THE SIGNALS HAVE DONE
A GRAND JOB
H
By Capt. D.J. Morgan
OW many people ever give highly trained men. The trained a. thought to the vast re- lineman who, at the beginning of construction job that has 1040, could put a five-hundred-line taken place in the telephone exchange together is a "rara avia" today. Ever since retenses started systems on Hongkong in the to drain away their highly compet- Inst two years when they pick ent regular soldier signallers, and up telephone nowadays? Not wartime soldiers who had learnt
Jobs very many people, I imagine, their Inside out, the Signal except perhaps the Hongkong Squadron has been fighting an uphill
to maintain the battle
emelency Telephone Company engineers' with which they have always served and linemen, and the
officers the Army since they were
were formed. and men of the Royal Corps of
indication Bome
tho
For
the course of
Signals, who looked after the alandard they expected, and gel, Army side of the business and from their unt consider
they prescrib rebuilt the Forces telephone net- ed for then before the war A work throughout Hongkong. joining the army at the age of
A couple of days after the fleet teen was sent to G. P. O at Man- arrived in Hongkong to take the chester before the stores creases surrender of the Japs, General Head were out of his uniform, and there
line
auarters flew a Colonel of the Royal he
The stayed for two years learning Signs Into the Colony to get rom- to be a third-class
operator. munications working for the British Another ve years with la unit Garrison that would follow In. It brought him up to n second class did not take Colonel Gordon long to signaller, and then he went off on fluid that telecommunications were in a course of Fort Stennis elther to #sorry slate-I fact, they were vir- Plymouth от Chatham. After tually non-existent. The 113 miles fifteen years or so you find lim na of underground and submarine cables a first-class operator able to do any that served the Garrison before the job in the book-and if he's pretty war had either fallen into decay food, he's usually a sergeant too by through lack of maintenance, or else this time.
the Japs had lifted the cable by the
mile and relaid it along unknown,
roules and there were no markers
or blueprints to help the British find
DEAD DUCK ·
dlo
EFT, ns they were, with a dend L duck of telephone systom or their hands, the Army had to something-and quickly-to tide the Bellish Military Administration over the interim until something substan- at was constructed again. A Naval Line Section of the Royal Signals- section which works with the Royal Navy, fixing up their shore communl- cations when they come into port- solved the problem by putting up a two-hundred-line field exchange of the lype used at battle headquarters. and running lines out to all essential subscribers.
Meanwhile, sections of British and Indian Signals were brought in fron the Buring Army to tackle the big Job. With a company headquarters also flown in from Burina, ond Royal Marine Signal Company under command, they were ready to start. They were
called the Hongkongt Signal Company, which has since be come known as the Hongkong Signol Squadron.
SIDE GLANCES
By Galbraith
COPR, 1941 NY NEAYERVICE, INC. T. M. RIO, V, B. PAT, OFF,
"I didn't realize how many boys I've had romances with till I looked through this last year's diary- wonder what they'll be like if I ever have dates with them!"
SEFTON DELMER'S No, it's hardly
like Munich!
E
XPERTS of the Ameri- can State Department are inclined to take the Communist coup
in
Their first task, was, naturally, tongue pretty calmly. In their locate what there was left of the old view it does not fundamentally cable, so that they could economise alter the European balance of In material and labour for the freon- struction of the lines.
Here they power. I agree with them. were more fortunate than they had hoped. A former civilian employec
Wan
Tam
Memory of the events of of the Signals,
Gal, nu od 1938 and 1939 is prompting hand who had been with Hongkong politicians everywhere to attach Signs for twenty years, came a greater strategic significance to the Best Signals officer that he to the changes than they really saw, tok him who he was,
and
offered his services to get hold of as possess. many of the old civilian emplyees
ines.
of the Iussians
NEWSMAP
Franco gives a point to
please U.S.
OTH Generalissimo
B France and the Ameri- portant modifications of policy which bring ostracised totalitarian Spain closer to Marshall aid and the
cans have made Im-
But
they do not fundamentally Western camp. change the relation of Czechoslovakia complete dependence on Moscow was the stocks of German gold now in to the Western world.
The U.S. has made a bargain with Prague's Franco, Spain
will (1) surrender Czeenslovakia (in common with the clude a satisfactory agreement con- already clarified Ira July when Spain to the common pool; (2) con- other satellites), under orders from cert shall plan discussions. Moscow, withdrew from the Mar- assets in Spain. In return the U.S. cerning the treatment of German
will (1) unfreeze Spain's dollar The importance of the 1938 col- sion to US capitalists to make sub- assets in the U.S.; (3) give permis- lapse was that prepared ground for further surrenders,
the stantial loans to Spain. Ger- man force seemed irresistible in a disarmed world. There was no one to face it.
it
And_now?
American capitalists are already visiting Spain discussing loans for Spanish industries worth approxi- mately 50,000,000 dollars.
hands who had been doing the job of there drove the Germons out Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Turkey, shall have any say in how the money
as he could, and help to locate the tween 1938 and 1948 is only B forces are a long way from en- Spanish authorities have promised
In my view the analogy be-
These private enterprisers have ob- DUT the Soviet Union's arned tained from Franco a concession of Considerable significance. The OLD HANDS HELP
superficial.
In 1938 Munich nut the Germans Hitler's armed forces held in 1838 Spanish enterprises shall be
joying the unquestioned superiority that American that time-January
to money loaned A Signals were fortunate enough to until then been aligned against them.
.1046-the in control of a country which had and 1039.
used have men with years of experience
only for the purposes designated, at the kind of job which they were
But the Czechoslovakia of 1948 To those who
nelther the State-controlled thinking of 1938, that going to tackle. Most
has been a Soviet satellite ever since say "now watch for the collapse of trade union syndicates nor the State of the ol
Institute of Commerce and Industry In 1945. for tea or fifteen years were still
and Italy." I have this answer:- serving, and they knew
What
now was that (1)
is applied or spent. happened too many
Cabinet in tricks of their trade- to--lose-nny trust of the say
which Communists
The Prague coup, though com had Bloop
it.
replaced
parable in wanton
In other words France has agreed by one was Aller
aggression to Burma they in which Communists have all the
Hitler's Prague moves, is not part with its insistence on State control in to modify his authorliarlan economy, were probably glad to have a quiet, say; (2) the chance that existed of a new wave of expansionist im- industry, to meet the demands of steady job for o whlie.
until then of a Communist setback perialism. It is Later in the year up in the China In the coming elections was climi- sive consolidation of what the So- American capital. It is an important they bullt a nated (3) the rule of law which viels had already gained. They are ether similar modincations-economie first step which may be followed. by and had been reintroduced
taking no chances of Czechoslovakia and political-making Spain a more then the Royal Engineers renovated slovakia since May 1, 1947, was or any other neighbour being seduced attractive proposition than it is ot the exchange butting around it abolished in favour of terrorism by
into the Western camp by the cart before horse, but that is the way Communist action squads.
templations of the Marshall plan. present. It was actually
over
Command building. five-hundred-line exchange,
done. A typhoon
blew quite a bit of it away when it
was half done, too!
Digging and lino parties tested old
1
Police rule "
the
fines and dug new ones in unill the HOSE events are of drastic signi- 113 mites of multi-core cable again stretched from the Headquarters out Slovaks, who from now on are ex-
TH Alcance for
Czechs and to Stanley. Lyemun, Stonecutters Island, Whitfield Bar
Barracks,
posed once more lo arbitrary police Son Wal dozen other places where rule, subsidiary exchanges were put up to take some of the weight off the main.
perhaps
and half
Cables carrying
five
hundred pairs of wires as they came out of the exchange were broken down until every pair of
wirca
ended up in the right telephone.
And
the exchange itself,
thousands of lines had to be joined
on to the right contacts and
THE
move of defen-
I am not saying that Czecho- slovakla might not at some future date become the base of n Com- munist push to "hnsten" the process "some future date" is not now, of Communisation in the West. But And there is a lot we can still do to avoid
it.
murder for
Who did the m
which Oscar Slater served 18 years?
A man lets out the secret
by BRENDAN KEMMET
FEW weeks ago Oscar Slater died. He holds an enduring place in the re- cords of crime na a
man who served 18 years in jail for n murder he did not commit. After his release he was given £6,000 in compensation.
Slater was convicted of the murder of Miss Marlon Gil- christ, an 82-year-old woman found dead with her head bat- tered in her home in West Princes-street, Glasgow.
Who committed the crime for which Slater suffered so long
and so cutely?
Oscar Slater
he said, kept watch.. went with his jemmy to the house.
Ho rang the bell. Mias Gilchrist, thinking It was her mald Helen Lambic (witness at the Sinter trial) coming back, opened the door and then returned to her dining-room.
lila Jemmy, underneath
Jstruck at Miss Gilchrist, but did not knock her out as ha expoot- ed. 50 ho followed her, striking again and again with lils until she collapsed. By this time the
prople had become alarmed, and were mak ing for Miss Gilchrist'a J had no time to hunt for money or jewel-
lery. He may have snatched a place or two hurriedly before he was dis-. turbed, but to the beat of my know- ledge the two men gained nothing by the murder.
Now at the time of the trial a Miss Amies Brown, u school-teacher, told the police that two men rushed past her in West Princes-street. One, she. said, had his arm pressed close to his skic.
That was
supporting, th
Jeminy under his jacket,
the
Miss Brown, confronted by Slater nt the identification parade, did not pick him. She knew that helther of the men who passed her that night She was not called as a witness at the trial.
A couple of weeks Inter, Rested switching to Miss Gil was there. moved by the news of the death christ's house.
of Slater, a man broke a silence The murder was committed he had kept for 40 years. while I was in prison.
He came to me in the Glasgow office of the Scottish Sunday The first I heard of it was Express, and said: "I know who when Glasgow detective committed the murder. I wish named Gordon came to see me now to tell the story that would in Barlinnic Prison. have saved Slater and sent two men to the gallows."
The man is 59. He has spent much of his life in prison.
At the time of the Slater case he was one of a gang of thieves in Glasgow.
This is his story
Four in
gang "THERE were four of us in the gang. The other three were:-
J--- was always well dress. ed.. Ha
appearance and general, build much resembled Slater's. But he was clean- shaven, whereas Slater had moustache.
Gordon, had he but known it, was on the right track.....
He had information, he said, that I, "and others unknown," had been watching and planning a robbery in the vicinity of the crime. "Who were the others 7" he demanded.
I not only refused informa- tion, but I stoutly denied knowledge of the affair."
Some months after my lease, the first instalment fate's "bill of costs", for silence was presented.
Other charges
all
re
Slater's outburst
the
The Jemmy was thrown into River Kelvin, J, who lived in Partick, went home by subway.
From the day of that meeting with W I have never seen any of the old gang. If W- Is alive today he is over 00.
But Oscar Slater I did see, again and again. We became good friends the murder, for I was terrified to tell in Peterhead. We never discussed of what I knew.
I used to wonder what he would have thought or done had he known that I, his constant companion in
directed the secret, and was
the cause of all his misery. at the guards "pleked" on him. Slater felt, sometimes justifiably, Early in his sentence,
the platform on
when he but broken English, I have seen him, of with his gigantic strength, rush to he spoke
my stood, shake
which the guards ulit trembled, and ery in a volca full of suffering: Schlater-Schlater why is it al- ways Schlater?"
It
was
It
Gordon pounced on me for. The outery over the murder-made housebreaking, and brought the police of that day desperate to several other charges against secure a convletion.
I was sent to n High pounced on a "tip" which was, ⋅ AC- with relief that they Court, and received.a five years' cording to underworld rumour, sent sentence.
about Slater by a fellow gambler.
At that time he was aged me. about 22-25.
W was not so much like Slater in build, but he had broken nose (like Slater) and a moustache. He was about 40,
G, a barman, the only married man of the four, at one time fairly prosperous,
Man
who did it
I was 21 years old. A sen- tence of that type on a man of my age was rare. I never again sentenced in any
court other than a High Court. My sentences rose with every con- viction.
was
Judge convinced
I firmly believe that the only per- son who was thoroughly convinced Slater's guilt was the judge who sentenced him. And he was misled by the police, who called only, a few hand-picked witnesses.
Witnesses who really did matter were never called to give evidence..
The verdict hinged on Identity. saw fleeing from the scene of Five witnesses said the man they the crime was clean-shaven. Slater had a moustache.
So for the greater part of the next 20 years I toiled and suffered in the granile quarries of Peterhead Prison -alongside Slater, the man 1 should Jwas the man who struck bave saved. Miss Gilchrist down.
In 1921 I had six weeks of liberty, and for the first time in 13 years met A fifth man, whom I never Crown-street, Glasgow.
W
We met in a public house in met, comes into the story. Hu
w was more alarmed than In spite of that, Blater was con- was the brain behind our-rob- pleased to sec ine. He was agitated-vleted and sentenced. beries. He used to supply us, spent together. But he did tell me facts related here have been submit- throughout all of the brief time we The Glasgow police, to whom the through W, with informa- what had happened on the night of tion about the contents of the Gilchrist murder.
ted, say there is no question what- ever of the case being reopened., houses, gleaned from char- women and daily helps.
Before the Gilchrist murder a charwoman had told "The Brain" that in West Princes- street was an. old woman who lived alone, with a large sum of 'N S.S. lender on the jewellery in the house.
money and 'n large quantity of run is Count Basse- witz-Behr. During the war he was Himmler's police
wanted by the Russians criminal.
On September 10 last year he was extradited-by-the-British-to-the-since-found-reason to believe,
FUGITIVE
☆A
All this makes 1948 very different chief in the Ukraine, Now he is
from 1038.
BY THE WAY
by Beachcomber
ля п
war
Russians. Shortly after that British Intelligence' men got word that the clandestine S.S. organisation meant La free him. But they did not pass on the nows to the Russians. They
Starting ideas of or in a leopard skin kiell her man did not believe the S.S. could do it, Strabismus the right numbers. That sort of thing Preserve) of Utrecht are having wards her. "He hath come for the ed up Bussewitz-Behr in Bremen.
(Whom God at feet, both arms stretched imploringly to- probably leads to the popular belief. thoir
Last month American police plek- that it
helps to be mad if you are a science. The other day Professor voice. "She reacheth for his hat," springing him from the Russian
American rent, ho yes," said Ashura in a loud His S.S. friends had succeeded
bald
Kazbullah. "It is sombilical
ical prison. And before the Americans
to start, with, you soon will be.
effect on
In
W brought us that news. But the address he gave us was that of a Misa Crosbie, another old lady who lived alone near; Miss Gilchrist, but who, I have
was poorly off.
"The Brain," I think, had got the addresses of Miss Gilchrist and Miss Crosbie mixed up. Watched for weeks
Bignalman and If you are not mad. V. R. Thompson wrote of once more," said Klzamughan. "They could hand him back to the Russians the house of. Mias Crosbie.
It was in the process of digging "a siren that makes so much neether of them there at all, ex-fie had escaped again. He is on the Never once now lines in that they burst a water noise that it gencrates sufficient cept her." At that moment the glet loose now. main and nearly washed the Wan-heat to kill a chal district out to sea.
THEY SAY IT'S EASY
mouse in a began to pirouette on her toes, and minute." This must be a near the mon rose nnd leaped in the air. rolation of the Doctor's battery, The Persians roared with laughter.
Ekchulah
noise, loud AGLOOMY man stood up in the
the
row of the stalls. "Ekchu-
CORPSE
than as a
Che SNAPSHOT GUILD
HOW FAST IS FAST?:
No need for fast shutter speeds here. Panoramming "stopped" this racer.
ASK any good photographer, an o
an exposure of 1/50 of a second.
ww3
For weeks we kept watch on
were we lucky enough to catch her leaving the house unattended. OUT at Lyemun and Stanley, they which generates so much hent
set up inammoth receivers and that it makes a
Erich of us took turns of visit
Ho'll tell you that all the And, as you probably know the transmitters which maintained com- enough to kill a fly a mile away tnh," he said, it isn't meant to be Officling Unera died, after a life big answered the door.
NRRA coring, on one pretext or another gadgets in the world won't help average box camera shutter speed is munication by radio telephone to
approximately 1/35.00 ☆U
live body, but on each occasion Miss Cros- a good, sharp, brillant picture wrong. For today's picture
the man who 'isn't able to take But don't feel badly if you guessed General Headquarters at Singapore: This is certainly sending a funnch; How two sets as wide apart as that whale to catch a sprat, and the cried the three, gleefully. "What?" of a litt over two years, in June,
you know." "Manure!"
with n simple box camera. mado by. "panning and without enables a person sitting at a desk whole elaborate business might said in Hongkong to speak to someone be avoided by simply controlling "I don't get it," said the managering a lot of nation. It occuples agents.
astonished
1M 1947.
panning you probably would have manager.
Chances are he'll tell you, too, needed a shutter speed of 3/1,000 to I posed as a window clenner; "Munure, ho yes, repeated the three. gliting at a desk in Singapore, where
But I find it corpse still demand-J———— and G
that your Brownie can do u stop the sending and receiving sets are flying mouse-trap by radio. "He doesn't get any," said Ashura. four buildings in the West End of
as insurance good bit more than you realise.
the car. "Panning" is particularly
Barly suited to presumably just apart, is still a When within "striking, distance At that point, the hairy man inter- London, and the ground floor of
For example, let's
consider pictures of this type. It's done by mystery to me-and so it will re- of mouse, the trap would vened. "They always say manure," fifth. It employs a
During those weeks of watch grophile alang, "Panning" is a trick; camera and snapping the shutter as main, though the Signals say its just make enough noise to generate he explained. "But why, man?" re-and a staff of 197. In Europe Unra ing the name of Miss Gilchrist it requires some practice; but it pays you follow it. The trick is to gluo panoramming-panning" in photo-"following the action with your plied the manager, Irritably. "It's a still has six so-called "receiptor Nowadays, the Hongkong
enough hent to release a blob of sort of habit, I suppose," "But what stations distributing the last of its know of her existence until she using cameras with high shutter head and shoulders, so as to keep the Signal Squadron handles all Army, and n electric cheese. When touch- are they? They're here for that Bountymin
was never mentioned. I did not goiting good action pictures without subject as it approaches, pivot your aff. For "panning" is a means of your eye to the viewfinder, spot your lot of RAF traille, to the rest of the ed by the mouse, the cheese en bit I thought of adding." Prague, Trieste, Rome and Athens,
Hamburg, Belgrade, world, and
diplomatic traffic to would ring a little bell to sum
ceused to exist.
speeds. While it fan't suited to many subject centred in the finder and Nanking, with teleprinters that en-
lypes of action and it results in a click the shutter without interrupt- code decodo messages
qulet." us they mon the nearest cat.
Omcial forecast is that "winding A few months before up of Unrra will keep the boys and murder G and I were ar- lows a prescribed course.
the blurred benkground, it can be used int your pivot, S
where action is continuous and fo will show n fol- The result, come or go..
the picture above, like the girls busy until the late autumn-
n streaked background perhaps even until the end of the rested on a charge of reset (ze the tall of the racer in today's plc- you were moving the camera at a been able to put the telecom-ME COLIN VELVETTE led the WHILE the conversation is at its move to the US. for the writing of ceiving stolen goods). He got ture. Then stop for a minute and rate which was constant incolation Take a look at that number 47 on from the movement. But becauso. what is left will munications back on the old footing three Persians to a corner of or better, because by this time, they, the Stage, where a rehearsal was in carefully theoverybody's shoo or
height slip under the table and Unrra's history and the final agony. six months I got twelve. After think you would need to "stop" be "stopped." And those streaks in in common with most other branches progress The hairy man in
estimate what shutter speed you to the subject speed, the subject will of the Army am suffering from hairy suit was shouting wearily. A neighbour. Return to your seat and and a bit of life after death for either to have discovered his around the track
tha boot-strings to those of hla or her Which means at least two years our arrest, "The Brain" seems racing car in this way as it whizzed the blurred background add to the acute manpower shortage, and more shivering girl was standing on her wait until they all got up at the end Unrra: And maybe a good bit after
pense of sprod.::. acutely from shortage of really toes with ono band in the air and of the meal.
1that
error or for some reason Bug For today's picture was made with
You say 1/1,300-1/4007 Wrong. Why not give it a try?
John van Gullder
too
cary.
and
G
It is fortunato that the Squadron
has,
Rehearsal
really must keep them "Well, we'll come to that later. You
"O.K.," said the hairy man. Games
(For children)