The development section (WDU) under Tony Martin who had been appointed Chief Engineer, did incredible work turning the brilliant ideas of the back room boys at RAE and TRE into produceable and what is more important, reliable equipment for the RAF as well as the Army and Navy. He had joined E. K. Cole in 1930 as a self-taught Radio-engineer who was found by Eric Cole repairing wireless sets on the south coast.
As he seamed to know more than those who were designing their Nains Receivers, he was put in the design laboratory, never having had formal training as an engineer, was an excellent mechanical designer, and was certainly on equal terms with many of the erudite electronic engineers of the RAE and TRE. He had a number of academically trained engineers under him, particularly Inskip who later joined RAE and Callender (son of Professor Callender of "Steam Tables" fame) who were both trained physicists and mathematicians who refined Martin's ideas by application of their mastery of physical theory.
Martin and I worked well in double harness, appreciating each others problems and points of view and the Malmesbury complex had a reputation in official circles for the absence of that enmity and bickering which was, and is still often the case between designers and producers. He became Chief Engineer of the whole Ekco Company after the war, was awarded the MBE, and died tragically in the mid sixties after seeing the collapse of the Ekco group and its absorption into the Pye Organisation - no doubt of a broken heart on top of the diabetes from which he latterly suffered.
But to return to the actual job of producing what had now become known as Radar, we soon began to produce the first sets for use by the Fleet Air Arm and also a number of units for the first AI sets. The tests were reasonably successful, and, with daily supplies of the critical transmitter valves, by motor cycle despatch rider, we got some output going, having by the time of the Battle of Britain almost completed our section of the work on VHF.
In fact, within a few months of Dunkirk, we were short of labour and, for the skilled reserved occupations, such as toolmakers, skilled fitters and testers, we had to resort to some poaching from firms in the West Country not engaged on work of such high priority, sometimes with the help of the Ministry of Labour, but often by plain piracy.
For unskilled labour we started an incentive drive locally for female labour and for billets for labour drafted from other areas and we decided to ask the Town Mayor to call a town meeting to help. He was a local Ironmonger called Jones who seemed to have the town under his thumb, he daren't refuse, and reluctantly agreed to have some posters put up around the town. The meeting attended by only about 30 inhabitants to whom I explained that we were doing vital work and could not manage unless we got more help locally than we had hither-to.
Unfortunately, the rumour had got around that I was running a side-show for Ekco to make Radiograms for the black market, and as we could not explain exactly what we were making, the audience had to take my word for it. The Mayor introduced me had said that in the first world war Malmesbury had not heard a shot fired in anger or a bomb exploded, and he hoped that in spite of our presence, Malmesbury would again escape the rigours of war, which he was sure would soon be over etc. etc.; the result as was to be expected was very meagre, and very few of the larger houses in the district would give us billets or accommodation, in spite of visits by the billetting officer.
The gentry were too annoyed at our having recruited their servants to whom they paid atrocious wages. I remember one woman coming along with her daughter of about 17, asking us not to pay her the minimum wage for her age (then about 30/- per week) as she had only been getting 10/- per week as a help in one of the local country houses. Of course, we were in the middle of the Wiltshire and Gloucestershire country, and the loss of stable hands, servant girls, cooks etc. was to many of these people the only real impact of the war, and we had taken from their almost feudal retainers, we were pretty unpopular, even with some families who had sons in the forces.
Next to us at Rodbourne was Cole Park, a moated grange occupied by an old lady, Mrs. Lovell and one servant. When the billetting officer called, he found that they drew water from a well, the place was lit by oil lamps and candles - this in 1940 - and the house was crammed with priceless antiques! I did hear later that one of her forebears had been involved in a cause celebre as me of Balzac's mistress and the old lady lived an almost hermit existence there until she died towards the end of the war.
There was a large house on the edge of the town inhabited by a woman (she was certainly no lady!) who was a member of, to, me, some unknown "County family". After considerable pressure by the billetting officer, in view of the number of unoccupied rooms in the house, she agreed to accept two or three of our people, but would not under any circumstances provide cooking or bathing facilities, or even somewhere to eat, and although we did have a few people there for a short period, lack of facilities beat us in the end.
Shortly after this, (remember, this was just after Dunkirk) she inserted an ad in the Times personal column notifying all concerned that she was henceforth to be addressed as "The Lady Blank" and not as "Lady Blank", which was the subject of one of (Daily Mirror) Cassandra's most vitriolic attacks on this section of the British Upper Classes.
