There were times when I had to go out and about on duty. As Officer i/c Armoury I had responsibility not only for the weaponry at Borgentreich, but also for the small armoury store at RAF Scharfoldendorf, home of 646 Signals Unit, to our north-east. I had to make six-monthly visits to this outpost to retrieve its weapons and replace them with newly serviced ones. The journey involved a pleasant drive in a Borgward truck along a winding road by the banks of the Weser, through Höxter and Holzminden, and on through beautiful forests to our hilltop destination. Scharfoldendorf did not look like any normal RAF camp. It was a small Unit which blended well into the countryside and occupied buildings identical to those in the surrounding area. The Officers Mess, where I usually had lunch, had been a Gasthaus and was often mistaken as such by German tourists. The business aspects of the trip were usually handled by the Station Adjutant and involved logging the quantity and serial numbers of the weapons exchanged. Apart from this, the visit was largely social and a good day out. At the time I never asked the purpose of the Unit, but by its blending into the surrounding scene, I suspected that it was some kind of monitoring establishment.4
In May of 1956 I was sent on a midweek liaison visit to RAF Celle. My job was to discuss fighter control matters with the Squadron pilots. This didn't take all that long and I had time to spare. Using the transport I had been given, I took time out to visit the very pretty town and went as far as the gates of Bergen-Belsen, that horrendous concentration camp. I have to admit that the racks of funerary urns, the gates, and the railway line, filled me with mixed feelings of total horror and deep sympathy for those families who had lost loved ones or were entirely wiped out by disease and starvation in that awful place.
Another official journey I had to make in autumn time, was to deliver and fetch new cypher materials from Group HQ at Wahn. Three of us made the journey, a Corporal Service Policeman, an SAC driver, and myself. Our transport was a Volkswagen beetle. I had the locked leather bag containing the cypher material chained and locked to my wrist and, if we stopped for a toilet or refreshment break, I was to be escorted by the SP. Our route was clearly defined, with nominated Service establishments at which I could seek help should anything go amiss. We all wore holsters with Smith & Wesson revolvers and six rounds of ammunition. It was serious stuff.
We set off immediately after lunch and made very good progress. We arrived in the area of the Ruhr in good time and navigated our way along an Autobahn, as briefed, and soon found ourselves driving in a dirty sort of mist. The nearer the Rhine we got, the thicker the mist became until it was dense fog. By this time the SAC was getting tired. We had a break, and I took the wheel. Speed dropped to a crawl. With windows open and all eyes trying to see where we were and read the road signs, I suddenly found myself driving with nothing ahead but with streams of slow moving traffic coming towards us on both sides! It was now dark and the headlights of the oncoming traffic illuminated the fog so as to make forward vision all but impossible. Panic was welling in me, but I was sure I was on the right road. What had happened was that I was at one of the sometimes very complicated Autobahn interchanges. Thankfully, a confirmatory sign loomed out of the fog. Speed was down to 10 miles an hour and still there was a distance to go. The route we had been given was straightforward and clearly described so we pressed on, our eyes out on stalks like snail's. To divert to some other unfamiliar Unit down side roads which we couldn't see was not an option. One of us noticed that there were, unusually, no other military vehicles in the traffic (we had seen many up until then). Eventually, and very late, we reached our destination. We checked in at the
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4 It was much later that I was told that it was a 'Y' Station - a listening post for eavesdropping on Eastern Bloc transmissions.
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