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. After the liberation of Germany he was based in Lintfort. This is his story.

In February 1946 I was sent on a Wireless Instructors course at the RAC Schools in Bovington. The course lasted about eight weeks. It started with classroom work, primarily on how to teach a subject. We all had to prepare a lesson on any subject and then present it to the class.

I gave a lecture on brick making, having spent a lot of time at the Berwick Brick-works where my father worked. The whole course turned out to be a very enjoyable experience. On leaving Germany I had been issued with a leave and duty warrant. This was a multi-page document with a separate page to be used at each stage of the operation.

There was one page marked 'To be handed in at the Port of Embarkation'. The next was a travel warrant for the journey to Bovington, the third for travel home on leave after the course-and so on. There were so many pages that the railway staff were completely bemused by them and I could travel almost anywhere with this document.

I went home every weekend using it. Work finished at around three on Friday afternoon and we all trooped down to Wool railway station. I travelled to Eastleigh where I changed trains for the Brighton line. It was only a short trip from there to Berwick.

On the travel warrant it stated that my home station was Berwick, but it didn't say whether it was the Sussex village or Berwick-on-Tweed. I could therefore travel all over England on this one warrant!

One of the other NCOs on the course was suddenly told that his discharge papers had come through and he could leave immediately. He had the same type of warrant as mine and asked me if I would like it. It came in quite useful as a spare.

I was standing on Eastleigh, station talking to a sergeant who I had met on the train from Dorset. He said, 'Look out, there's an inspector, I'm going to nip into the Gents.' The inspector, of course, followed him in and he had to pay for a ticket. I stood my ground and offered the ticket the other NCO had given me.

After a little while puzzling he clipped the top ticket of the warrant and handed it back. After he had gone I had a look at it and found he had clipped the one marked 'To be handed in at the Port etc.' I just tore that page off and carried on using the warrant for the rest of the course.

In the classroom we increased our knowledge of the RT procedure, including the correct order of answering of outstations. This had to be strictly adhered to otherwise when two stations attempt to answer at once, all is heard is a heterodyne whistle and neither station can be heard.

We also learned simple faultfinding on the radio. This usually meant such things as taking out one of the fuses, removing motor brushes from the rotary converter and putting a piece of paper behind the insert in the microphone to stop it working.

Another trick was to remove one of the valves in the set to reproduce the effect of a faulty valve. We were not allowed to cause any permanent damage to the set.

There were about ten Austin Utilities, a small pick-up truck, each of which was fitted with a 19 Set. There was an ATS driver with each vehicle, some of whom were quite pretty. Going on exercises around the Dorset countryside in the by now spring weather was a wonderful way of passing the time.

We each had a chance to organise one of these 'schemes' as they were known at the time. We found that if we selected high ground, free of trees, we could achieve ranges of about ten to fifteen miles using speech transmission.

We could not understand how one of our instructors managed to cover thirty miles with transmissions until we found that he had parked the Austin on the sea front at Weymouth and had run out a long wire aerial to get the extra range. He also had a long extension cable for his headset so that he could pass most of the day sunbathing on the beach.

All too soon the course was over and I had to return to Germany. When I arrived in Osnabrück I discovered that the regiment had moved to Münster. They had taken over a German Army barracks on the outskirts of the town.

The buildings all had a built-in telephone systems so all the Regimental Signal Troop had to do was man the telephone exchange. Now I had passed my course I was promoted to Acting Unpaid Lance-Corporal, the first rung on the promotion ladder.

As more and more people were demobbed, more young soldiers were being inducted into the regiment. These were the first National Service men to be called up.

The first time I took a walk through the town of Münster I saw the damage that just one night of bombing had caused to the city. There were hardly any buildings standing above one story. Although the streets had been cleared of rubble and the trams were running, most of the town was a sight of utter desolation.

I did see one familiar sight and that was F.W. Woolworth's shop, which was still only one story high and had very little to sell. I now visit the city on a fairly regular basis and there is an exhibition of Münster through the ages, which shows the town before and after the raid.

Ron Levett, 2001