Don Wallis Re 2602814 D,F,Wallis SCU3 & 4

							Bernard Gildersleve
                        Some notes on my Wartime Service.
                              Bernard Gildersleve

        I was born and brought up in Dulwich in South East London. When I was
nine I passed the entrance examination for Alleyn’s School and attended there until
the outbreak of war. One of the physics masters was a Mr L. H. Jones who was the
father of R. V. Jones, the ‘Most Secret War’ author. I have since wondered whether
that in any way influenced my being chosen for the SCU instead of the Royal
Artillery for which, at my medical examination, I had expressed a preference, having
served as a teenager in the Home Guard on a large heavy anti-aircraft gunsite on
Dulwich Common. As we were still experiencing a few air raids on London, we were
sometimes in very noisy action. At that time I was working in an independent
Private Bank in Park Lane.
        I was surprised, therefore, when my call-up notice on the 24th March 1944,
received less than three weeks after my eighteenth birthday, told me to report to the
Royal Corps of Signals, No 1 SCU at Whaddon, Bletchley, Bucks. I was met at
Bletchley Station, along with several other surprised chaps, and transported by lorry
to ‘Gees’ (Little Horwood), thence to Ashby’s at Stony Stratford for my six weeks
primary training. I was paid from Army Funds throughout under the army number
2392407. Although I had to sign a declaration of acceptance of the terms of the
Official Secrets Act I did not know then what I have learned since. We did our 6
weeks primary training as the first draft at Ashby’s There we did a little elementary
Morse training.       But we also endured the usual round of inoculations and
vaccinations, and carried out the usual guard duties, fire pickets, square and spud-
bashing, weapons training, PT, fatigues, fired rifles, Bren guns and Sten guns on the
range and also did bayonet practice. and then went to SCU7 at Gees to concentrate on
our Morse and to familiarise ourselves with the wireless equipment we would be
using. After morning parades went to the training hut for proper Morse practice, and
learnt about the sets we were to use. Day schemes in the Packard wireless cars were
with Squadron Leader Matthews in over-all charge. We then took our trade tests for
Operator Wireless and Line grade B3, were posted to SCU8 and moved across the
road to await further orders.

         On passing my trade test, I was posted to SCU8, to a forward station named
‘Mermaid’ serving the U.S. 9th Tactical Air Command. Our small group (4 operators
and two drivers under the supervision of a CQMS ‘Lofty’ Day) drove our vehicles
onto a landing craft (LCT) at Southampton, and after lying in the middle of the Solent
for eight days crossed the Channel to land on Utah beach which, by then, was
mercifully quiet. The U.S. 9th TAC were giving tactical air support for the U.S. 1st
Army advancing through Belgium and into Germany and we followed close behind,
our first ‘set up’ point being under canvas on a hill overlooking Charleroi, in Belgium.
After few weeks we moved forward to Verviers. Life there was not without its
moments: the first was a sudden dive-bomb attack by a squadron of aircraft
accompanied by the rattle of machine-gun fire. An eye-witness told us that the
aircraft were Lockheed Lightning twin-boom fighter-bombers. The aircraft of the
U.S. 9th TAC were Lockheed Lightnings. Sounded suspicious, but we never did hear
anything more about it! Then, one evening when I was on the set, a great flight of
Lancasters passed overhead on their way to a target in Germany, the border being
only twenty miles away. Lancasters usually flew to their targets ‘en masse’ but
returned individually. Soon there came the sound of an aircraft approaching from
Germany. I knew from the tone of its engines that it was a Lancaster, but the US
opened fire and shot it down. Fortunately the crew baled out safely and, when I went
to the mess next morning for breakfast, there they all were having breakfast.

        We junior operators did not know either the nature or the origin of the
messages we were receiving, apart from the fact that the transmitting station was at
‘Windy’ (Windy Ridge). We were well aware of the secret nature of our work and
that the messages in five-figure groups were coded with the one-time pad system.
They all carried priority codes (everything else stopped for an OU priority) and the
operator on duty worked alone, having to log each message and take it to the tent or
room where a group of RAF sergeants were decoding them under the supervision of a
small, thin little RAF junior officer (to whom we gave the rather uncomplimentary
nickname of ‘Chicken-S**t’). They were then passed to the US Capt. Hoopes (a
most ill-humoured individual) who then took them to Major-General Qusada, the CO
of the 9th TAC.

         Then came von Rundstedt’s Ardennes offensive (the ‘Battle of the Bulge’).
We had to evacuate and pull back as far as Liege where the Americans put us on the
top floor of a former modern Girls’ School. This was one of those all-glass buildings
with floor to ceiling plate glass walls, hardly the place to feel comfortable in a town
suffering from continual V1 ‘Doodlebug’ flying bombs as well as other bombing
attacks. Despite near misses we were lucky to get away with it but we spent a very
uncomfortable Christmas. I remember walking along the road seeing truck-loads of
American troops driving away from the front line whilst on the other side of the road
were lorry loads of British soldiers going towards the front! Anyway, to cut a long
story short we finally returned to Verviers, thence on to Bruhl in Germany, crossed
the Rhine at Remagen, spent some weeks in a German Barracks at Marburg and
ended up in another Barracks at Weimar where on V.E.Day we were rudely awakened
by machine-gun fire as US gunners tried to shoot down a few German aircraft coming
in to a nearby airstrip to surrender to the Americans rather than to the Russians.

        After V.E. Day we quickly returned to the UK and were sent to Nash Camp
where, under canvas, we went through a ‘toughening-up’ course with daily PT,
lessons in colloquial Hindustani and tropical diseases, and were given Yellow Fever
injections prior to service in the Far East, when half-a-dozen or so of us were
unexpectedly ordered to report to an officer who told us that we were being flown
back to Germany. We were at first known as SCU9 but in due course we became
SCU2. Operation continued with HROs and Mark 3 Transmitters in the usual 5 figure
groups and, at Bad Salzuflen, we had a messenger (an RASC chap) who took the
messages across the Kurpark to officers in a house on the other side. On the various
outstations we shared the same accommodation and meals with the officers and there
was a sergeant who did the de-coding. The messages were received from Bad
Salzuflen which, in turn, had received them from Brussels. On one occasion, when the
duty sergeant was to be away for the day, I was asked to decode any messages
received myself, with the one-time pad. As luck would have it no messages were
received that day (disappointingly).

      We were billeted in a comfortably furnished former convalescent home. Our
CO there was Major Norman (‘Jock’) Watt and we worked to various ‘one-man’
outstations in different parts of Germany. I was soon sent to serve on one of these
stations at Plon, in Schleswig-Holstein in the picturesque lakeland area of this part of
Germany. My station was named ‘Gracious’. It was in a comfortable house with
German staff to cook and clean, and the MI6 officers sat at table with the other ranks.
I joined the local sailing club but winter was approaching and the lakes froze over.

          Sadly ‘Gracious’ became redundant and I had to dismantle everything and
return to Bad Salzuflen which was a delightful Spa town with a beautiful Kurpark,
and lots of amenities and charity canteens and other recreational facilities. I
subsequently served as ‘leave release’ to other operators at Benthe, near Hanover,
Dusseldorf (twice) and Berlin (twice). In Berlin the work involved keeping an eye on
the doings of the occupying Soviet powers. This was, of course, before the days of
the Berlin Wall, and we could move about fairly freely, meeting Russian troops
around the city. It was safest to avoid any of their important sites as we were always
suspicious of their trustworthiness. It was a good job they didn’t know what work we
were doing!

         As wireless operator working only two short schedules a day I did various
other tasks such repairing fuses, repairing faulty light fittings, controlling a water
pump which supplied water to the house from an outdoor well and, in Berlin,
photographing ‘borrowed’ Russian documents for one of the MI6 Agents and drawing
extra Naafi Rations for a non-existent member of the staff, which were used by the
Agent as a bribes/rewards for his contacts who procured such documents. During
this period we were re-designated SCU2. I cannot now recall the names of some of
the outstations. Berlin was named ‘Stowaway’ whilst there were also such names as
‘Gem’ (or was it ‘Jewel’?), and ‘Aphrodite’.

         After de-mob I returned to the Bank in London, this time to their head-office
in Fleet Street where I eventually became deputy head of their tax department and
dealt personally with the affairs of some very eminent people. I discovered that there
was a T.A.Unit of the SCU in Farringdon Street, quite an easy walk from the office
and I joined this as number 22569097, helping to train some National Service recruits.
I left after two years to get married. We lived for some time at Forest Hill before
moving to the pretty Kent village of Otford from where it was quite easy to commute
to the City. I sang tenor in the City of London Choir, and learned bell-ringing at the
neighbouring village of Eynsford. When eventually I retired we moved down here to
Beaminster, in West Dorset, joining the Dorchester Choral Society and the Bradpole
bell-ringers. Sadly, for health reasons I have had to give up my choral work but still
ring at Bradpole when well enough.