With the fall of France Germany had access to her assets though Britain forestalled their use by attacking French naval units in Toulon and Dakar but Germany still had the use of the bases and three of her ships were in French ports. These were the Scharnhorst, Gneisenau and Prinz Eugen. The first two were nicknamed by NAALO's petty officers as Salmon and Gluckstein after a local store in Plymouth. Germany wanted to get them back to the relative safety of a German port and Britain was equally determined that they should stay where they were, where they could be attacked. Fortuitously Germany picked a day when the weather was thick and wet and under this cover the three ships, hugging the French coast, slipped eastwards past their enemy up the English Channel to find sanctuary. Though we were only onlookers we were able to follow the action to some extent as information was given to us by NAALO. We had teleprinter links between Plymouth, Portsmouth, Bristol and Reading and apart from any other correspondence there were the daily rituals; firstly the "colours of the day", given to us by NAALO were broadcast to all the gun sites so that friendly aircraft would not be fired upon, and secondly each night an ammunition report would be sent by the three companies to Reading. We were all able to see what the others had sent. Almost invariably the ammunition report would state "nil expenditure" but one Sunday night there was an exception; Bristol reported "Bristol the subject of a heavy air attack, ammunition report will follow." As Bristolians we became very anxious; not much news filtered through that night but the next day we gleaned from various sources little bits of information. One informant said that amongst other targets they had dropped four bombs on Bristol Bridge; that was not strictly accurate but from the damage done it was fairly true. They had hit our home town, the war was getting serious. Bristol's suffering was just beginning. We were expecting a visit from some top brass, presumably to give the place the once-over, to convince us that indeed we were not forgotten and to show us some faces to match the names that would appear from time to time on orders. In order to impress them with the skill and expertise of our Line Section it was decided to replace the twisted Don8 cable between Bowden Battery and Egg Buckland Keep with an air line, that is bare copper wire on short telegraph posts. This was finished just before the top brass arrived but when the phones were connected all that could be heard was a loud 50 cycle hum; the wires had been placed beneath and almost parallel with the overhead grid system cables. "Oh, well," they said, "we'll say it was never intended to be used, it was only done to show our ability to run an air line."