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Ron Levett, born in Alfriston, East Sussex, enlisted in 1943, and whilst posted to the British Liberation Army, took part in the liberation of Germany. He then returned to England, working in electronics and developing an interest in the new entertainment of the time - television.
In the Services the Kings Crown, on cap badges and badges of rank had to be replaced with a Queens's crown, after the coronation of Elizabeth II. I was issued with a new cap badge with the new one.
The Army Emergency Reserve (AER - similar to the Territorial Army) camp we held after the Coronation was held at our usual barrack in Chester, with exercises being held in North Wales. We were still short of drivers so I found myself driving one of the Bedford QLs.
These were quite a job to drive. They are a flat fronted 3-ton truck with the engine situated between the front seats. This means that the gear lever is a long way back and the driver needs to be a contortionist to reach it.
I did find that other traffic is inclined to give way when they see an army driver with a large vehicle. On one exercise during a winter camp I was driving a Landrover in the Welsh mountains with a young officer as passenger when we got stuck in the mountain stream we were crossing. He couldn't drive so it was his job to get out and push.
One year the authorities decided to hold an exercise in the London area to test our preparedness for an atomic war should it ever happen. We met in Chester as usual but I found that the only spare vehicle I could have was a very old Morris Commercial 15cwt with a 'Crash' gearbox and solid tyres.
Goodness knows where they had found it. It must have been left over from around 1940. The base for our operation was at Purbright Barracks, the home of the Brigade of Guards. It was a long drive from Chester to Purbright but we all arrived safely.
The Guards Depot was a rather frightening place for part-time soldiers in the Signals, who are not really known for their military bearing. Some of our men made the mistake of watching a squad of Airborne troops drilling on the Barracks Square (The Holy of Holies!).
When the drill sergeant spotted them he told them that if it was so fascinating they had better join in, so they ended up doing about a quarter of an hours drill. When I asked a very tall Guardsman for directions, he sprang to attention and shouted 'That way, Sergeant' and pointed the way. He frightened me to death.
The senior NCO's were billeted in the Guards Depot Sgts Mess. This was very comfortable and the food was superb. It was the first place in the army where I had seen sliced bread being served.
There was a celebration evening held one night in the Mess and our Cook Sergeant stopped up the whole of the previous night cooking a sirloin of beef. When this was sliced and served I must say that it was the finest beef I have ever tasted.
One evening I found that I had been picked as Orderly Sergeant. I had to mount the Guard Parade in a very conspicuous position near the Guardroom. The Orderly Officer was younger than me and hadn't got a clue what to do. After I had called the Guard to Attention and he had inspected it I marched across to him, saluted and reported, 'Guard ready to march off, Sir.'
He leaned forward and whispered, 'What do we do now?' I said, 'You march over there and face front. I will march the guard past you, give you a salute, then I will march them round the corner where the Brigade of Guards can no longer see them, then we can decide what to do out of sight.' He agreed and the whole thing passed off rather well.
The exercise being held in the London area was to test communications after an atomic attack. This was before the development of the Hydrogen bomb. There were three headquarters, which needed to be kept in contact. The main centre was at Dolis Hill in North West London. There is a large GPO (as it then was) telecommunication centre situated there.
There was a steel door some eight inches thick, behind which a flight of stairs led down to a second similar door. Down another flight of steps there was a third door, which finally lead into the Headquarters. I went down only once and found that unless you were a General, you did not rate a salute. The place was stiff with senior officers.
We had to station one of our QLR trucks near the entrance at the top to act as a radio link to the other Regional Headquarters. The problem was that our trucks were left over from WW2 and were really decrepit. I found that the aerial tuning inductance was so corroded that it was impossible to tune the aerial.
I went round to the nearest hardware store a bought some emery cloth. After I had cleaned all the rust off the coil it worked very well. Of course, this had removed all the plating off the coil, but I thought that we only needed it for a fortnight anyway.
One of our wireless trucks was out on Hackney Marshes and I needed to find out why the transmissions were so weak.
We had not been issued any maps of the London Area, but I managed to get hold of a London Bus map. This only showed bus routes so in order to get from NW to NE London, I had do drive the old Morris Commercial 15cwt down the Edgware Road, along Oxford Street and follow the appropriate buses until we arrived at the Hackney Marshes.
On the way back from East London, driving along Oxford Street, I spotted a cinema showing a film I hadn't seen. When I parked the old truck outside in the street I soon had a policeman enquiring my reason for being there. I just mentioned the code name of the exercise and he just touched his helmet and carried on. That's how we came to go to see a film in the middle of preparing for atomic war.
These headquarters, with all the millions, which had been spent on them, were completely wasted a few months later when the first Hydrogen Bomb was exploded. When the exercise was over we drove all our vehicles back to Chester and camp was over for another year.
Ron Levett, 2001
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