Signalling Language
Our very first lecture was about the Morse Code. Invented by Samuel Morse in 1837, financed by American Alfred Vale, it was adopted as an international language at a covention held in London in 1912. It is quicker than speech, composed of two symbols and based on the English language; the shortest letters in Morse symbols are the letters that appear more frequently than others: e - t - i - s - a. However, the maximum signals for alphabetic letters are four whilst figures uniformly consist of five symbols.
In the construction of the code, the unit of time plays an important part. The dot is one unit, the dash three; intervals between a dot and a dash one unit, intervals between each letter and figure three, whilst the interval between each group of letters or figures five units. It became a rhythm we soon acquired, each operater with his own but recognisable style when transmitting.
Another aspect of signalling language was the use of the phoentic alphabet which we had to use from the first day.
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Visual Means of Communication Sending and reading morse dominated the early weeks of training. Billeted in a former tearoom in Kinghorn, Fife, 35 signallers had their palliasse beds on the floor along the three sides of a long room having in the centre a line of trestle tables and two field telephones equipped with morse key. They were First World War telephones in a leather case and claimed could be dropped from the height of a telephone pole and would still work! We also practised reading lamp signals on the golf links overlooking the Firth of Forth, the Signal Sergeant taking up a position some distance from a line of signallers who were paired, one facing the lamp the other with his back to it and wrote down whatever his signalling partner read out. These messages were usually sent in code, using groups of five letters, so that we could not guess through anticipation the sense of the message. One day when getting prepared to read lamp signals, the Signal Sergeant ready to send a training message tried repeatedly to get 'K' [− ● −], the signal 'we are ready to receive the message' from the NCO in charge of us. He was busy chatting to a number of the lads about the 'night-before' activities, and after about ten minutes without getting a response to start sending the message, the Signal Sergeant rose to his feet from behind the lamp, tore of his Tam O' Shanter by its tossle, threw it on the ground, jumped on it, and then walked about 10 paces to the rear of the lamp, then turned and ran towards the lamp, kicking it up into the air and launched into a charge in our direction! We in astonishment witnessing this rage decided to make a run for it back to our tearoom billet. The incident was never mentioned; the expecting harangue did not materialise. |
Learning morse by flag was a regular exercise. The signallers would line up on the beach at Kinghorn and would signal in unison when we received the command 'Ack to Monkey, Squad up!'
A dot is signalled when the flag is waved from (A) to (B), and without any pause back again to the normal position. To transmit a "dash" the flag is waved from (A to (C), and after a slight pause at (C), brought back to the normal position. |
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It was claimed the best flag operators during First World War could send 12 words a minute. In practice we never used morse flag for the transmission of messages during the Second World War. |
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