Captain Barrie Kent, born in 1922, entered the Navy by a more conventional route:
“When did you first come to Hampshire?”
“Actually, before the war, when we used to go to the Isle of Wight - to Bembridge - every holiday, where we sailed. We used to go to Navy days. That was where I also got interested in the Navy. This was in my young teens, or earlier than that because I then went to Pangbourne Nautical College and from that entered the Navy in 1940.”
“Was that in this area?
“Not to start with, because I went to sea . The war was on by then, so I spent some time in the Mediterranean. Came back from the Mediterranean in 1942. We started doing our sub-lieutenants courses and that’s when I first went to HMS Mercury at Leydene, Hampshire.
“Petersfield is the main town. Leydene was a big house, a so-called stately home, built during or after the First World War . But we came over to do our sub lieutenants courses. We were actually based here on HMS Excellent, where we lived, and we were bused up to Leydene every day, while we were doing the Signal course. Leydene was a house started in 1914 and finished about 1924, built by the Peels - L. Peel, who was the grandson of Sir Robert Peel and was a Member of Parliament. And the Peels built this house right on the top of the hill called Leydene, after a little hollow in the hills nearby which was called Leydene Bottom. Right on top of the hill, on the walking route along the ridge to Winchester.
“Now, that was my first visit to Hampshire as such and we were youngsters then. We used to go up to Leydene every day. The wardroom mess was in the main house, but all our instruction took place in Nissen huts. Of course, during the war, it expanded madly, first with tents and then Nissen huts. These were pretty uncomfortable - they were either hot in summer or cold in winter. They had an awful coke stove in the middle - it pushed out fumes and smoke.
“But the reason that the Signal School was there was, it used to be in the barracks at Portsmouth, but when the bombing got heavy, it became evident that all the schools would have to move out of Portsmouth and so they looked around for somewhere to requisition, and came across Leydene, and Lady Peel, of course, was the sort of old girl who wasn’t very happy at being taken over. Didn’t think her way of life should be disturbed.
“However, this was about August ’41, before I went there, but it was taken over as the Signal School. One of the outcomes of this was that the Signal School down at the barracks had been not only for the naval officers, but also for the naval scientists. And they had worked together in the barracks for many years, in K Block, and this association of the scientists and the naval officers was quite unique and they built up a great rapport. And unfortunately Leydene wasn’t big enough to take the whole lot, so the naval side, uniform side, went to Leydene and the scientists went off partly to Haselmere and partly to Witely, where I think they occupied one of the schools which were evacuated.
“Anyway, Leydene then expanded throughout the war, not only were there these awful Nissen huts, but they began to put in proper buildings. The first thing they put in was an enormous great Nissen hut as a cinema and dance hall. It was entirely for training really. It was a slope - well, no, the cinema was for recreation, the sloping floor of the cinema was used for dancing. Which was quite funny. And of course they then erected masts for wireless training and masts for flag signalling training.
“One of the things that happened at the signal school was, when you were doing your parade work, you tended to do it all by signals. That’s the course leader, instead of saying right turn, he would say ‘Blue Nine’ which was the signal which you would say to a ship by wireless or by flags, in those days, mainly.”
“So you began to think in signals?”
“Yes. The course instructor would say, instead of ‘quick march’, he would say ‘George 15’, which means ‘speed, fifteen knots’ and you would all put out your arms horizontally, which represented the answer at the dip while you thought about it and when you understood it you put your answer pennant close up, you see, in the ship. So you all put your hands up, then he said ‘execute’ which meant you hauled down the signal and you all start marching. And of course, on many occasions, the instructors or the course leader got in an awful muddle and did the wrong thing or gave the wrong signal and we all pretended not to understand it anyway and the whole object … And then they would say, ‘George 25’, which meant ‘stop’, and so you would double off and while he was trying to think of the next signal you managed to go galloping through the flower beds and that sort of thing.”
“So it was all quite fun but … Lady Peel would be delighted about that?”
“Yes, quite.”
“Was she still in the house?”
“No, she evacuated to Scotland, where they had an estate. Her husband had already semi moved out. He lived in London a lot or went to Scotland for the shooting. And they didn’t really live together very much, I think. She had a horror of children and her grandson, who still lives at Petersfield, he said he only met her once, he had an interview for about five minutes when he managed to force his way in. And that was it. She was a very eccentric lady. We didn’t see much of her, of course, because she had gone, but there are all sorts of stories about her. For example before the war, she had had a house party for a weekend and they were snowed up at the end of the weekend - and her guests had to stay for an extra two days. So she sent a bill to the Rural District Council for several pounds because they had failed to clear the snow! So that was my first war-time experience in Hampshire, for six or eight weeks.”
“What sort of signals were you dealing with? Did you do any radar?”
“No. Radar in those days … There was radar, just, it was called RDF - Radio Direction Finding - and there were very, very few ships fitted, but these naval scientists that I talked about were collocated with the signal school but had to depart to Haslemere and Witely. They were very involved in the development of radar. One of them had actually, in theory, invented radar about ten years earlier. He produced a specification for a thing that we now know of as radar but at that time (1928, I think) nobody took much notice. I think he failed to take out a patent and so nothing happened. But the naval scientists later got re-involved and had quite a lot to do with developing radar, particularly for ships. I was in a ship in the Mediterranean in 1941, HMS Valiant, which did have one of the very early radar sets. The type 79, I think it was called. And this actually did play a part in the Battle of Matapan, when three Italian cruisers were sunk. And we were one of the ships which had radar and one cruiser I think had radar, and that was about all at that time.”
“Was it long-ranging radar or did you just manage not to bump into people with it?”
“No, this was theoretically long range. It was really meant to be air-warning radar, but it could be used for surface warning as well in a very elementary way, but it did plot these Italian ships ahead of us in the dark and gave us enough clues to get in the right position to attack them. So it played its part in the Battle of Matapan. But they were very early radar sets.”
“Where did you come from, to that job?”
“Well, I was at Pangbourne College, which was a nautical training school. I joined the Navy from there in 1940. We actually did two terms at Dartmouth because we should have gone to a training cruiser, but the war had started and the training cruiser had been diverted to other things, so we did two terms at Dartmouth and then went to sea as midshipmen. I started off in a cruiser, HMS Southampton, in the home fleet for a few months then we went out to the Mediterranean and that was in 1940. Then in 1941 the Southampton was sunk between Malta and Crete - we were sunk by dive bombers - and I ended up then in HMS Valiant, which was a battleship in the Mediterranean fleet. And in about another fifteen months I was in her before coming home to do these subs courses.”
“That must have been a very unpleasant experience, being sunk. How did you