The journey down to Plymouth was the longest rail trip that I had ever taken alone and I was eager and excited about it. I was travelling with all my kit of course and I was learning how to stow it without interfering with other passengers. As we pulled away to the south-west from Temple Meads station the familiar scenes around Bristol gave way to the flatter country of north Somerset and later on to the red soil of Devon. At Plymouth North Road station I detrained but I have no memory now of how I reached South Raglan Barracks in Devonport. The barracks were typically army, grey, spartan, uninviting and ugly; my spirits sank. I was allocated quarters in a small room together with six or eight others; beds consisted of three bed-boards on two low wooden trestles augmented with three "biscuits" for comfort and the whole ensemble was completed with four blankets. I was directed to join a GOR team and shown the ropes as it were. The GOR was located on Mount Wise in the end room of Hamoaze House. A large map of the south-west of England had been painted on an expanse of dark blue linoleum, this formed the plotting table in the centre of the room; to one side a dais accommodated the GCO and also the naval anti-aircraft liaison officer (NAALO) for this was a combined operations room. We signalmen sat around the plotting table waiting for something to happen. Assorted naval petty-officers, Royal Artillery gunners and bombardiers made up an eight-hour shift. As in Bristol one signalman sat with a head-and-breast-set permanently connected to No.11 Fighter Group at Uxbridge and the routine was much the same. Those doing the plotting made up wooden blocks with plastic chips of letters and numbers to indicate the identity, size and height of a particular plot adjacent to a coloured arrow, green for friendly, red for hostile, showing the location and direction of the aircraft. This was quite an improvement on Bristol's coloured pins. There was another improvement too, the Post Office type switchboard was replaced by two wooden desk mounted units, each fitted with 10 switches and indicator lights. Every switch and light combination was connected to a gun site or a searchlight station and any combination of sites could be called individually or simultaneously. Each site acknowledged receipt of a message by pressing a button, this caused the appropriate light to glow in the GOR. In this way messages could be broadcast to all sites at once; those sites whose lights did not glow were contacted again individually and the message repeated. Frequently in the heat of the moment gunners would forget to acknowledge causing some irritation and on one occasion an exasperated GCO ordered me to reprimand the miscreant. Having got the official blessing I proceeded to do just that, translating his order into the vernacular most effectively; I was rewarded with most obsequious apologies elevating my rank to that of "sir".