Differentiation of Signals (Part 1 of 2)

Heroes Remember

Differentiation of Signals (Part 1 of 2)

The reason we could identify them and I, you know, this is sixty, seventy years ago, apparently they, the Brits had access to a, a German publication. When a German unit was created in Germany and had signals equipment, they were assigned a certain page in that book, "Call Signs and Frequencies" which they suppose to use. There were given five frequencies and twenty call signs they, they used. And let's say they're on page forty-five, right. In that book of a hundred and eighty pages, I don't know how many pages are in it, but we had that book. So, if I, and every day about five o'clock in the morning, all the German units in France on the Russian front, in Italy, in the desert, changed call signs and frequencies. They did it every day. But if you identified one unit and identified the number they used, so if they said forty-four, if he was on page fifty-two, he added forty-four to fifty-two. He's now on page one hundred and twelve. There, there it is. This is, so we could identify units very quickly and there was quite a, quite a competition. Every day, every day, quite a competition. And we had what they call secure line, secure lines, we could talk to people. We had a British unit and eventually an American unit also doing the same thing but a little further along the coast line, and we were we were competing who would get the, the, the qualifier for the day and then we'd pick up the phone, "It's forty-two!" But this was all scrambled.

Mr. Pollak describes how they were able to differentiate the origin of one signal from another.

Fred Pollak

Mr. Pollak was born May 20, 1919, in Vrezno, Czechoslovakia, a small town in the German part of Bohemia. In September of 1938, his family was expelled from Vrezno and had to go inland to Prague. They arrived in Canada as refugees in August of 1939 and lived in Prescott, Ontario. Mr. Pollak eventually joined the Canadian Army, enlisting as a typist. At the end of the war, Mr. Pollak monitored radio transmissions for German traffic and was also employed as an interrogator of war criminals in Belsen.

Medium:: Video
Owner:: Veterans Affairs Canada
Duration:: 02:00
Person Interviewed:: Fred Pollak
War, Conflict or Mission:: Second World War
Location/Theatre:: France
Battle/Campaign:: Northwest Europe
Branch:: Army
Occupation:: Signals Intelligence

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Date modified:: 2024-12-30