Jill talks about her 32 years’ service as a civilian volunteer at RAF Neatishead helping to warn and protect the civilian population in case of nuclear war.
Joining up with the United Kingdom Warning and Monitoring Organisation (UKWMO)
I was working for Her Majesty’s Stationery Office (HMSO), and we were asked to place an advert in our weekly information circular on behalf of the Home Office to recruit volunteers for the United Kingdom Warning and Monitoring Organization, colloquially known as UKWMO. I had always wanted to join the Civil Defence, but it had died out long before I was capable of joining. So, seeing the advert, I thought this was an ideal opportunity. I was able to get myself considered. I don’t know whether they would have weeded me out if I hadn’t been dealing with the applications, but it was me and I did manage to go.
I was invited for interview where I was told you had to be over 22. I said, ‘what happens if you are under 22? The Chief Controller replied, ‘Well 21 and how many months?’ So, I went ‘One in two weeks’ time’. I was vastly underage as well as being a woman. Then I got lots of letters saying my application was being considered. Many years later, I heard that, because I had been with the HMSO which had computers, which in the early 1970s was fairly new, they thought I was either a scientist or something in computers, they didn’t find out for some years that I was just admin. But I think, because I was young and maybe because it was at the start of women joining these things, I was accepted. I think there was just one other woman in the whole of the UKWMO outfit at the time – she had joined in Lincolnshire because her husband was a member – although a few more came along later.
I applied in January 1972 and got taken on in April 1972 with the original letter addressed to ‘Dear Sir’, and ending, ‘I remain, Sir, something or other’ because it was all for men, so they had to type over this and put in ‘Dear Madam’. After that, the letters were addressed to me personally, so whether I changed things or whether it was due for a change in the Home Office, I don’t know – I like to think it was the latter.
Joining was really interesting because going up, they were all men. Many had been in the RAF during the war, we had people with DFCs and DSOs, really amazing pilots while most of the others had done National Service whereas I was a woman, I was too young, and it wasn’t my background. So, it was slightly tricky in some ways, but you have to learn, if you decide you want to do it, you have to learn.
However, I was incredibly shy and I did find it very difficult being overwhelmed with a lot of men. But they were all really nice to me, I mean, they weren’t patronizing or nasty to me in any way. They were all very gentlemanly and kind and accompanied me into areas and at times when they thought I might not be safe. I didn’t realise what they were doing at the time but, latterly, I understood – they accompanied me to my room when we were away at conferences to make sure I was safe from other drunken men from different areas. I just didn’t think about it, but I think it was really sweet of them.
Volunteering with UKWMO
When I started, we used to do training two nights a month for two hours, from 7. 30 to 9. 30 on the first and third Mondays of the months and then, every now and then, we had a weekend exercise and very occasionally a 24-hour exercise. This was co-training with the Royal Observer Corp (ROC) at Chartwell Road in Norwich. It was a bunker but now it’s been filled in and a Co-op has been built over the top.
Our role in UKMWO was dealing with data on nuclear explosions and forecasting the extent of fallout across the country in the event of a nuclear war. We worked with the ROC, although we were a civilian organisation working for the Home Office whereas they were a uniformed part of the Ministry of Defence. The ROC got information from posts all over the country and passed it to us and our job was to send this on to the Home Office warning them about bombs which had landed – atomic nuclear bombs – and the fallout area so people would know when it was safe to go outside to perform tasks – these might be for ROC or civilians but essentially our role was to protect the civilian population.
Some people might remember, ‘Protect and Survive’ which was sent to all households in the late 1960s or 1970s. It advised that in the event of a nuclear attack, you should find somewhere to go or you settled down in places like under the stairs, you put white tape over your windows to stop the glass falling in and you put your battery radio in a biscuit tin to the EMP – Electromagnetic Pulse – getting at it so you could still hear what was going on. Whether it would have actually worked when you look in retrospect, I think you would have been extremely lucky, but I guess it was better than nothing.
When you went into the bunker, there was a decontamination area although how we were to be decontaminated, I don’t know because I don’t think we ever practiced, and we had no equipment. I used to say ‘ But, where are the body bags?’ People were going to die, and we didn’t have any body bags so, looking back it was a bit of a game. But it was the Cold War and if you didn’t live through it, I don’t think you realise how frightening it was. Fortunately, I don’t remember things like the Bay of Pigs or some of the really bad days but we all lived in hope, I think. I did find it difficult, my brother used to say I was the only Eve amongst all those Adams. I always thought if there was war, I would go to my hairdresser and get a really good haircut as I would be stuck in the bunker for months.
Our job in the bunker
Information came in via the Royal Observer Corps and they would write it up backwards on transparent screens so we could read it frontward – we ended up learning a bit of backward mirror writing too. We could see where the bombs are fallen and then we monitored the decay rates, obviously all theoretically on logarithmic charts so you could then see either when it would be safe for people to go outside or why there was a sudden increase in fallout, perhaps because it was a sodium bomb which meant it had landed in the sea as opposed to on land.
We were in close liaison with attached neighbouring groups which were Lincoln, Bedford and Colchester and all these ultimately reported into the Home Office, which was based in Oxfordshire, Cowley in Oxford. In the event of a nuclear attack, they would have been co-located with the BBC because it was the BBC who had to send out the information to the general populus about going down the hole and about when it would be safe to come up again. Our job was very much based on liaison and you have to remember that these were analogue days so there were no computers. The ROC got the information via a teleprinter but presumably there were also direct lines.
We had passes to allow us to get into the bunker, the original passes were to say to the police ‘let us get in unhindered’. You can imagine all the people trying to get down the bunker themselves for safety and the police were just going to let us in – I think not. But it was a matter of doing our bit. Of course, you can look back to fifty years ago, but do we know what it is going to be like fifty years in the future, you can’t guess, so you can only do what you can. So, I did that for a number of years.
Transferring to RAF Neatishead
Volunteering in Norwich was purely with UKWMO and the ROC. Then, I think it was in about 1977, I was asked if I would volunteer to go to do some joint exercises at RAF Neatishead because I only lived about five minutes away and thus, in the event of the twenty minutes to get down a bunker, I had a better chance of getting down there than some of the others. So, I thought why not?
Going to Neatishead was very different because I was used to a civilian outfit. There, it was obviously very military and in 1977 there were still a lot of RAF personnel – the cuts came later – and there were lots of people around, they were all working and knowing what they were doing. I was still part of the Home Office, but we did less with the ROC, although there was a group of ROC personnel based in R12 at Neatishead but, because there had been a fire in the lower bunker, we were based in a different building.
When you came to Neatishead, you came in by the main entrance and you had to go through security and show authorisation letters as they had to know why you were attending and all that sort of thing before parking up the car. Then there was a building above ground, and you went in and there was a small mess for officers, I don’t know where the other ranks went, we just went into the officers’ mess. There was the upper bridge, the middle bridge – they were all darkened areas and those areas have now been converted for displays for the museum. In the dark you had to get your sight in, then there was the radar equipment itself. I can’t remember all the other bits, there was an area for equipment behind the scenes.
When we started, we worked above ground because there had been a fire in the bunker but then it was reopened – I can’t remember the exact date at the moment – and that was completely different because we would go down a whole group of stairs to go underground and then there was a small mess. Above ground, there was a place where the RAF Regiment was, we did our training in there.
The Group Captain who was in charge of Neatishead would be on upper bridge and he could hear all of what was going on. We worked on the middle bridge where there were about half a dozen or so radar screens and we had to learn to read the screens in dark conditions and learn RAF tech, RAF speak, I suppose, because we were listening in. On the ground floor, so to speak, there were all the quick reaction alerts, QRA or something like that, which were linked to different air force bases from where they would send out the fighters because Neatishead could see when bombers were coming in. Presumably we are talking about Russia, that was always the bête noire. Remember this was pre-digital, I emphasise that because, ultimately, I think that was one of the reasons why eventually everything was stood down and disbanded, because who is going to pay the money for it to be upgraded.
So, we were there on the middle bridge for many years, just being there, not knowing really what was happening. We attended exercises but we didn’t have deep, lengthy training. We had a special connection, a special jack and a special headset- which I later donated to the museum after universal peace broke out – and that got me directly to the Home Office which, I think, was co-located with the BBC.
I was part of the Home Office, but it was all voluntary, we weren’t paid, although we did get our expenses so we got mileage to and from Neatishead and a subsistence allowance in line with civil service allowances. You could occasionally get a cup of tea, I don’t remember getting any food unless we were on a NATO exercise when we were allowed to join them when they had food at lunchtime – I have to say, the short crust pastry on the steak pie was really one of the best I have ever had! I did congratulate the chef doing it and I don’t think he had ever been congratulated before – what is this weird woman doing!
So, this continued and gradually over the years, we did a little more training. But I always felt that we had got better trained after the bunker was reopened, that’s when life became more formal – we got proper training and everybody was back where they were supposed to be, not above ground which had had to be hastily re-implemented after the fire.
The disbanding of UKWMO and becoming HOWLOs
Then, universal peace broke out in 1992 and the government decided to stand down the Royal Observer Corps. As I heard it, it was going to be their sixtieth or seventieth anniversary, sorry my arithmetic isn’t quite right, and the Queen said, ‘do I congratulate them on surviving seventy years and on to the future or do I say good-bye’ and they decided good-bye.
This had a great impact on what we did with UKMWO because we got all our information via the ROC. So, it was decided to disband UKWMO and four of us became a specialized team based at Neatishead and I don’t know how it came about but I was chosen as leader and we became HOWLOs – Home Office Warning Liaison Officers.
In the team was another woman who had been in the ROC and had done some work at Neatishead, another UKWMO person and someone who had joined UKWMO from the ROC within the previous six months, so they had a bit of an idea about Neatishead but not about the Home Office side. Now our connection was only with Neatishead other than reporting back to the Home Office.
The four of us, fortunately we all got on, we were all friends, and it is very sad to think that all those are now dead. One died when she was very young and the latest one died in January this year. So, it is just me to tell you these stories of HOWLOs and COWLOs.
It was when we became HOWLOs, we got more specific training. We were allocated a Flight Lieutenant as our liaison officer, and some were better than others – some didn’t contact us at all to tell us when exercises were going to happen or help us while others were excellent and the training we got depended upon our liaison officer.
HOWLO Training
We started getting people who realised that, while we were civilians, we were very keen and we did our bit. Once a month on a Friday night, we used to go for training after work. I don’t know, maybe from half seven to half nine or ten o’clock and we started getting specific training on how to read radar screens, interpret things and know what they meant. Now I have never been particularly interested in planes. wasn’t particularly interested in bombers and interceptors …they were Russian, Tupolev’s and things like that. I never knew which were bombers and which were interceptors, so I used to come home and say to my husband ‘what’s a Tupolev 121’ and he went ‘Lancaster’. He tried to translate it into Lancasters and Spitfires for me which doesn’t sound very professional, but you just have to learn, you had to know bomber or interceptor. But I could never understand my husband, who wasn’t interested at all in all of this, how he knew exactly what a Tupolev 121 or 157was, how he knew what it did. So, I had that little bit of training, personal training at home but we did have, as I say, some really good liaison officers.
Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Kit
We then got involved in NATO exercises. We had had localised exercises with UKWMO previously but from this time we got involved with NATO. NATO representatives would come along and watch how Neatishead was reacting and how they were doing. One time we had one of the NATO, I can’t remember what they called them, investigators – I’ll try to think of their proper name later on – he came over and he happened to be one of our previous liaison officers. Then in the middle of this exercise, when we were looking to see when the bombers were coming in because our job was to warn the population that a bomb is on the way by passing that information onto the Home Office. Now, obviously not all the bombs were going to be nuclear although there would be a lot of nuclear bombs. The RAF all had their NBC kit which was Nuclear, Biological and Chemical kit with gas masks and every now and again they would shout ‘Gas, Gas, Gas’ and all these people would put on gas masks, but we had no equipment what so ever. This particular time, this Flight Lieutenant, who knew us and felt maybe that our training should have gone on a bit longer, with more depth, said something to somebody and then this young aircraftsman came with open arms and said to me ‘here’s your NBC kit’ . Now I know my eyesight isn’t very good and we were in semi-darkness looking at the radar screens, but I couldn’t see anything between his arms and I didn’t know what was going on. Remember, I am just an innocent civilian and for these people it was their lifetime’s work. He kept saying ‘ your kit, Ma’am’ and I had no idea what I was supposed to do -I am standing there wondering what the heck is going on. Then, fortunately the Flight Lieutenant our previous liaison officer, came over and said, ‘you should have been issued with kit so I asked where’s the kit for the HOWLOs?’ ‘So they had to pretend to get some out of store but they haven’t got anything for you but they had to go through all the sequencing’. I wish he had told me that before because I am standing there, everybody’s doing their jobs and I am standing there , thinking it’s like Emperor’s new clothes, there’s nothing there and I don’t know what I am supposed to say or do. I think I was supposed to sign for it and I was absolutely…… So, I was really pleased when that particular Flight Lieutenant explained to me. There were lots of times when I was embarrassed but after that we did get better training.
We then had training with the RAF Regiment to learn how to put on the NBC kit in time, – ‘on in five, stay alive, on in nine, just in time. ’Putting on the gas mask was difficult; all the RAF female personnel had their hair tied back and I didn’t, so I had to tie it all up and so on. Then the four of us had to do the buddy checks. We used to scribble notes and the Sergeant said, ‘I don’t understand this, you come along once a month or whatever and take all these notes, I have people here whose work it is , they are not half as interested as you’. We used to apologise to him for not understanding and doing things, but he said, ‘no, he liked it because we were so engaged. ’
Fire Training
We were also given fire training which was particularly important at Neatishead because there had been a fire in the lower bunker -the underground bunker which had forced its closure for about 15 years and burnt it out. The fire resulted in the loss of three or four firemen. I had been down to the bunker and seen the fingerprints in the smoke of the firemen who had died. The door handle was not where they would have expected it to be, and they were just inches away from opening the door to get out of the bunker. I think once you have seen that, the whole idea of safety and fire, health and safety processes that other people laugh at, they were young men with families, and they died for no reason.
I was very keen that we did the training, which we did with the fire brigade. There was one funny incident when they were training us to use the hoses. I used one and thought I would take this opportunity to wash my car which was within water distance until the fireman said, ‘is that your car? ‘and I said, ‘yes’ and he said ‘wouldn’t advise you, the water is really powerful, it’ll take the paint off and well as clean it. ’ So that was immediately stopped. Fortunately, no damage was done – I thought that would be a free wash.
We went and did all our training and we got more and more involved, being in on the loop with air marshals who were directing the air traffic, getting the interceptors up and setting them up to intercept the incoming bombers. We were learning the lingo which was difficult and then, as I said, passing on the information.
From HOWLOs to COWLOs
And we were it, I mean we were it – the Home Office Warning and Liaison Officers dealing with civilian protection. Our group in Neatishead and two others, one in Boulmer in Northumberland and the other in Buchan in Scotland. Ultimately, they closed all of us down because universal peace broke out in 2002 and we weren’t needed.
I was in close liaison with the other groups, particularly with the Boulmer one. We used to meet up at Home Office conferences; they had them to give us extra training and background. We met at Easingwold which was the Home Office emergency planning department where they had a big building, and all the Home Office civil defence training was carried out there. However, again because the Home Office was shrinking and doing different things, in about, I am not exactly sure when it was, 2000 or maybe 98 or 99, something like that, instead of becoming HOWLOs – Home Office Warning and Liaison Officers, we became COWLOs, Cabinet Office Warning and Liaison Officers.
We were then an adjunct of the Cabinet Office which had no previous history of people like us, and it seemed to me that they were not interested either. At that time, we had a really good Liaison Officer who got us new binders and new information so we could read up on everything we had to learn. He then got pictures of cows and put them on the front page for us all because we were COWLOs, there were heifers and bulls – I don’t know. Probably It all sounds trite, but it was a good way of working with each other, if you can have a laugh and a joke and still get the work done, that’s quite good. And I think, some of the people we worked with there, they were just amazed, as civilians we put ourselves out and learnt some of these things.
Fitting in with the RAF as civilians
I thought there was more of an equality in the RAF because it was a much more recent service whereas the Army were generations of fathers and sons all being part of a particular regiment, that didn’t happen in the RAF, there was much more equality.
As for how women were treated, I didn’t have to experience it, so I don’t know. However, I think we only had one female RAF liaison officer and she and I are still in contact thirty odd years later, we still send Christmas cards, and she has travelled the world and says, come over and visit me and so on. That was good because we could talk woman to woman, not the linguistics that maybe the RAF used. But when younger personnel came in, they were more on our wavelength so that was interesting. Yet trying to explain our role to other people and as volunteers learning about such things as bombs and sidewinder missiles and all about trajectories, that takes a bit of learning, I’m not saying we were experts but, at least, we tried.
Socially, there wasn’t much contact between us and the RAF, although towards the end I was invited to the sunset ceremony that they have each year where helicopters and typhoons fly over. But then I became a civilian again and they never really knew what to do with me, I speak in my own personal terms because I went everywhere and for the longest time, but the RAF never knew what to do with me because I was a civilian, in civilian clothes when everybody else was in uniform.
Sometimes an exercise would begin on a Monday, and we would arrive on the Friday because it was only the end of the exercise that affected us, and one time, I remember, turning up and they went, ‘Er, we didn’t know you were coming Jill’. I said ‘No, I heard a letter was sent’ ‘Oh’. Then I was put under an armed escort, I don’t know whether there were bullets in the rifle, but this young aircraft man put me in the officers’ mess because everyone else was in and out. Of course, I didn’t know who they all were, and they certainly didn’t know who I was but he was there to guard me until I went ‘I need to go to the loo’ and he had to stand outside, poor man, I felt very embarrassed for him. Then the WO came out and said, ‘Oh we found the letter Jill, we don’t open the post when it is exercise time’.
Then there was another moment when an exercise was going on, and again, we didn’t appreciate all the niceties of the RAF exercise. My colleague and I were just walking across to get to our cars and there were markers on the field and we didn’t realise that was to show where bombs had gone off – supposedly. So, walking out was not a good idea because the station was being bombed and at that moment, planes came across and they were the lowest I have ever seen. They were flying over the RAF station pretending to bomb it. That was really scary because I thought we are ruining somebody’s exercise. But we didn’t know because nobody had told us, so it always depended on how well briefed we were. But we always felt we had done the right thing.
Another time, I remember, going over for an exercise and I was off to London in the afternoon to go to a course the next day. I was just in a skirt suit because, as I said, we didn’t have a uniform, and one of the RAF said, ‘Oh Jill, do you want to go over to Neatishead, they are having a proper exercise there, when I say proper, they were having bombs dropped or something’. I remember being there with one of my colleagues in this skirt suit speaking to someone from the German air force who spoke immaculate English as we were waiting for the Belgian air force to come over. And I was thinking, what on earth must they think of me being in this skirt suit on the edge of an airfield as the planes were coming over. But it was fascinating talking to him, – it was just at the time when the RAF was coming out of Germany, the British Air Force of the Rhine were being shipped home and I said, ‘ you must be really glad that we are finally leaving Germany and he went, ‘no, now is the time we all need to liaise, I’m really sorry you are leaving’ and I always remember that but couldn’t understand it .
Official Secrets
When I joined the HOWLO team, we had to sign the Official Secrets Act so I didn’t say much about my volunteering. At work, they knew I volunteered for UKWMO because I was allowed five days a year special leave to attend weekday exercises. When they happened, I was in the position of having to say I am allowed leave which was in the rules and regulations. However, when I joined a new department, they were doing a new terms and conditions book with new regulations, and I saw that I was no longer going to get special leave. I rang the person who was renewing the regulations and I said, ‘ What happened to the leave that the HOWLOs could get’? He said he had contacted the Home Office and only 12 people were affected so had not included it. So, I said ‘It just so happens that I am one of those 12’, so I was given a special dispensation. I don’t ever remember using up the whole five days except when I went on Home Office training courses at Moreton-in-the-Marsh which I had done at the very beginning and the others would just be odd days when we were having NATO exercises.
Doing my bit in the Cold War
Volunteering and learning about bombs and civilian protection was scary, it got better over time, and after 89, was it, when the Berlin Wall came down and we had the détente, we were feeling safer. But it was still a scary time. My view was always, don’t worry about the Russians, I had been to Russia in 1968 and I had met Russians who had been in the War, and I felt that they wouldn’t start a nuclear attack, although they were our main opponents, because there were too many old men there who knew what war was like. I think it’s the younger more gung-ho men, like maybe, Blair and Bush who hadn’t participated and who did not understand the absolute horror of war who were more likely to start something. My own view had always been ‘Beware of the Middle East’, because they will die for – the martyrs and so on but I don’t think anybody took any notice of me. So, yes, it was scary, but we had volunteered and I believed you did it for your country, because if we didn’t, who would?
After I married, I was always scared what would happen in case of war and I had to go to the bunker because I wouldn’t be able to phone my husband. However, part of my day job involved selecting people and volunteers to go down another bunker just outside Norwich, so I volunteered him for that. He didn’t know I had; he wouldn’t have known about it until he was called up. He wasn’t very happy when I did eventually tell him he did say, ‘that’s for me to make my own decision’. But I said, ‘I want to know where you are and that is the only way I can get hold of you’. I thought I was doing the right thing but …
The disbanding of COWLOs in 2004
When we started, we were pioneers but, essentially I think they got rid of us because everything was turning into a digital age, they didn’t need us anymore. Nobody knew what to do with us, because I think the previous people who had been in charge in various government departments and so on, had all been involved in the second world war or Korea or something so they were aware of protecting personnel whereas anybody in charge from ‘92 onwards had no idea of what that might be and with détente it wasn’t seen to be needed, money could be funnelled elsewhere. But I do feel we tried to do our bit and I am just really grateful that we didn’t have to.
So, in 2004, it was decided by the Cabinet Office that we would be disbanded so you look back and think, so, what did we do? We did try and do our bit and it was all very good and I look back – I had been given the Defence Medal, so that’s something to be proud of. It was the long service Defence Medal, and I would have got a bar to it except by then we had moved over to the Cabinet Office and the Cabinet Office didn’t have the same rights to issue the bar. It was an order in Privy Council which had to be done and they obviously didn’t think it was worth all that expenditure for me, but I had my Medal.
My MBE Award
Thirty-two years of volunteering from 1972 to 2004. I think having done all that work, did help towards my getting the MBE which I got the year afterwards from my civil service department.
I got it from Prince Charles, the King now, so that was quite nice. It was for work I had done for the work I had done towards Health and Safety. It was just before my husband died so it was nice to be presented and have that. But I think without the work I had done for the Home Office I wouldn’t have got it, it all contributed to you being considered a person who has done something for the Country.
Jill Ward talking to WISEArchive on 21st September 2023 at Brundall. © 2024 WISEArchive. All Rights Reserved.
