Page 47 - ABA Salvoes 1999-2024

COMBINED OPERATIONS BOMBARDMENT UNIT: ‘THE EARLY DAYS’
By Len W Lloyd
Len Lloyd served as a Leading Telegraphist in 2 COBU in the Mediterranean. His first operation was Sicily in support of the 1st Canadian Division, then off to Salerno with 41 RM Cdo, and for Anzio his party was attached to the Scots Guards. Later they went down to Nettuno to work with the US Artillery. He did his parachute course at Goia airfield in Italy, jumping from Wellington bombers. After this he was posted to India. Since the foundation of the ABA Len has been one of a small band of COBUs who have been in regular touch with news of COBU members.
In the beginning was the Word — or more accurately for us lesser mortals, two words: NAVAL BOMBARDMENT. Only a few months after Britain’s military trauma at Dunkirk, plans were being formulated for future offensive action on the ‘German fortress’ of Europe. The great series of amphibious landings that eventually took place, and which are now part of the military history of World War Two, presented extremely complex operations, with unprecedented problems in the vital area of communications. In this latter area we were blessed with such people as Captain Robert Phillimore RN, one of the foremost experts in Combined Operations communications in the Second World War. His success in this particular field can perhaps be judged by the fact that his last appointments before retirement were with NATO in Washington, and in Oslo as Chief Signal Officer, Allied Forces North. (As an ex-Naval telegraphist may I crave forgiveness for any apparent bias in my special mention of Captain Phillimore - of course many other Army and Navy notables were involved in the early planning of amphibious operations, all of whom deserve due acknowledgment).
Needless to say at the time, those of us who only trained and waited were not really aware of the plans and exact nature of future amphibious operations being formulated in the higher echelons and, for many, subsequent postings and drafts led to somewhat adventurous, if mysterious, exercises. In the case of COBU it all started in the winter of 1940-41 when a number of Royal Artillery officers found themselves at the Whale Island Naval School of Gunnery, Portsmouth, when it became clear that they were to act as forward observation officers (FOOs) to observe and direct Naval gunfire during amphibious operations, whilst others would actually operate on board the bombarding ships as Army Liaison Officers (later BLOs). They also discovered that Naval telegraphists would be attached to the FOOs to effect the necessary wireless communications between shore and ships for bombardment purposes. Later these RA officers were sent to the Combined Training Centre at Inveraray in Argyllshire, although at the time very little was known of their purpose at the latter location. Nevertheless, in 1941 the seeds of No 1 FO & BL Unit (subsequently Bombardment Unit) were thus sown, although it was not until April 1942 that a Bombardment
Unit as such was actually formed.
Many names, familiar to all old Bombardoes, were involved during these early stages - including the then Capt (later Col) L S Seccombe RA, and other RA officers W Hewitt, VKJamesandFK RLongtomentionafew-butitwas Capt (later Col) F K R Long who started a Bombardment School at Iveraray, which moved to Dundonald, near Troon, in March 1942. Thereafter Dundonald became the ‘home’ of the Bombardment Unit, and the subsequent training activities of all concerned must have been viewed with some amazement by the ghost of Robert the Second, the 14th century King of Scotland who died at Dundonald Castle. Having just finished my training as a RN Telegraphist I found myself one of a number of rather bewildered ratings on a draft chit to HMS DUNDONALD at Troon in Ayrshire. Our bewilderment was enhanced when we arrived at this land location and saw a milling massofrepresentativesfromallthreeServices,including of course the Royal Artillery officers and bombardiers to whom we were then attached. “What did it all portend?” we wondered amongst ourselves, although I have to confess that this question was posed in more lurid terms by some. I suppose our bafflement was understandable to some degree. Our earlier expectations during Navy wireless training had produced visions of finding ourselves on the pitching decks of some kind of Naval vessel, yet here we were in Dundonald, wearing khaki battledress, humping 18M sets on our backs, and having to take orders from Army officers. On the odd subsequent occasion this last anomaly was used, although never very seriously, to effect complaint if such an order generated temporary resentment, with the more bolshie of the Naval ratings taking the opportunity to point out that we were sailors not soldiers, a somewhat fatuous comment under the existing circumstances. However, such immature reactions from what was, after all, an extremely youthful group, never affected the course and main purpose of the training and, indeed, as time went on the Naval ratings became quite attached to their respective FOO party officers, and strong friendships developed that have lasted to this day.
The induction of the FOO parties at Dundonald thereafter proceeded apace and, during this stage at least, many aspects of the Combined Ops training proved to be almost adventurous to some, perhaps particularly to the RN telegraphists who had never envisaged such a role in their Naval careers: Commando-type training at Inveraray and other Scottish locations, inland wireless exercises, and the inevitable ‘wet landings’ on the beaches around Troon. At an earlier stage a number of individuals did some training with the Special Boat Section, as the result of an idea that FOOs could be put ashore in collapsible boats from submarines prior to a main landing, but this SBS training was never used operationally as far as the
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