MOS EE AA Ynyslas: Oral Testimony of M Herterich

Description

This image shows one of the radar or monitoring stations of the Ynyslas Firing Range where Margaret Herterich worked as an ATS (Auxiliary Territorial Service) Experimental Gunnery Assistant.

Ministry of Supply Experimental Establishment Anti-Aircraft Ynyslas (or MOS EE AA Ynyslas for short) was chosen as the location for early experiments in long range rockets propellants at the end of World War II.

Margaret wrote an account of her time here in Wales, which is now in the collections of the Imperial War Museum:

Extract from the Wartime Memoirs of Mrs M Herterich - Cotton Waste Soldier Girls, 22 September 1942 – 5 July 1946
Imperial War Museum Collections, Document Ref: 99/86/1

Mrs Herterich was a 17-year-old schoolgirl when the war broke out in 1939, but three later she joined the Women’s Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) inspired by the example of the Queen, then Princess Elizabeth, who has also joined and trained as a motor mechanic.

Mrs Herterich experiences were not always good and she endured ‘a great deal of misery traipsing around’ often undertaking menial duties (e.g. the ‘cotton-waste’ in the title of her memoirs refers to ‘used for cleaning’).

However, on 11 July 1945, she arrived in Wales – ‘by the sound of its name I could have been anywhere in the world. I was told it meant Blue Grass but to me it meant Blue Heaven. I arrived at the wooden platformed station in the middle of nowhere. The ration van picked me up and I was driven to Ynyslas Experimental Gunnery Establishment. I was to become an ‘EGG’, as we called ourselves – Experimental Gunnery Assistant or E. G. A.

Here was the last icing on the cake, for I had found a group of clever, lively, humorous girls and coincidentally yet again, one from my old school in London! They were doing the most interesting, exciting work. We were treated like adults as indeed we now were and there was no Army ‘bull’ here.

Most of our work was outside in the lovely country of Wales. We were on the tip of the River Dovey Estuary looking across to Aberdovey. The sea and estuary were used for testing different types of firing shells. The girls, smartly dressed in black refer jackets and berets, were placed at different observation posts around the area where we read off bearings and information from our equipment. We traveled around on the back of lorries or went across the Dovey on our duck.

We need to understand about photography, light meters, theodolites, thermometers, and filling and reading off weather balloons. Before I could be called an E.G.A., I had to load a camera with a plate, take a photograph of a group of objects and develop the plate.

I remember trudging up to different levels on Plynlimmon 2486ft and walked up the sandy estuary, when the tide was out, plotting the scatter of shells on to a grid paper. We were invited to tea on a Naval Ship anchored in the estuary that day. We felt very grand - somewhat different to ablution, or cookhouse fatigues!

Our main work, which came later, was the start of experimentation on rockets, the beginning I believe of the Blue Streak, the British rocket.

Four of us were trained as Kinetographers on modified kinecameras as used in the film news industry.

The first instruction was in one of the loading bays where a system of knots and rope-pullage had been devised. We pulled the ropes in a fashion to follow the knots, although we didn’t know why we were doing it at the time. Eventually we worked these two kinecameras mounted on posts. Each was worked by two girls for bearing and elevation. After loading and switching on, we followed the flight path and booster-drop of rockets fired from a ramp on the range.

The films were taken back to the dark-room where we four girls wound them on large circular reels and developed them. We were responsible for the results of the experiments costing thousands of pounds. Our officers must have been great instructors. The film was then evaluated, frame by frame, through a grid machine and then plotted onto the longest piece of graph paper you’ve ever seen. The trajectory was then studied by the Officers.

We knew that we were working on something special when we girls received letters from the Ministry of Supply, asking if we would like to go to Woomera, Australia, to carry on the work of the Blue Streak Rocket.

Our officers were excited about this work as they had just received some new Canadian radar equipment. Knowing that I had been an Operator Firing Control on radar in the Ack-Ack, they invited me into the new set to be, as they said - ‘The first woman in Britain to see a rocket on radar’. We didn’t see a thing!

Our days were full of sun and we worked with pleasure - except it seems the sweeping out of our secret plotting room! My turn seemed to consist of cleaning up a lot of ‘licks and promises’ from some of the other girls, who had not had my training fatigues!

Evenings we walked along the golf-links by the sea down to the W.V.S. room in the village. There we ate toast with lovely jam. I expect they had made. Sometimes we borrowed bicycles from the office and cycled into the Welsh hills for an egg tea. All nicely done for 2 shillings and six pence - 13p.

Other nights we had a long walk to a farm which was generally full of H.M.F. all seeking supper, the woman cooked a huge pan of eggs, all at the same time, over the fire and held a large loaf to her bosom as she sliced thick slices of bread.

I believed they were poor people, to whom perhaps the war was kind. One night I went upstairs to see her two children in bed, for they wanted to see me. The boy and girl were in together without pillowcases or sheets, covered only by the roughest of blankets. In contrast, a high hill farm I visited looked wealthy with many, many sheep and good equipment.

The nearest town was Aberystwyth where we spent our days off. We were all taken there one night, on an official visit, to see Sir Laurence Olivier in Henry V. I don’t think that we fully appreciated it then, any more than another compulsory trip on the train to the Home Training Centre, Donnington!

January 1946 - In the middle of our active service life somebody somewhere was thinking of our return to ‘Civvie Street’, and planning to where women would and should be going. We were sent to the centre in pairs, for three weeks.

The three weeks passed whilst we learned some of what we would need to know for the rest of our lives. All I have to remember is a yellowing certificate with a baby sucking its thumb in one corner and a very nice house in the other! Flowers grown on each side and an idyllic scene of a little village, with a sail boat on a calm sea nearby, decorates the bottom.

Back at Ynyslas, demobilisation was in the air. Every soldier was given a demob number and had to wait their turn to go. Plans were being made for the Victory in Europe Parade in London and troops were being selected from all over. I was asked if I would like to be in it, but as my number was nearly due, I could not say that I would. One of our other girls went instead but on her uniform she sewed the set of brass buttons that I had polished to almost nothing, all those long years. Strangely enough I felt very proud.

Ynyslas was closing – it had to be handed back to its owners, before we left however, to join our sister site in the main Ministry of Defence camp at Aberporth, we had a dance on Aberystwyth pier, How we enjoyed ourselves doing our own version of the Hokey Cokey.

We did little at Aberporth for a few weeks, just waiting. My number came up and I was on my way to Guildford in Surrey for my freedom – or so I thought.

Goodbye to all my friends.'

• http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/1030009758 (link opens in new window)