Memories of Frank Yates Chapter 14

Memories of Frank Yates CHAPTER 14

A week after the episode of the hot engine, I noticed that, although it ran very well, an oily “goo” was showing on the edges of the cylinder head gasket.
Orders came for the battery to go to firing camp and we entrained, at Driffield on a special train, which was to be our home for the next five hours or so. As I settled on the cushions, I felt a little relieved that the sergeant, who had taken over my gun site and signed its inventory, had made no comment about a weeping gasket. After all, the generator ran very well.
After the train had reached Leeds, where we stopped for an hour, for a “cuppa and a wad” we went up the Midland main line to Skipton, then turned off, on the ”Little North Western Line” to Carnforth, on the West coast main line. This station was the film set for the acclaimed “Brief Encounter”. Then off the main line again on what was once the Furness railway.
I found this journey most interesting, the train wound its way round Morecambe Bay, the sea out of sight beyond the miles of sand, through Grange over Sands and then out into the Furness peninsular, where the line turned south and then circled round the town of Barrow with its shipyard and its steel works, before changing direction to the south again, through Millom, then turning north along the Cumbrian coast, the railway line running between the sea and the coastal road through Seascale and Sellafield, names well known 60 odd years later, as the site of nuclear power stations. When our train passed them, they were little villages and we had never heard of nuclear fission. Eventually our train stopped at Netherton, another little village, with a hutted firing camp.
By now, the blokes in my detachment were very competent and I was proud of them, but we had to learn new tricks with the "Stiffkey Stick”. This cheap, clever little device costing about 0.1% of the cost of the predictor, got good results, and was fitted to all guns to be used in a mobile role.
On the sight bar, bolted to the top of the gun casing, a vertical steel tube was clamped. At the top, a bar, about 30” long was pivoted in a vertical plane and fitted with hand grips and hand operated levers, like bicycle handlebars. The No 1 stood opposite the loader/firer, on the gun platform and held the ends of the rod with both hands, he lined up the “stick” with the flight of the target and “clicked” the hand lever, once, for every estimated 50 mph.
The tilting of the device and the number of clicks caused the foresights of the layers to move by means of a simple linkage of Bowden cables. All they were required to do was to keep the plane in the centre of their foresight. If the tracer curved in between the target and the gun, the leading hand of No 1 put on further clicks until the tracers were obscured by the target, meaning that the shells were passing in front of the aircraft. Then, by doing nothing, one of the next shells will hit. With this “Woolworth’s” device we became as adept at hitting the drogue as we had been with the predictor.
One evening, Bert Hawkins, Jim Talbot and I walked nearly 3 miles to sample the fleshpots of Egremont, the local centre of civilisation. After a drink at one of the local hostelries, we headed for the local dance, duly prepared with respirator cases full of dance shoes. What a shock! Instead of the well worn sequence of Quickstep, Slow Foxtrot and Waltz, we got Reels and a miscellany of folk dances. Bert decided that no lad from the East End of London could possibly be seen, doing such strange tribal rituals and we didn’t disagree with him, so we tried another watering hole! On the long walk back, we decided that we would give the pleasures of Cumberland a miss, in future.
An interesting day, during that week, was a trip, to the pit head baths at the colliery in Whitehaven. The showers were excellent and very hot; after all, coal was hardly a problem! These pits, at Whitehaven and Workington were special because the workings stretched out under the sea. The return bus was arranged to take us back to Netherton in the evening to give us time to go to the cinema, I can hardly recommend Whitehaven as a tourist paradise, but perhaps it looks a bit better nowadays. A rather curious thought is that on the road to Whitehaven, the sea was immediately on our left, and immediately to the right, were the green foothills of the mountains of the Lake District. Since then I have motored across Shap, on the other side of the Lake District, but in my 83 years, I have never seen the Lakes!
I still remember, on our last afternoon, after a spot of firing, sitting on the cliff top, having a fag with my detachment, we sat, spellbound, just taking in the stupendous view, moving, even to us unromantic twenty year olds. The Sun was setting, in every shade of orange and red, the air was crystal clear, The Isle of Man looking as though it was near enough to touch, the top of Snaefell silhouetted against the light and the Irish Sea, dead calm, reflecting the golden sunset right to our feet
Next day a special train took us back to Yorkshire. To York in fact, from where we were taken, by trucks, to yet another of those Yorkshire airfields, this time Linton upon Ouse. Our stay at Linton was brief, but we made the acquaintance of the Handley Page Halifax which was succeeding the Whitley in Yorkshire, as was the Avro Lancaster in Lincolnshire. I would mention that the Lancaster got most of the publicity even though the Halifax was considered, by a lot of aircrew, to be a better plane, and certainly easier to get out of, in an emergency.
Linton was the “Rolls Royce” of pre war airfields, with concrete runways, from the 30’s, and a lot of pre war barracks blocks, in which we were temporarily billeted. One of those strange coincidences happened. You may recall, in an earlier chapter, that I mentioned that, at grammar school, I sat next to Ian Wood, who flew Spitfires in the Battle of Britain and Harvey Wood. Sgt. Harvey Wood saw me in the Sgt’s Mess at Linton. We had a great reunion! He was a wireless operator on a Halifax and was adamant that, on one of their instrumental test flights, he would borrow me a parachute from stores and I could have a trip. Harvey was keener to get me in the air than I was to go, having seen the many training flight casualties at Topcliffe. I said goodbye to Linton and to Harvey, before he got me into a Halifax!
There were three of us kids, on that back row at Hartshead and I often have wondered how many others in that class of 30 were in the services and how many survived the War?
At Linton the Troop Commander, a Mr. Jacques, button holed me and told me that he had had an army circular, which asked for recommendations for possible officer candidates. He added that he proposed to submit my name and had I any objections? I asked him about the financial aspects of a commission and he assured me that there was no problem, in that respect, and that was that, to be forgotten.
We went off to Thirsk, to a hutted camp, by the side of the Thirsk-Northallerton Road a short distance out of Thirsk. It seems that we were to become a mobile battery, no longer to be used for the air defence of the UK, but to become part of a fighting division, the General Staff obviously looking forward to the future and the time when we could go on the offensive again.
I can pin point the date exactly. Feb. 1942, because it was my 21st birthday and my sister sent me some money to buy a gold signet ring, engraved with my initials, from the jewellers, in Thirsk. I still have the ring, which has a gap, caused by an argument with a drop of mercury at school. Peggy sent me a beautiful toilet case, custom made, in leather I remember Bert Hawkins admiring it so much and bemoaning that no one ever bought him anything so handsome.
It wasn’t long before a bunch of NCO’s and officers went off on a course to Lotherton Hall, near the Towton site of the Wars of the Roses. It was purely theoretical and was concerned with the speedy and efficient siting of guns and management of a column of vehicles and was very interesting and logical. Bert and I went out one evening with a resident chap, a Sgt Chadwick, who borrowed a 15 cwt truck. We went to a pub, on the Great North Road, at a place called Aberford. There was a piano and I was amazed when Bert, the asphalter from the east end, sat down and played all the “hits” of the day and a great sing song was enjoyed by all. It seemed that Bert had never had a lesson in his life, he couldn’t read music and he only played in key “C”. It was done “by ear” as they say, but to me it was magic!
At closing time we had a shock; an impenetrable fog blanketed everywhere and together with the blackness, made our chances of getting back, virtually nil. We made it, however, by Chadwick, driving on the wrong side of the road, holding on to the wheel with his left hand, while leaning out of the open door, with his nose close to the grass verge, whilst I, sitting in the back, tried to light up the road edge with my little torch. Fortunately we were not likely to meet another vehicle at 11pm, in a thick fog. It took us an hour for the 2 Miles!

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