Duties of a Communications Gunner

I was picked out as a signaller because of the fact that I had been in the boy scouts and I knew the semaphore so that was a start. I was in battery headquarters, I wasn't on the guns as such. I wasn't a gunner to be on a gun. I was on communications and we were in battery headquarters.

Interviewer: And what exactly did your job involve doing?

Telephone duty, wireless duty, there was a multitude of things I had to do. Yeah. We'd try and keep the telephone lines open, that was our best communication. And little Don 5, just a little handset with two 1.5 dry cell batteries and two terminals, one for ground and one for your main line and you know we could get through 6,7,8 miles on that. And that was strung long (inaudible) was going probably, twenty miles an hour and you had a rod that kept it on the hedges, or on the trees and different things away from the road as you went along and that was it. Yep. Sometimes you'd pick it up before you, if you had a chance, before you moved and sometimes you'd just leave it and go on and use more wire....Yep.

Interviewer: So when a battle was raging and your job would be on the phone...

Yeah. Give orders from the command post, give orders to the, to the
.. shout orders back to the guns.

Interviewer: So you would take directions to the phone and how would you get that information to the...

Oh more phones, more phones. Every troop had a phone, you know. Yeah. Oh yeah.
And of course officers all over the place you know, they'd, they'd been doing what they had to do too, you know. Sometimes they'd take the phone from you, you know, and they'd give the orders eh, make sure there was no mistakes made or whatever you know, I mean...