Bow and arrow war

by Marjorie Inkster

This is the story of a 19 year-old who joined the FANY then trained as a radar mechanic during the 1939-45 war. From 1943 she was a radar maintenance officer on London gun-sites, including Hampstead, Primrose Hill and Mill Hill. The work entailed taking responsibility for a group of REME craftsmen and NCOs and gives a detailed account of life in the Little Blitz of Autumn 1943 to May 1944. There is a lively description of the gun sites, the people working on them and in the Officers' Mess, of daily work practices, air-raids and history of the fast development of army radar. There are insights into difficulties of planning and execution. Also there is praise for the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers in workshops, without whom no guns could have fired in our defence. In histories of AA Command, their work goes for the most part unmentioned.