was one armourer, Junior Technician Thompson who, in these circumstances, was on a good skive, but was known as a bit of a tearaway. He lived with his wife on the married patch. She, I was told, was something of a red-ragger and had recently written letters of complaint about RAF life to the 'Daily Mirror'. I had to tread carefully, but someone was going to get a wake-up call.
I took over the inventory, ordered all relevant Air Publications, and started swotting up on almost anything to do with small arms and ammunition storage. My time off watch was going to be more than adequately filled, at least for the foreseeable future.
With having wholly inadequate storage there was no point ordering any more weapons or ammunition. I reported progress to the CO, and soon afterwards I was allocated the old Station Equipment Section building for use as an Armoury and explosives store, a new Stores having been just recently completed and occupied. He added that I had better put my mind to drawing up a Station Defence Plan covering both active and passive aspects.3 Looking back, he either knew, or suspected, something of which I was not at that time aware.
I came out of that meeting as Officer i/c both Active and Passive Defence, and in charge of creating and running a full scale Armoury, including all weapons, ammunition, and relevant equipment. I was under orders, too, to report my progress on a monthly basis. I had thought, naively, that my main job was fighter control. This put a different emphasis on things.
There were no plans or maps of the local area so I bought some local walking maps from the tourist office in Warburg.4 With tracing paper laid over them, and after several ground surveys, I planned, drew up, and had available in issuable form, the location of observation posts and defensive positions with intersecting arcs of fire.
I set up the Armoury workshop, installed weapons racks and storage shelves, and soon had them stocked with the necessary materiel to the scale appropriate to the camp establishment. This included tools, rifles, bayonets, pistols, Sten guns and Bren light machine-guns, signalling pistols, rifle range equipment, gas masks, gas capes, and protective clothing and accoutrements of all sorts. In the explosives stores, I had ammunition, hand grenades, detonators, signal flares and, after the creation of 210 Signals Unit, plastic explosive with which to blow up at least part of it. I had charge of one of the largest inventories on the camp.
All this required an amount of paperwork. I had a small office in the building, and a telephone, but I had no access to anyone who could type. The Station Orderly Room clerks could barely cope with their own work, so they were no help. I bought an Adler 'Tippa' portable typewriter from the PSI shop (someone else's extraneous duty) and attended, thereafter, to my own filing and correspondence. J/T Thompson didn't know whether he was coming or going. His life of leisure had come to an abrupt end. His wife complained to me, and I told her that he was only doing what he was paid to do, just like everyone else. I also dropped the hint that there was a shortage of married quarters and if she cared to vacate hers, her kindness would be very much appreciated. Whether she wrote to the 'Daily Mirror' about that I didn't find out, but no-one had any more trouble from her.
Having amassed this armoury, practice weapons issues had to be organised and rehearsed. Similarly, I arranged for the use of the Sennelager range (north of Paderborn) for weapons and live-firing practice. All ranks had to have firing practice
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3 Passive defence involves, among other things, protecting personnel, as far as possible, from the effects of atomic, biological, and chemical weapons, as well as creating facilities for the denial of RAF installations from use by a potential enemy, by the use of demolition charges or whatever, when all else has failed.
Active defence involves the use of appropriate firearms in the defence of a location.
4 There were no maps equivalent to the British Ordnance Survey available to me within the RAF in Germany.
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