave it and get out. And when, later, we were standing in the sheds, the officers took no more notice of us than if we had been cattle. It would have been a generous gesture if one of them had said to us, ‘Now we know that you are about to undergo great hardship and discomfort. But we who are left alone at home with our wives and children and acquaintances and comforts, we think highly of you and beg you to endure all inconveniences patiently. Good fortune go with you.’
But instead, our only valedictions were the neutral chirping of the sparrows among the high rafters of the sheds and the bullying voices of the NCOs. At this never-to-be-forgotten embarkation centre, we were housed like criminals, fed like criminals, detained like criminals and sent off like criminals.
On the boat we were fortunately in the care of a competent and kindly officer – a Scot with a broad black-jowled face, a bald head and an extremely energetic disposition; but his friendliness could do little to mitigate the wretchedness of our living conditions. I have mentioned conditions on the mess deck during the day. The evenings were just as chaotic. After we had slung our hammocks or laid out our mattresses, there was scarcely an inch of space left; and at times the atmosphere was suffocating. I must say that when we had all settled to bed, and the lights had gone out, the atmosphere grew remarkably clear and cool, and we slept well. And a hammock is certainly a delightful bed.
It is most easy to sling and to pack, and the slight swinging movement is more soothing than otherwise. Yet, day or night, the satisfaction of every little need, the finding of a towel, or cigarette or handkerchief, involved so complicated a train of actions such as removing baggage, replacing or restacking the disturbed pile of rucksacks and haversacks – that it was weary and burdensome.
And the lavatories and ablutions! The lavatories were open pens, wide and deep enough to contain a lavatory pan only. We sat in rows and conversed together along the row. And the only available washing water was cold sea water. You picked up one of the loose bowls lying about, filled it from the showers, and emptied it into your particular bowl. The usual procedure, and the most economical, was to clean the teeth first, then wash in the same water, then use it a third time for shaving. And of course, the best of shaving soap and toilet soap only was of any use in the salty water.
War's Nomads: A Mobile Radar Unit in Pursuit of Rommel during the Western Desert Campaign, 1942-3 Page 5
