The Silent Listener E-Book

Major D J Thorp

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 324

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

On 2 April 1982 Argentina launched Operation Rosario, the invasion of the Falklands. The British, caught off guard, responded with Operation Corporate. Deployed alongside the rest of the British Army was a small specialist intelligence unit, whose very existence was unknown to many commanders and whose activities were cloaked in the Official Secrets Act. Trained during the years of the Cold War, the OC of the unit, D.J. Thorp, was tasked with providing electronic warfare support – interception of Argentinean electronic and radio signals – allowing the British to be in real time receipt of enemy plans long before execution. He personally briefed Col H Jones before the Battle of Goose Green. For the first time in print, The Silent Listener confirms the existence and role of the Special Task Detachment during Operation Corporate and provides details of the deployment and operational role of a dedicated ground based electronic warfare (EW) weapons facility. It also details the development of electronic warfare during the Cold War period, including the establishment of a communications intercept site on East Island following the cessation of hostilities in the Falklands, and D.J. Thorp's top secret role in the investigation into the sinking of ARA General Belgrano.

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Preface

Introduction

1The Training of Professional Communicators

2Apprentice to Veteran

3My Career as an ACORN

4The Corridors Linking East and West

5The Special Task Detachment

6Preparing for War

7The Transition from Peace to War

8Action Stations

9Life in Bomb Alley

10Battle for Goose Green

11Arrival of 5 Brigade

12Communication Procedures

13The Planned Counterattack

14The Surrender

15Formation of a Permanent Signal Unit

16Transition to Post War Life

Appendix 1‘La Gaceta Argentina’

Appendix 2‘Counterattack’

Glossary

Plates

Copyright

PREFACE

The objective of this book is primarily to give the reader insights, alternative answers and in some cases the truth relating to certain events that took place during the Falkland Island War of 1982. In addition its content is aimed to broaden one’s knowledge of a very small number of Armed Forces personnel employed in specialist duties during the period 1940–1990, who, because of the restraints placed on them by their signing of the Official Secrets Act, have seldom attracted the attention of the general public. I have deliberately liberally peppered my ‘real war’ memories with an overview of my military career in general during the period 1955–1988, in order to give the reader an insight into an aspect of Army life that seldom hits the headlines.

After 1990, mainly because of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the more relaxed relations between the super powers after the Cold War, the role of these specialist personnel changed and through these changes, and more open reporting by the media, their existence has become more widely known. My specialist knowledge and expertise only came about after years of experience employed in the clandestine world of the electronic intercept of communication systems used by the potential enemies of Great Britain and her closest allies.

The specialists to whom I refer were actively employed 365 days a year. When on operational assignments their place of work was often hostile and on occasions very dangerous; they could be employed in the air, on the ground or at sea. Where they worked was also varied; they could be deployed to any continent in conditions, from the opulent and palatial to living and working in chicken coops, as they once did in Kenya.

Classified information pertaining to Official Intelligence Activities in all its forms and Signals Intelligence in particular, is not subject to any fixed timetables for release, such as the so-called ‘Defence Notice’ (D Notice) or since 1971 its replacement the ‘Defence Advisory Notice’ (DA Notice) and the ‘30-Year Rule’. The D Notice was established in 1912, bolstered by the Official Secrets Acts, to define subjects that are not cleared for public broadcast. With the progress of technology, today’s DA Notices cover media broadcast content via radio, films, television and the internet, and may be applicable to other government information under the Public Records Acts. In addition, the Freedom of Information Acts do not apply to the intelligence agencies; the Acts explicitly exempt them from any obligation to provide information concerning any units of the Armed Forces ‘which are for the time being required to assist the Government Communications Headquarters [GCHQ] in the exercise of its functions’.

In February 2010, the British Government presented their ‘Review of the 30-Year Rule’ to Parliament and the general public. Amendments to the Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill were tabled.

The reduction of the 30-Year Rule through amendments to the Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill is perhaps one of the first steps towards transparency in the field of dissemination of past highly classified information into the public arena. No sooner had the ink dried on this Bill – now an Act – when in June 2010, details of the 1946 UK–USA (pronounced ew-koo-sa) Secret Agreement was released to the British National Archives by GCHQ. This agreement, brokered with the US, led to the sharing of all signals secret intelligence between the two countries. The agreement was later extended to include the three former British dominions, Canada (1948), Australia and New Zealand (1956). The UKUSA Agreement was a follow-up to the 1943 BRUSA Agreement, a Second World War agreement on cooperation over intelligence matters – this was a secret treaty, allegedly so secret that it was kept from the Australian prime ministers until 1973 – and formalised the intelligence sharing agreement in the Atlantic Charter, signed in 1941, before the entry of the US into the conflict. While rumours suggesting the existence of such an agreement had persisted for many years, outside of GCHQ the actual document, or its content, has never been published before. The agreement itself states ‘It will be contrary to this agreement to reveal its existence to any third party whatever.’ With top secret codeword protection, the document was drawn up and signed by members of the forerunners of the National Security Agency (NSA) and GCHQ, the State-Army-Navy Communications Intelligence Board, known as STANCIB, and the London Signal Intelligence Board.

The Silent Listener confirms the existence and role of the Special Task Detachment during Operation Corporate and provides, for the first time in the history of British warfare, details of the deployment and operational role of a dedicated, but limited, ground-based electronic warfare weapons facility under the direct control of the Land Force Commander; a significant development in military history that appears to have been omitted by Professor Lawrence Freedman in his Official History of the Falkland War.

The content of The Silent Listener has been shown to and commented on by authorities at both Government Communication Headquarters and the Ministry of Defence; in consequence all requests from these Government Departments for changes to meet the terms of the Official Secrets Acts have been complied with. Failure to have done so may have caused damage to Great Britain’s strategic and tactical military capability and aims, and risked British servicemen’s and women’s lives in current and future conflict.

The Constitutional Reform and Governance Act means that over the next 10 years national archiving after 20 instead of 30 years will be required by law. Though within the Act, in Freedom of Information 46 (2) it states: ‘The Secretary of State may by order make transitional, transitory or saving provision in connection with the coming into force of paragraph 4 of Schedule 7 (which reduces from 30 years to 20 years the period at the end of which a record becomes a historical record for the purposes of Part 6 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000).’

INTRODUCTION

The art of intelligence gathering has been practised almost since the beginning of human societies. The need of individuals, organisations and nations to know more about others than the others know about them is insatiable. The ways and means of gathering intelligence are vast and varied, as are the reasons why groups feel the need to gather such information.

Throughout history much has been written about the world of intelligence gathering on a national level, where the target array varies from the activities of an entire nation, down to the individual on the street gossiping over the garden fence. While some people, through the press and other forms of media, like to feel they know a little about the nation’s civilian intelligence gathering organisations such as MI5, MI6 and perhaps the Government Communications Headquarters, it is generally only those, because of security implications and the policy of ‘need to know’, who have been employed or actively involved in the various aspects of military intelligence that have any real knowledge of the role and capabilities of the Intelligence Corps and in particular that element whose specialist duties are in the collection, transcription, translation, cryptanalysis and eventual reporting of signals intelligence. In the twenty-first century it has more commonly become known as ‘electronic warfare’.

The Crimea War (1853–1856), although best known for the Charge of the Light Brigade and the Thin Red Line during Battle of Balaclava on 25 October 1854, also made history as the first modern war to introduce the tactical use of the telegraph. With advances in telegraphic equipment and technology by 1901, when the Italian Guglielmo Marconi first discovered he could transmit and receive signals across the Atlantic Ocean, that department within the British Army responsible for its communications has frequently been at the forefront in the exploitation of radio transmissions. From early in the twentieth century, continual research and development within the field of electromagnetic radiation has allowed military commanders to communicate worldwide over secure means by the use of the high frequency wave bands for Morse code (less susceptible to interference) for long haul, and very high frequency wave bands for voice transmissions over shorter distances. In 1920, the Royal Corps of Signals was formed to provide communication specialists for the British Army and to this day it continues to be the Army’s leader in information technology and communications.

Technology pertaining to electronic communications has undergone a radical transformation even in the last decade. The use of Morse code in the passage of radio communications is all but defunct. In a modern age of communication satellites, secure cellular telephones and the World Wide Web, radio communications via terrestrial transmitters and receivers are slowly being forsaken for state-of-the-art equipment and techniques.

1

THE TRAINING OF PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATORS

I was born into a service family; my grandfather was a regular soldier during the First World War and eventually retired with the rank of Warrant Officer 2 (WO2) and my father retired after 30 years as an officer in the Royal Corps of Signals having served prior to, during and after the Second World War. My older brother served twelve years, including active service in Cyprus, and my younger brother served for 27 years, including several years in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. Continuing the tradition, my eldest son served nine years and completed tours of duty in Belize and with the United Nations Peace Keeping Force in Cyprus. We all served in the Royal Corps of Signals – as miners’ sons went down the pits so the Thorp sons enlisted into the British Army. Upon leaving school in February 1955 at the age of fifteen I agreed to serve for three years with what was known then as the Army Apprentice School (AAS), Harrogate, North Yorkshire, followed by a further nine years with the colours in the Royal Corps of Signals.

The AAS Harrogate was established in 1947 to provide the British Army both with a small cadre of regular soldiers suitably institutionalised from a young age to fulfil the roles of future senior non-commissioned and warrant officers, and also full apprenticeship training in a variety of trades including carpenters, painters, quantity surveyors and radio mechanics for various regiments and corps. This apprenticeship training was occasionally extended to servicemen from colonial and other armed forces – during the period from the late 1940s to early 1950s the largest single contingent of foreign apprentices to serve at Harrogate was from Myanmar (Burma), with the majority training as communication mechanics (later changed to technicians). The ‘apprenticeship’ in most cases was of three years duration, specialised trade training culminated in the passing of City and Guilds and other specialised trade-associated examinations, alongside training in military skills and education to include General Certificate of Education ‘O’ and ‘A’ levels.

The School was renamed the Army Apprentice College, Harrogate in 1966; by this time the only corps training its ‘apprentices’ at Harrogate was the Royal Corps of Signals. To coincide with its change of name, the College badge was also changed to that of the Royal Corps of Signals. The final graduation parade at the College took place in August 1996.

In addition to its apprentice school, the Army also recruited ‘boys’, officially referred to as Junior Leaders – young men aged between 15 and 17½ years of age. While these ‘boys’ received full-time military training, the specialist skills relating to trade training they received was very basic. Unlike an ‘apprentice’ who spent three years, unless he was ‘back-squadded’ through illness or lack of progress before transferring, a boy entrant on reaching the age of 17½ years was automatically transferred to ‘man-service’.

Having passed the apprentice written entrance exams and through a medical examination board been declared fit to serve in Her Majesty’s Forces, I received instructions that I was to report to a central recruiting centre by 0900 hours on 8 February 1955, for induction into the Army, prior to travelling to the AAS in North Yorkshire.

At this time my father was a serving officer stationed at the War Office – he commuted daily by car from our family home in Chingford, Essex, to his office in Whitehall. Knowing that I would need assistance with travelling arrangements, I made the grave mistake of assuming he would take me with him at least as far as Whitehall, although secretly wishing he might drop me off at the door of the recruiting centre; after all I was only fifteen years of age and leaving home for the first time. No such luck, he informed me the evening prior to my enlistment that he would give me an early call the following morning to ensure I left in good time to catch a bus. With a small suitcase containing the minimum of personal items – I was instructed to take only items for washing, shaving and cleaning my military clothing and equipment, all clothing and other items of a personal nature would be issued on arrival – I left my parents home at the crack of dawn on a very cold and wet Tuesday morning in February to catch a Green Line bus that would take me to the Army Recruiting Office, Great Scotland Yard, where, after swearing allegiance to the Queen and receiving the Queen’s Shilling, I was given a rail warrant to take me from King’s Cross to Harrogate. The journey north was reminiscent of several years previously, when my older brother and I, each carrying gas masks and small cases containing most of our personal belongings, were evacuated during the Blitz to stay for several months with a family in Thornaby-on-Tees.

On arrival at Harrogate railway station, I along with other potential ‘apprentices’, some of whom had been waiting several hours, was met by the Duty Corporal. He checked our details against his records, confirmed no other trains were expected within the next couple of hours, then escorted us outside where our onward transport was waiting. In the pouring rain and strong winds, the small group of us were taken in an open 3-ton truck without seating to Uniacke Barracks, Penny Pot Lane, Harrogate, which was to be my home and place of learning for the next three years.

Some events and occasions, for better or worse, will always remain in people’s memories and my arrival at Uniacke Barracks is one such memory. Debussing at the Apprentice School, all passengers were directed to a single-storey wooden structure known as a Spider. The Spiders – single storey construction, built from wood larch lap style panels under a gable roof, externally coated with dark brown creosote for protection against the harsh weather of the North Yorkshire Moors – both at Uniacke and across the road at Hildebrand Barracks (permanent staff accommodation) – were originally erected prior to the Second World War as temporary barrack accommodation for soldiers, with a change of use to a US field hospital during the war years.

The barracks consisted of six or eight large rooms constructed in a three or four, left and right ‘herringbone’ formation, with a very large central area and covered corridors linking the middle to the ‘legs’ of the Spider. The centre, the body of the spider, housed the ablutions, toilets, baths (no shower facilities), wash hand basins, ‘Blanco rooms’ and drying rooms, while the ‘herring bones’ or legs, were large dormitory rooms to accommodate up to eighteen occupants, nine on each side of the room. Each one of the eighteen bed spaces was furnished with a cast-iron framed bed, a single horse-hair mattress about six inches deep placed over a wire and metal support, a wooden wardrobe and a bedside cabinet.

Windows on both sides of the room were dressed with curtains in a plain khaki colour; we later discovered these curtains were for cosmetic purposes only and were never pulled for privacy. Occupants that claimed a bed space below a window were later to regret their choice because on kit inspection parades, if an individual’s kit was not up to standard, it was easy for the inspecting officer to jettison the offending items – sometimes one’s entire issue of military clothing and equipment – through an open window irrespective of the weather, whereas those not in close proximity to a window only had to contend with retrieving their kit from the floor around the bed.

The aisles were bare planks of wood and they were polished with brown wax polish – to maintain its shine, the floor was polished with brushes from boot cleaning kit for twenty minutes each morning by the room’s occupants. The planks of wood to the left and right of centre were coloured black. I soon discovered that the colour was obtained by mixing brown wax polish with Zeebo Black Polish (normally used to polish black cast-iron fire grates); Zeebo Polish contained lead and after walking barefoot on the floor for several months we wondered why we had ‘foot rot’. The floors of the surrounding corridors required regular scrubbing with soap and hot water. A punishment regular dispensed by the permanent staff (a regular soldier or National Serviceman as opposed to ‘boy’) was to scrub these corridors using only a toothbrush (personal property of the offender), soap and water.

No personal possession was allowed to be openly displayed and absolutely nothing was to be stuck, pinned or stapled to the walls; all notices and orders were placed in a display cabinet in the adjoining corridors. Only personal family photographs were allowed to be affixed to the inside of personal lockers. The one exception to these rules was a week before breaking up for Christmas leave, and festive decorations were permitted – there were prizes for the best decorated barrack rooms.

I previously mentioned that the barracks was once used as a US field hospital. This did not go unnoticed amongst the apprentices and this period of the camp’s history was regularly the subject of many a yarn concerning the patients and staff, all based on rumour and with the inclusion and embellishment of gory details. One such story involved a US pilot who, having been shot down by enemy aircraft, was brought to Uniacke Barracks as a patient and accommodated in the same Spider as myself and other members of my term. Unfortunately, very soon after being admitted one of his legs was amputated and failing to make a full recovery he eventually died in the hospital. His legacy to the apprentices that occupied his ward was the ‘Ghost of Stumpy’. Imagine some four or five years after his death, six dormitories, each with eighteen impressionable fifteen-year-olds with vivid imaginations, believing they had heard, seen or even spoken to ‘Stumpy’. After rumours of such encounters it was not surprising that at night not many of them left the security of their beds to use the toilet facilities located in the centre of the Spider.

Dormitories within the Spider were allocated by alphabetical order, consequently I was in a dormitory with names starting at letter P through to Z. Having found our bed spaces, the next step was to ‘march’, not the word the Duty Corporal called it, to the quartermaster’s stores for bedding, cutlery, and drinking mugs. Returning to our allocated bed spaces, after making up our beds and securing our personal belongings in our allocated wardrobes, we were marched to the dining hall (also known as the cook house).

My very first Army meal was London Roast, a mystery recipe consisting of minced beef, onions and other ingredients placed in a loaf tin and cooked in the oven. It was cut into slices and served with mashed potatoes, carrots and something called gravy (well it was brown and runny), followed by steamed pudding and custard. Having not eaten since breakfast that morning and the time now about 8pm, I was ravenous and ate all I was given without complaint. With the meal we had the mandatory issue of two slices of bread cut to regulation width on a hand-operated slicing machine. If stocks were running low the width of the slices was reduced. All meals came with two slices of bread and a single pat of butter, plus a single teaspoon of jam at tea. The butter and jam were insufficient to cover one slice of bread but that was the ration.

Returning to our dormitories we had a little time to become acquainted with the other occupants before lights out at 10pm. I soon discovered that I was to spend three years with a group of boys from very diverse backgrounds. Having introduced myself to two other sons of serving Army officers, coincidently one of whom I went to school with in Egypt a few years earlier, I was introduced to the boy in the bed next to mine whose name I think was Angus Taylor, from Glasgow; during our initial talk he mentioned his previous school was Doctor Guthrie’s Academy. I later discovered that Doctor Guthrie’s was a borstal; Angus, like several others at the school, had been up before the local magistrate’s court so frequently that eventually, in an attempt to encourage him to improve his ways, he was given the choice of volunteering for the Forces or a spell in the local jail. Most given the same choice signed up.

My older brother served for twelve years in the Royal Corps of Signals, but prior to this he also spent three years at the Apprentice School, enlisting in February 1953 (Intake 53A). We were there at the same time for his last year and my first, but we had little contact; he had his circle of friends and I had mine. On the few occasions the senior boys had contact with the junior boys, it was either the junior being given personal items of a senior boy’s kit to clean, or for the junior boy to be an unwilling volunteer included in the senior boys’ games. These games could take the form of a race between junior boys, on their hands and knees pushing an open tin of polish with their noses along the full length of a corridor or, on the return of the senior boys to camp on a Saturday night after the pubs had closed, assembling all the junior boys on the parade ground for a regimental march pass. The Corps of Drums would be in attendance and all those on parade would be dressed in pyjamas and boots. Considering the noise of the bugles and drums, how members of the permanent staff failed to hear what was going on within the barracks at midnight was always beyond me. I believe nowadays the accepted term for this contact would be ‘bullying’; we looked upon it as initiation and character building and no real harm came to any of us, but over a three-year period it was certainly a means of separating the men from the boys.

The consumption of alcohol in Uniacke Barracks was only permitted at dances and organised social functions, and then only if apprentices were over the age of eighteen. However, underage drinking outside camp was a challenge to all and considered only successful if one was able to get past the staff on duty in the Guard Room without them smelling alcohol on one’s breath while ‘booking’ back into camp. On the other hand, smoking was permitted on reaching the age of sixteen. To legally smoke – but only outside of buildings and in designated areas – written permission had to be obtained from parents or guardians. On receipt of written permission a ‘Smoking Pass’ would be issued; the pass had to be produced if requested by a member of the permanent staff or an apprentice NCO. During my early period as an apprentice, the Regimental Sergeant Major (RSM) was Stan Longsborough of the Coldstream Guards. The RSM had a dog that regularly accompanied him to work, and when it needed exercise he would walk it through the barracks where he would frequently find apprentices smoking outside their barrack accommodation. The RSM would challenge the smokers to produce their pass, but to my knowledge he never caught an apprentice without one for the simple reason that he took the same route. An apprentice without a pass had plenty of time to remove any evidence that could incriminate him.

As apprentices, all our activities were strictly timetabled. I was down for physical training during the last period of the day on Thursdays. Nothing extraordinary about that except that Thursday was, in those days, special because it was pay day and the only weekday that those apprentices with less than two years’ service were allowed out of barracks. Once the work day was over it was a mad scramble to get changed from uniform into blazer and flannels, rush down to the guard room where we were inspected by the Guard Commander who checked that our dress conformed to civilian dress regulations before allowing us to book out of barracks. If we moved quickly enough, we would be able to catch the 6pm bus to Harrogate in time to make the second showing of the film at the local Odeon cinema. The next bus would not be along until half an hour later and would have meant missing the start of the film. Waiting for a later showing was out of the question because we had be back in barracks by 10.30pm.

Our intake seldom made the 6pm departure because our instructor, Corporal Johnson of the Army Physical Training Corps, always took delight in finding fault with our efforts and delayed ending the class for 30 minutes or so. After several weeks of being kept behind after the class should have finished, the intake, all thirteen of us, decided that enough was enough and the following Thursday we would not attend the class. Instead we returned to our barrack rooms and lay on our beds until it was time to change out of our uniforms to go into town. But when we attempted to book out we were taking into ‘close arrest’ and locked up in the guard room. We were initially held on the grounds of being absent from our place of duty. Apparently when we failed to turn up at the gymnasium, the guard was alerted and searched all the possible places that we may have been hiding, everywhere except our barrack rooms otherwise they would have easily found us. Later that evening we were released from ‘close arrest’ and placed on ‘open arrest’; this entailed reporting to the guard room first thing in the morning, at lunch time, after tea and last thing at night. After several days, including the weekend, we were charged and appeared before our Company Commander.

The Company Commander was Major Shenton, Royal Artillery and the Company Sergeant Major was CSM (Harryboy) Harrison, Coldstream Guards. Thinking that because we had spent several days on ‘open arrest’ this would be sufficient punishment for the crime, none of us were unduly worried. Eventually CSM Harrison marched us into Major Shenton’s office who then asked the CSM to read out the charge. After reading all thirteen personal details he went on to say we had been charged under a section of Queen’s Rules and Regulations for wilfully failing to attend a parade and under this particular act were accused of mutiny, and if found guilty, the offence would be punishable by death. On the word ‘mutiny’ I swear all that could be heard were thirteen pairs of knees knocking together. All of us were then asked if we had anything to say; all we could think about was the firing squad. Eventually we were marched out of the office, to return one at a time. After each boy had been seen by the OC he left the office by a different route so he could not relate the nature of his interrogation to the other boys.

I was the last to return for a second appearance before the Company Commander and was accused of being the ringleader and encouraging the others not to attend the class. This was not true; the idea of not attending class had been someone else’s idea but I was not willing to say who it was. Having been warned about my behaviour and there not being the slightest hope of a second chance in the future, I was presented with the chevrons of a lance corporal and informed that as of now I was being promoted with the proviso that I lead my subordinates in the direction the Army would expect me to, not in a direction of my own choosing.

Promotion for an apprentice in the second term was at the time unheard of and since my retirement from the Army in 1988, I have often wondered what my life would have been like if I had been dealt with like the other twelve ‘mutineers’. Would I have stayed in the Army for more than 30 years?

On commencement of my apprenticeship in February 1955 (Intake 55A), I was initially selected for training as a radio mechanic. During our first six weeks of basic training we were given an insight into our chosen trades. From this brief trade introduction I learnt that for the next two-and-a-half years most of my working day would be spent in a classroom, studying radio theory and mathematics. However, when I saw what the role of a communicator had to offer, my apprenticeship changed to that of an Operator Wireless and Line. A qualified Operator was able to transmit and receive Morse code, touch-type for keyboard work, read Five-Unit Murray code and a host of other practical skills coupled with theoretical knowledge associated with radio communications.

About one year into my trade training the War Office (later the Ministry of Defence) decided to no longer train its Royal Corps of Signals personnel as Operators Wireless and Line and introduced the new trade of Radio Telegraphist – this meant combining the ability to receive Morse code with touch-typing on a typewriter (much later on a computer), as opposed to copying by hand, thereby increasing the speed of receiving Morse code from around 12 words per minute (one word consisted of 5 characters, therefore 12 words per minute equalled 60 characters) as an Operator Wireless and Line, to receiving and transmitting Morse code letters at more than 30 words per minute and Morse code figures in excess of 35 words per minute. The higher speed for figures was because there were only 10 figures compared to 26 letters and figures were easier to identify particularly when transmitted as coded blocks of 5 figures. Operational speeds in excess of 30 and 35 words per minute are possible but only machine-aided. The simplest way to increase Morse speed is to record the message text on a tape recorder, then transmit at a much faster speed; conversely, record at the faster speed and play back at reduced speed. A small number of apprentices that failed competency in high-speed Morse code transmission were later trained in additional skills and became Special Operators.

The introduction of the new trade of Radio Telegraphist progressed so fast that the administrators for this new trade, both service and civilian, were unable to proceed at the same pace; consequently on completion of our apprenticeship there was no civilian qualification available or applicable to the standards reached. As one of the first six apprentices to qualify as Radio Telegraphist, I failed to achieve any form of civilian recognition or qualification, which after all was one of the main reasons I volunteered to enlist as an apprentice in the first place. However, for ‘trade pay’ purposes, Radio Telegraphist was classified as an A Class trade, while Operator Wireless and Line was a B Class trade; this meant that the six of us were financially better off at the end of our apprenticeship compared to those that had qualified as operators before us.

2

APPRENTICE TO VETERAN

As a qualified Radio Telegraphist my first posting on leaving Harrogate in February 1958 was to a signals regiment in support of 2 Signals Division where my older brother was also serving. It was initially located in the Düsseldorf area of West Germany, but later, on amalgamation with another division, my unit relocated to the small town of Bunde in central West Germany. Life at Bunde appeared to revolve around the consolidation of our specialist trades in preparation for a possible war against Russian and other communist forces; this was fine when on deployment outside barracks, but when in barracks, there was only the cleaning and maintenance of vehicles and equipment to be carried in preparation for the next exercise. Life proved to be extremely quiet and less hectic compared to that of my first three years spent in a military training unit. Realising after only six months that as a serving communicator with the British Army on the Rhine (BAOR) there was more to life than military manoeuvres and cleaning vehicles, I submitted an application to attend an Arabic language training course that I had seen advertised on the Squadron notice board. After two interviews by officers of the Army Education Corps, I was accepted for training on the next course.

My choice of Arabic as a second language was in part due to the fact that as a child, during the period 1948–1950, I lived with my parents in Egypt where I picked up a smattering of the language. At the time of applying for the language course I was aware that previous courses had been held at the Berlitz School of Oriental Languages, London, with some students going on to its sister school in Beirut, Lebanon, to gain practical language experience. However, changes had occurred between the times of submitting my application to its approval, which resulted in my course being held in London, not at the Berlitz, but in a room on the fourth floor of Kings Buildings, Dean Stanley Street, accommodation owned by the War Office. The language teacher for four hours’ tuition Monday to Friday was a lovely woman of Middle Eastern origin known as Sit Ray, who was married to a serving British Naval officer. Sit Ray had previously been employed with the Berlitz School as a language tutor for Army students.

For the six months of the course our accommodation was with the Coldstream Guards in their barracks at Bird Cage Walk, in a room to the rear of the barracks used as accommodation for those service personnel in transit. Our personal possessions were frequently stolen because we had no secure storage space, and it was terribly cold during the winter because the room had no form of heating and the one and only window had most of the glass broken or missing. Our dress as students was smart civilian clothes for which we were paid an allowance of one shilling a week, and we were issued with a pass that allowed us to use the rear entrance and exit of the barracks along with bandsmen, other civilian staff and those considered not suitable to pass through the main gates.

Those responsible for getting the course up and running and ensuring that the accommodation used for our formal four-hour daily tuition with Sit Ray was up to the standard expected of a classroom, in their haste to get the course started, failed to provide adequate accommodation for ‘home study’ – homework. With a minimum of four hours homework Monday to Friday, and more at weekends, the atmosphere and facilities in our allocated barrack accommodation, as previously described, were far from ideal. However, we did find that the Union Jack Club provided warm and comfortable surroundings and this is where we spent most of our ‘home study’ time.

On completion of this language course I was to discover that once again I had completed a course without any form of civilian recognition. It was apparent that the only civilian Arabic language examination open to us on completion of the course was an obscure paper set at GCE ‘O’ Level with all questions relating to the Koran, or another similar paper specifically for students whose mother tongue was Arabic and learning English as a second language. As the five of us students were neither studying the Koran or enjoyed Arabic as a first language we had to be satisfied that our ability to read an Arabic language newspaper was sufficient. In the War Office’s defence they did find an acceptable college willing to set an exam based on the content of our specific studies, but six months of preparation time was required by this college, time which we did not have. I believe that later courses benefited from the many administrative mistakes made on mine.

Prior to commencement of the language course, it was never explained that on successful completion all non Intelligence Corps personnel would be transferred to the Intelligence Corps prior to commencement of special duties. When I discovered that to be transferred would result in a reduction of pay – the trade of linguist was a ‘B’ Class trade for pay banding, while my current Royal Signals trade was an ‘A’ Class – with marriage looming, I could not afford to transfer to the Intelligence Corps and had to decline the offer of a change of corps. As a result of my actions I became the first language-trained soldier to pass through the Intelligence Corps depot at Maresfield, East Sussex, without changing my cap badge.

On completion of the language course I married Margaret during my pre-posting embarkation leave. After this short spell of leave, with three other Army students from the course (the fifth student was a civilian employed as a Russian instructor at a Service language school) I found myself in Cyprus.

The flight to Cyprus was by the Transport Command, the RAF’s own de Havilland Comet 4 aircraft, the first military jet aircraft taken into service for air trooping and, in comparison to other trooping aircraft, a much more luxurious and faster means of travel. On arrival at Nicosia Airport, the four of us were transferred to the Forces transit camp located at Wayne’s Keep, just outside the town of Nicosia. Wayne’s Keep was a tented camp with very limited facilities, and it introduced us to the ‘Char Whallahs’ – men of Asian origin, mainly Indian or Pakistani, who, after the Second World War, ‘followed the Flag’ throughout the Middle East serving tea, known locally as ‘gunfire’, and curry to British servicemen from about 5am to 10pm daily.