Memories of Frank Yates Chapter 9

Memories of Frank Yates CHAPTER 9

Leave was over and we got down to reality at Topcliffe. The village is on the Swale, a very pretty spot, and the, near-by airfield, on the railway line from Leeds to Thirsk, was a typical 1930’s layout, exactly like Scampton, with the same five massive hangars, the same Officers’ NCOs’ and OR’s messes, the same ivy clad HQ building and unlike Scampton, still with grass runways. Most of the southern stations, used by fighters, in the Battle of Britain, had no metalled runways either.
Topcliffe was equipped, at the time, with Armstrong Whitworth Whitleys, heavy, lumbering bombers, powered by two Merlins, less frequently, by two Siddeley radial engines.
I took over my gun site, situated at the side of the football pitch, on slightly rising ground, on the south side of the airfield and about 150 yards from the perimeter track. There was a wooden hut, alongside a hedge, separating it from a farm field. A towed gun was in position, on the football field side, with a pretty tatty sand bagged wall round it, but no predictor. After going through the inventory, with the outgoing sergeant and signing it, we moved in
There was a short corridor, with my little room on the left and a storeroom opposite. The large room contained a row of wooden double bunks down one side and a large table and forms on the other side. At the other end was the cook house and opposite an ablution room with washbasins and taps (no hot water, but after all, there was probably no man on the site, including me, who had hot water at home) There was a jumbo coke stove, in the main room and a cooking stove in the kitchen, with a “dixie” of hot water, ready for the morning shave.
The RAF was responsible for our feeding. They kept us supplied with eggs and bacon, porridge oats, bread, butter, jam etc so that we could make our own breakfast and tea, but they supplied dinner, in containers, by truck, every day. The arrangement worked very well, one of our Liverpool dockers, volunteering to be cook and barrack orderly. At first light, we “stood to” for an hour, an Army tradition, going back into the mists of antiquity, the theory being that an enemy is likely to attack at dawn. During the daylight hours we had a crew of three on the gun, doing two hour stints, and another “stand to” at dusk, before closing down for the night.
Our troop commander was Capt. Robertson and there was a lieutenant by the name of Jacques, who, believe it or not, I met in the billiard room of Baron Rothschild’s town house in Paris, four years later. Major Hardy was a frequent visitor. The man was a born belligerent! We had no rifles, he worried about this, what would we do if the Germans dropped in parachutes, as they had in the Low Countries? Shortly afterwards, he turned up, from his Harrogate HQ with an unbelievable array of weapons There were gear wheels, welded on the end of two foot lengths of steel tubing, in the style of medieval maces! There were six foot long pieces of tubing, with WW1 bayonets welded into the end, like Cromwellian pikes! There was a beer crate, filled with “Molotov Cocktails”, bottles filled with a nasty mixture of petrol with old bits of rubber dissolved in it. A piece of cotton cloth was fastened to the side of the bottle. We listened, wide-eyed, as the good major explained that, in the event of Nazi tanks appearing in north Yorkshire, we had to unscrew the stopper, push the cloth into the neck of the bottle and light it with a match. All that had to be done was to get close enough to the tank to throw the thing at it, thus roasting the crew! After the Major had gone, I had the knightly weaponry stowed in the store room, and the Molotov cocktails secreted in the hedge bottom well away from the hut
We had been told that we were likely to get a predictor in the near future, so it was decided to rebuild the gun pit, with a concrete floor and space for the predictor. Sand, cement, and a bale of sandbags arrived and we started the new site, close to the existing one. Let it be known that I knew nothing about mixing and laying concrete, but I soon learned from the others, especially the three Irishmen. We built ammunition boxes into the neat sand bagged walls, for ready use shells, and cemented the spare barrel stands in place. When it was finished, the gun was transferred to the new site where it looked pretty good, waiting for its predictor.
Now, a few words about some of my team, firstly, Norman, one of the dockers, he was about 25 and had been, in his earlier days, a fairground prize fighter. He was the chap that would take on any aspiring young man and the management would pay £5 if the challenger could stay on his feet for three rounds. He would, sometimes, by force of habit, take a boxing stance, with his left hand extended and his right thumb touching his nose! I was reading a book, in my little room when Norman knocked at the door and came in. He, embarrassed, told me that he had a girl friend, in Liverpool, and he had a letter from her and would I read it to him and answer it. Norman was the first totally illiterate person I had met. Every time he got a letter, he would bring it to me and close the door and we, between us, would compose a loving answer. I made it clear to his fiancée that anything in the letters would remain strictly in confidence. Norman will have passed on, by now, but I hope that he had a happy life with the girl of my letters.
I mentioned, earlier, that one of the blokes was a Clerkenwell watch maker and, during his visits to the NAFFI, in the evenings, having discovered his trade; several RAF types asked if he could repair their ailing watches. He asked me if it would be alright if he did this work on the side and I could see no problem. After all, there were many professional (and amateur) hairdressers about who would cheerfully savage your hair for about nine pence! He used the table in the cookhouse, putting down a square of green baize and laying out his little set of tools; A couple of pairs of tweezers, two or three watchmaker’s screwdrivers, a bottle of rectified spirit and a little bottle of oil, so refined that it looked like water, made up his toolkit. When he was not on duty, he performed his art, and, of course, it was not long before I was sitting there watching him and taking instruction! Three main faults can stop a watch;
1. A broken mainspring. (Return to owner- no spares)
2 A broken balance staff (ditto)
3. A snarled up balance spring. (Easily rectified)

Any other stoppage is due to dirt in the works, and this was our usual, successful repair.
Bill, (his name), showed me how to take the watch completely to pieces, bathe every part in spirit, and reassemble, allowing a touch of oil inside the mainspring casing only. The re-assembly needed a lot of practice, because all the wheel pivots had to be entered into their respective holes in the plates, simultaneously. Bill would do the expensive ones, allowing me to do the “Roscofts”.
Before the war, cheap wrist watches were taking the place of cheap pocket watches, and some very flashy looking watches were available for about 5 shillings I had one myself, bought from Marks and Spencers, for 5 “bob”. Bill removed the movement, devoid of any jewelled bearings, and, while he was dismantling it for my instruction he asked me what I thought it was worth. He told me that the movements were made by a firm in Nuremburg called “Roscoft” and I almost fell off my chair when he told me that, in London, in the trade, they retailed at three shillings and sixpence a DOZEN!
One dark and rainy night, the Battery 15 cwt truck dropped a character, with his kitbag, on our doorstep and the driver said “Battery captain says look after him, he’s your new man” So arrived Dave Kingsley, who, after “Ting” Bell and Major Hardy was to have a significant influence on me. He was a Jew, only about 5feet 5 inches tall and with a personality about 10 feet tall. We fed him, warmed him up in front of the stove, showed him his bunk, and we went to sleep, ready, next day, to find out all about him.
After Dave had sized us all up, it was me, in whom he confided. He had little in common with me, but he was a light year away from the dockers! His Grandfather was a German Jew called Kunerich, who came to Britain before WW1. Like anyone with a German name in .the Great War he suffered much abuse, and changed his name to Kingsley, (a straight translation). Dave was a fur merchant and a member of the Hudson’s Bay Company. He informed me that he had supplied the furs for the coat which the Duke of Kent had presented to his bride, Princess Marina. After our container dinners, Dave would get his cigar box out and select a corona for his post prandial smoke. My lads were astonished to learn that he paid four shillings and sixpence each for them! He was very learned, he had rare editions of authors such as James Joyce and Leo Tolstoy He played the violin and explained how to double stop a fiddle- might as well be Greek to me! He told of receiving his call up and arguing a reserved occupation. Fur trading was hardly an essential part of the war effort and so he found himself living in a hut in a field in north Yorkshire He had installed his wife in the Regent Palace Hotel for the duration, the wife that he had married a year ago, with the reception held at the Dorchester, for 300 guests, with the top of the bill bands of Jack Jackson and Lew Stone playing for the dancing. I imagined that Father in Law was footing the Regent Palace bill as well. Dave was very popular with the lads, perhaps they were a bit in awe of him, and I am sure that, if he had volunteered to shovel sand, which he never did, they would have said “Leave it to us, Dave” and he would have complied! I was not willing to change things because, when we had a predictor, he made a brilliant No 1.
One summer morning we found that the field, over the hedge, was sprouting superb mushrooms, and Dave and I virtually lived on them, cooked in butter. The Liverpool lads sat around, expecting us to drop dead. They had never tasted them and we could not persuade them to try any. There was a complete taboo. I sent a couple of shoe boxes full, by post, to sister Gladys, where they were much appreciated.
When on the dark evenings, when some of the lads had gone down to the NAAFI, Dave and I sat round the stove and chatted. He told me a lot about Jewry and to my surprise, although he hated the Germans, he ranted and raved about the Poles, the worst persecutors of the Jews, in history, he assured me. Eventually a letter arrived, via Battery, from the War Office, addressed to Dave. As he read it I saw his face take on a worried look. They said that it had come to their notice, that Gunner Kingsley was a naturally fluent speaker of German, and would forthwith be transferred to the Intelligence Corps. I think that he liked the out of the way tranquillity of Swaledale, and wondered if being a German speaker, in intelligence, might lead to missions not to his liking.
Anyway, off he went, and I missed our chats. More than a year later, the unit, now an operational mobile LAA battery, was stationed in a camp on the Northallerton Road in Thirsk. I got a message asking if I would ring a Thirsk number. The man at the end of the line was, you’ve guessed it: - Dave! He was living in Thirsk.” Would I come to tea on Sunday please”?
I was met, at the front gate of a rented, furnished semi-det by Dave, wearing a blue, pin striped suit, and a marvellous apparition, the gorgeous Mrs Dave, on his arm. She really was a stunner, wearing a huge cartwheel straw hat and looking like something out of a Hollywood film! Over tea, Mrs Kingsley thanked me for looking after Dave at Topcliffe and he explained that his own doctor had diagnosed some heart problem, which had been confirmed by a Medical Board, resulting in a medical discharge from the Army. Having tasted the “away from it all” life in Yorkshire, he had brought his wife out of London, away from the air raids and had every intention of sitting out the war in Thirsk. I departed those parts within a couple of days and never saw him again. I often wonder what became of them. Did they get bored and go back to London? Did Dave go back to trading furs? If so, I wonder what he made of the Animal Rights Movement?
Before telling the reader of our first serious brush with the enemy, it is necessary to be a bit technical and explain, as simply as I can, a bit about the working of the Bofors gun. The shell is locked in place, in the breech of the barrel, by a vertically sliding, brick shaped, lump of steel, called a breech block. This seals the gases generated by the burning cordite in the cartridge case, and ensures that their energy is directed in propelling the shell out of the barrel. A soft copper ring, called a driving band, is forced into the spiral grooves in the barrel, the “rifling”, so giving the spin, necessary for accuracy.
When the breechblock closes, a striking pin, impelled by a strong spring, hits the percussion cap, in the base of the cartridge case. The cap is filled with an explosive called mercury fulminate, which explodes on impact, igniting a small quantity of black powder, which, in turn, ignites the main propellant, which is a nitro cellulose compound called cordite, packed into the cartridge case and looking exactly like a bundle of uncooked spaghetti.
Occasionally, when the percussion cap is struck, nothing happens. This unfortunate break in the proceedings is called a “Misfire”. If the fault lies with the black powder “gain”, which could be damp, and burn slowly, the shell could fire a few seconds later. This is called a “Hang fire”. If a misfire occurs, the official drill is to wait a minute, then unload, This makes certain that, when the faulty shell is carried away to a safe distance, there is no more danger to the gun crew.
Pivoted at the rear of the gun casing, operated by the No 4, is a long “L” shaped handle, called the loading lever. When it is pulled backwards, it, among many other functions, pulls down the breechblock in its slides, and cocks the striker, against its strong spring, the last action being to hold the striker in the cocked position, this happening with the breechblock not quite fully open.
All gun sites had been circularised that, because of action delays due to misfires, the following modification would be made to the gun. The loading handle was to be pulled back until the striker was cocked and held (As explained above). Then while the handle was in this position, a white line was to be painted, using the lever as a ruler, on the gun casing. Then, in the event of a misfire, the No 4 had to pull back the lever to the white line and return it to its normal position, this caused the striker to have another go at firing the cap. This seemed a sensible idea and we understood that it often worked, when tried at firing camps.
Before I got chance to get hold of some white paint, an artificer from REME arrived and did the job for us. A couple of weeks later, an order marked “urgent” arrived from Battery, saying that the new misfire drill was to be abandoned immediately and the white line was to be removed from gun casings. It appeared that somewhere, when carrying out this new procedure, the No 4, in the confusion, had pulled back the lever too far, at the very moment that the shell had hang fired. Consider the effect; the shell fires, the breech is open and the projectile has got its driving band up against the rifling in the barrel, stopping it from moving forwards. All the frightening power in the expanding gases is used to propel the cartridge case backwards at very high speed, accompanied by the white hot cordite flame. This would inevitable cause serious burns, even if it didn’t explode the shells in the auto loader. This is not all. The projectile, in the breech of the barrel is throwing its tracer flame backwards through the gun, until the self destruct function explodes the shell.
At our next gun drill I informed the lads of the new orders and told them that we would revert to the old one minute drill. That’s the end of that, I thought. How wrong could I be?!

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