My Time with "Y"
by John Behague
"Y" Service was responsible for
some of the most unproductive and frustrating months of my wartime
existence within the Royal Air Force."Y" should never have
been part of the RAF, and I was shovelled into it without explanation
or opportunity to opt out. They tell me it is still under wraps. When
I sought information about it for a possible article, I was left
facing a blank wall. Today, all kinds of wartime secrets are being
revealed, and former spies and intelligence agents, who should still
be locked up because of the enormity of their betrayals, are babbling
away in books and broadcasts with complete freedom.
It was really all my own fault, and it happened this way. Together
with my close air force chums, Bob Clegg and Richard Beattie, I was
helping to run a wireless DF station at Tatenhill, near Burton on
Trent. Tatenhill was a satellite for 27 OTU at Lichfield, and all
types of aircraft used it, including Ansons, Airspeed Oxfords and
Vickers Wellingtons. Essentially it was a training station, but
several 27 OTU Wimpies took part in the first 1,000 bomber raid on
Cologne.
As direction finding operators we had the responsibility for
guiding aircraft back to base, sometimes through fog and around
balloon barrages. Our cabin was outside the perimeter of the airfield
and smack bang at the end of the main runway. It was a perilous
position, but it never seemed to worry us. Apart from one group
captain who caught me whitewashing the cabin ceiling which had been
blackened by too many fry ups on an unpredictable primus, we were left
well alone. For one thing we were held somewhat in awe by the other
airmen, and to get to us you had to follow a muddy track to the middle
of a turnip field.We worked shifts and came and went according to the
weather and our own arrangements. It was, in RAF terms, a cushy
billet.
Compared with others, we were sitting pretty, and might have
remained so until the end of the war, but we all had itchy feet and a
longing for adventure, so we volunteered for overseas duties. The
response from our masters was not long in coming, and it amounted to
the end of our freedom and any intelligent and worthwhile contribution
to the war effort.
We found ourselves shackled to "Y".
Dark Secrets
Why was it called "Y"? I often thought it stood for
"yawn" or "yuck" or just plain "why?"
because I found it so unbelievably boring and time wasting. The
initial "Y" was never explained, and the superior types who
put the clamps on us spoke of the organisation in hushed tones and
made us to sign the Official Secrets Act. For my part, I knew right
from the start that I was not temperamentally suited for it.
Can I possibly tell you what it was all about? And if I do, will I
be in danger one dark night of being whisked away in a black van,
never to be seen again? The truth is that it was - and probably still
is - a badly organised, so-called Intelligence body run by faceless
brasshats and manned by ill briefed and demoralised airmen. The people
behind it in my day were all-powerful. So powerful in fact that even
Earl Louis Mountbatten of Burma could not effect my release from its
steel tentacles. More on this later.
Why such a flimsy, facile, tacky outfit should still remain on the
secret list is anyone's guess. My theory is that it is so ineffectual
that if the truth became known it would be closed down immediately,
thus saving the taxpayers a great amount of money.
It is a listening organisation. Government and military radio
signals from around the world are monitored, recorded and decoded by
groups of operators constantly searching the wave bands. The results
are duplicated and fed to the various intelligence agencies for
information or action. It is mind numbing work listening to
low-powered signals, trying to identify them and then fix their
positions. The silly thing is that almost every country in the world
is playing the listening game. They know we are listening to them and
we know they are listening to us. They mostly send rubbish or routine
messages and anything really secret is delivered by more secure means.
I have no doubt that it is now much more sophisticated, with
military commanders and spies exchanging commands and information via
the Internet. With the help of computers, of course, the task of
decoding messages is much simpler, and the eggheads I used to see
puzzling over Japanese codes have given way to Macintosh machines.
Well, that's where we found ourselves in the middle of the war - a
secret establishment just outside Rugby, subject to rigid discipline
and not an aircraft in sight. We knew we were bound for Burma and all
that because for a start we had to learn the Japanese morse code with
all its twiddly bits, and most of the barmaids in Rugby knew that as
well. We were housed in stables, drilled by day and worked over by
night. You are special, they told us when we first arrived. So special
were we that fatigues and guard duty became part of our lives and
there was no respite or leave for what seemed like ages.
To me it was like moving from heaven to hell. I had revelled in the
sight, sound and smell of aircraft, of airfields at night, with the
gooseneck flares flickering away along the runways; the green flash of
the duty pilot's aldis to circling planes, and the occasional red very
light to warn them off; of cycling round the perimeter track in the
early morning, with the sun just coming up, the sweet smell of grass
and the expectation of another exciting day ahead. There were test
flights in Wimpies and the occasional trip as a supernumary crew
member way out over the North Sea, constantly on the alert for
bandits.
Then, all too quickly, we found ourselves stuck, straight jacketed,
unable to escape.
Hush Hush Brigade
I have tried to find out whether "Y" achieved anything at
all during the war years. Assessments, it appears, are still
restricted, and the chaps who had to keep their heads down and do all
the donkey work 24 hours a day were never told the results, if any, of
their labours. An appalling omission, but typical of the hush hush
brigade.
When we left Gourock in Scotland in the flag ship of a convoy
heading for the Far East we were more than apprehensive. As I have
said, the local barmaids had known our destination before we did. It
was Bombay, and from there overland to Burma and the war we weren't
winning. Such was the ferocity of the Japanese.advance at this time
that it had even been suggested that we were setting out on a fool's
errand and much too late because the Nips would be sweeping across the
Indian continent long before we landed.
Our ship was the armed merchant cruiser Ranchi, and she carried
more than a thousand troops all heading in that same direction which
you weren't allowed to mention. I have written elsewhere about our
narrow escape from oblivion on this vessel, which was subjected to an
enemy air attack lasting several hours off the coast of Bengazi. We
were struck amidships by a bomb which should have blown us out of the
water but instead struck a steel stanchion and was deflected through
the side of the Ranchi into the sea where it exploded close to the
ship sending a huge column of water in the air and down the open
hatches. Several people were killed, and it was s a very close shave,
described by some as a miracle.
Before this nasty event.I had helped to create a concert party from
among the troops on board. We called it the En-Route Concert Party and
it was enormously popular because we were able to make disparaging
jokes about some of the senior officers and make comic comment on the
stifling conditions below decks.
The damage to Ranchi was such that we were disembarked in
Alexandria and put into a transit camp to await another troopship. The
concert party remained active and gave several performances in Alex
where we were spotted by none other than Basil Dean, the head of ENSA,
the Services entertainments body. Would we be prepared to travel
around the Western Desert to cheer up the troops there? It would be to
our advantage, he said. He liked us so much that he was going to ask
the RAF to release us from our draft and second us to him. He'd be
happy to find us decent accommodation in Alex and there'd be prospects
for promotion. Were we interested? Oh, yes, yes, yes, we blurted. It
would be goodbye to purgatory and back to heaven in one leap. So off
to El Alemain and Tobruk and other famous outposts we set determined
to prove our worth.
Everywhere we went we were greeted like stars and enjoyed much
hospitality in the messes of the Desert Rats. What egoistical suckers
we were!
There was only one hitch. One night, after a long trek we arrived
at an odd, isolated place full of sad looking soldiers. However, the
hall to which we were taken, was packed tight and we gave of our best.
The strange thing was that all our jokes went down like lead balloons,
and only one item was received with any acclaim, and that was the Meet
Mr. Hitler act, in which one member of the party strode in wearing the
full Hitler regalia, pointed his finger at people, foamed at the
mouth, stamped his feet and screamed. We had thought it awfully old
hat, but the audience was bowled over by it, stood up, and made rude
gestures in return. Adolph was a definite hit.
I wasn't until the final curtain that we learnt we had been
performing to an audience consisting entirely of Italian PoWs, few of
whom knew any English.
The days went by quickly and we unwisely kept reminding the other
members of the draft of our good prospects and of their misfortune in
not volunteering for the concert party. On the day of embarkment there
was no news from ENSA and we were told to pack our kitbags and join
the rest of our chums on a rusty old tub named The City of London.
Basil Dean (who was later knighted) had been unable to pull any
strings.
Up the Brahma Putra
Our epic five-day train journey from Bombay to Calcutta proved two
things - 1. That no-one was going to be in a hurry to look after our
welfare, and 2. that bully beef and hard biscuits are not particularly
good for morale. As for a WC, there was none, apart from a filthy hole
in a carriage cubicle.
We arrived in Calcutta at the height of the Bengal famine in which
between two to three million Indians died. The sight of emaciated
women and children picking at garbage cans in their search for food
was enough to make us wonder at the morality of mankind and what kind
of war we were in. To escape the dull monotony of listening out for
Japanese signals in an ill-ventilated radio room I volunteered to
escort a collection of "Y" equipment up the Brahma Putra
River to Comilla and Chitagong on the Burmese border. It was Infal
time, with an entire "Y" unit cut off and surrounded. A
brave boy was needed to be dropped in with some special gear. I nearly
fell for it, but fortunately Infal was relieved and so was I.
By now I had suffered all the diseases that Bengal can produce,
including, amoebic dysentery (twice), dengie fever, jaundice (twice),
what appeared to be sleeping sickness, and septic prickly heat of the
face, and I was in a deteriorating condition.
One day there was a sight to behold. Outside our small HQ in
Ballygunge a brand new jeep pulled up driven by a naval officer in a
uniform so white and bright as to be dazzling. It was like the arrival
of a creature from outer space.
This pink-faced being, with gold braid halfway up his sleeves,
jumped from his chariot and strode up to "Woody" (Flight
Lieutenant Forrester) the unit's CO. "Woody" goggled and
saluted, but the gesture was not returned. Puffing away at a large
cigar the naval type demanded: "I"m looking for a chap named
Johnny Behague. Is he here?" "Woody" somewhat
hesitantly pointed in my direction, and with a bound, then with his
arm wrapped around my shoulders, the naval commander propelled me to
the shade of a tree. "Great to see you, Johnny", he said,
"Frank has sent me with an urgent proposition. He wants you to
join him."
"Heh?" I stuttered. "Frank?" "Yes, Frank
Owen. You know him. He used to edit the Daily Mail. Now Mountbatten's
sent for him to start a newspaper for the SEAC forces. Morale is
so bad that something has to be done, and Frank's been given carte
blanche to recruit a team and get cracking, and you seem to be the
only chap here who knows anything about sub-editing." I had
earlier visited the editor of The Statesman newspaper in Calcutta, who
had obviously passed my name on.
"Well?" demanded the pink-faced one, who identified
himself as Ian Coster, Owen's No. 2. "Will you join us? You'll
get promotion of course and a decent place to live, so what about
it?" I gulped. "Yes, yes," I said, and away he went
with a wave of his hand and a puff of blue cigar smoke.
I didn't tell anyone because I had learnt my lesson from the last
time. It was odd that "Woody" never asked me who the naval
type was, but he was that kind of person. Ask no questions in
"Y" Service!
A week went by and nothing happened, so I rang Coster at the number
he'd given me. "Oh Lord!" he said "We're having trouble
with your ruddy RAF bosses. They're playing silly buggers. But don't
worry, Frank is seeing Mountbatten tomorrow and will tell him to
action your transfer pronto. This is top priority stuff and
Mountbatten's under orders from No. 10! Don't worry. Things will start
moving soon!"
They didn't. A full fortnight went by, and still no word. I WAS
worried and phoned Ian Coster again. There were a series of muffled
oaths from the other end. "I don't know who you've got yourself
tied up with", he exclaimed, "but they refuse point blank to
release you. Even Lord Louis can't shift them. So that's that.. Hard
luck, old chap." And that was it. Or was it? Clearly,
the:wiseacres at "Y" were capable of fooling the topmost
echelons about their supposedly secret operations, and I could see my
chances of escape diminishing with every day. If Admiral Lord Louis
Mountbatten, Supreme Allied Commander for South East Asia, couldn't
get me off the hook, I was doomed.
Salvation At Last!
By this time I was decidedly ill and had just returned to the unit
from the Loretta Convent which had been turned into a dysentery
hospital. I was sapped of energy and falling asleep all over the
place, not at all a good thing for an efficient "Y"
merchant. The next time I reported sick the MO tut tutted and sent me
to see a specialist who appeared quite concerned about my condition
and put me through the medical hoop, stuck pins in me, consulted his
colleagues and said there wasn't much he could do, apart from send me
home.
Then, surprisingly, he said: "What do you suggest?"
I replied, "What I'd like more than anything else is to get
back to the real air force on a fully operational station, doing the
job I was trained to do." That startled him, and later somewhere
at the top of "Y" someone must have blinked because I was
immediately transferred to 99 Squadron in Jessore, and never looked
back. Well, I did occasionally when I remembered my wasted time with
"Y". I had returned to the land of the living and my health
quickly improved.
As for the chums I left behind at "Y", they had a
terrible time in Burma and emerged emaciated, half-starved and
thoroughly cheesed off. When I later asked those of the survivors I
met up with again what they thought of "Y" they all judged
it a pretty poor show.
So much for one man's view of "Y" Service.
J.B.
On page http://www3.mistral.co.uk/johnny/intro.html
John kindly gives permission for his material to be used. We
very much thank him for that.
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