Special Operations Executive in the Far East

Chapter 3 Station XII Aston House

I finished my meal and went down the passage to the storeroom where they had the coal as I had been instructed to find the biggest lumps I could. Why and what for I was not told, but this was nothing unusual and to return to the Lab, and even if they told me at times it was as clear as mud. Then I was told to get a brace and use it with a six-inch long tube that had a serrated end, my instructions were to see if I could drill a hole in the coal without it shattering. This I did, if too much pressure was applied the coal just shatters so it was simply the weight of the drill that did it. My thoughts were what the hell for? But, as I was learning, don’t ask, just do it.

I drilled three lumps and removed the coal that had been left in the center of the drill, this I emptied into a bag. When I had finished I went straight to the MI room with them dropped them on the table and went through the entrance hall to the officers dining room to inform the CO that I had achieved it, still none the wiser.

Doug took me down to the explosives stores that were in the middle of a field, this was wired all round to stop adventurous types from getting in, we had the only keys to it. Once inside you entered the dirty room, here we changed our boots and put on felt slippers if we had not done this any remaining explosive on the floor would have been highly uplifting. We then entered the clean room where the charges were prepared, I say prepared, the saying “I think that’s enough” followed by “are you sure” were the commonest words used.

This was my place of work, I had a bench with two machines one of these was used to cut fuses with. We had three types of fuses, one an orange colored was said to be instantaneous but in truth had a delay of some three seconds, not much but when you wanted to know how long a delay, it helped. The next was a black fuse, it had a longer delay timed in minutes. Two inches equaled half a minute. We used to demonstrate the difference by taping both together, lighting them, and then throwing them down with the instruction “don’t go near until you think its gone off”. The short fuse exploded, then when the person thought it was safe, seconds later the other would go off, a quick lesson in trust and timing.

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.