Ron Levett's memories of his time in the British Liberation Army during World War II.

Ron Levett, born in Alfriston, East Sussex, enlisted in 1943 and joined the Royal Armoured Corps. After completing his training as a Driver Operator he was sent to Belgium to join the British Liberation Army, where he was posted to the Royal Scots Grays and then to the Regimental Headquarters (RHQ) signals troop. Their task was to liberate Belgium, Holland and ultimately Germany. This is his story.

The squadrons were in villages separated from RHQ and needed communications installing. This was RHQ signals job. We ran single wire telephone cables from RHQ out to each squadron's HQ. The system we used had an earth return, with a spike in the ground to carry the return path.

This system was very vulnerable because, being only temporary, a lot of the line was simply laid on the ground. Signals troop spent a lot of time repairing breaks in cables that had been broken by vehicles etc. Because the squadrons were up to five miles from RHQ, we did quite a lot of walking.

The biggest problem with this job was when the man who was splicing the bare cables together, was holding the cables in his hand, with his feet providing a good earth return. Suddenly, an impatient officer decided he had waited long enough and furiously cranked the telephone handle.

This could give the repairman a nasty shock and some rude words down the telephone line. The telephones we were using were ex-German army because they were much better quality than the British Tele-L we were issued with.

A large stock of these German phones, together with a number of field telephone exchanges had been discovered by one of the parties when they were searching countryside for weapons. From then on we always used the German ones.

To keep in touch with Brigade HQ, who by this time was somewhere in Schleswig-Holstein, a Bedford QL Wireless truck arrived, fitted with a high powered wireless set and a 24ft Rod aerial supported by stay wires.

The Royal Signals operators tried for hours without success to make contact. We rigged up a long wire aerial to one of the rear link sets, WS19 High Power in the front seat of a Sherman. After carefully tuning the aerial for maximum output we called brigade, using R/T (Speech). After a short while, back came the reply and contact made. The Signals men were rather put out.

Ron Levett, 2001