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Initial Royal Artillery Recruitment Training at Oswestry and first deployments 1940
George Johnston was called up on Sept 12th 1940 into the (R.A.(A.A.)) (i.e. Royal Artillery (Anti Aircraft)). (Note in sequel 'Ack' was the British shorthand for 'A', cf. US 'Able', which got introduced as well as the Americans couldn't say the British system).
He did the two month initial training at Oswestry (Sept/Oct 1940) to form a new Battery (the 366th Battery). (George was with this Battery until he managed to escape to become a gunnery instructor. ((Later the 366th Battery arrived in Europe at D day plus 2 hours: the battery had little to do, and their 3.7s were used as Field guns. They had no casualties for a long time, until they started mine clearance activities.)) ) (The weather was very warm: hot weather with no rain, and the earth was like iron.) The first fortnight was basic military discipline, square bashing and the like, though some of that continued every day. The rest of the time they were trained as gunners, to form a new battery. To speed the training they were tested in different abilities: the basic split was between instrument operators and gunners (i.e. between intelligence and the heavy brigade). George went into the instrument section, which divided into rangefinder operators and predictor operators (gun control side). George became a No1 Predictor Operator, so he controlled the Predictor team, which may have had something to do with him being promoted to Lance Bombadier (1 stripe) in the 8th week. The course covered aircraft recognition, a lot of PE, and the theory of gun control. There was some teaching about guns but not much, and how the instruments affected the guns - the predictor was directly connected to it.
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