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Other duties.

On a small RAF Station such as Borgentreich's 537 Signals Unit, with a total strength of just over 200, the 20 or so Officers had to extend their skills to doing many jobs for which they had never been specifically trained. All the tasks normally accepted without a second thought by specialists on a larger Unit still had to be carried out by others, albeit to a lesser degree in terms of time devoted to each, yet each still carried the same relative degree of importance.
As to the Officers: as far as I can remember they were as follows (I have added the names of their replacements after they were posted away, in parentheses):- We had a Commanding Officer, Sqn.Ldr Paddy Ryan (later Wg.Cdr. 'Killy' Kilmartin) and a Station Adjutant, Fg.Off. John Duggan (later Flt.Lt. 'Sam' Weller, then Flt.Lt. Cunningham), a succession of Medical Officers, and an Accounts Officer, Flt.Lt. Roy Bertram (later replaced). We also had an Operations Officer, Flt.Lt. Don Crocker (later Sqn.Ldr. Owen Ellison), a Senior Technical Officer, Flt.Lt. 'Ray' Street, and his assistant, Plt.Off. Peter Bunn (later Sqn.Ldr. Monk and his Pilot Officer assistant), and Fg.Off. Mike Rush and his Pilot Officer assistant (later Fg.Off. Dave Hattersley), together with the Warrant Officer i/c Catering, the Warrant Officer i/c Equipment Section, and the Station Warrant Officer. All we other Officers were involved with watchkeeping duties and routines. It therefore fell to us, between us, to run all other Station activities when we were not on watch.1 As time went on I took over three major extraneous duties, and towards the end of my stay at Borgentreich, all three were running simultaneously. I also picked up an occasional minor one or two as well.
The Flight Lieutenants shared the job of Station Duty Officer, according to rota, on a weekly basis.2 We Junior Officers, as on any RAF Station, did duty as Orderly Officer on a daily basis, also according to rota. The other, so-called, extraneous duties were allocated to us according to our personal abilities, interests, or basic needs. Occasionally, semi-officially, we would also help each other out or stand in for each other at times of necessity or difficulty. Somehow we ran the Station and didn't do too bad a job of it, lifting morale out of the almost despondent situation when I first arrived to, about nine months later, a thriving, reasonably content camp. This was in spite of our isolated location and the few facilities available other than off-camp shopping and German entertainment, in distant Warburg, Kassel, or elsewhere.
Within a very few weeks of my arrival John Duggan sent for me and told me that the CO wanted to see me. He discussed with me my earlier RAF and pre-RAF CCF experience as a school Cadet. He asked if I was a good shot, and what knowledge I had of field craft. He then gave me the job of Station Armaments Officer, telling me at the same time that there were nowhere near enough weapons or ammunition to go round. He told me to see to it that all personnel were capable of being armed appropriately according to rank and ability, and were capable of being issued with arms and ammunition in the minimum time.
My initial investigations revealed that there were about thirty .303 Lee Enfield rifles, a similar number of bayonets, and some two or three boxes of ball ammunition. The latter did not appear to be on any inventory. This little lot, and that was all there was, was stored in the room in Station Headquarters which was used as the Station Post Office, telephone exchange, and the Armoury. In nominal charge
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1 The non-watchkeeping Officers were deemed to be fully occupied and most only had minor extraneous duties to perform.
2 On larger Stations this was on a daily basis.
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