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A Corps line det was attached and this was most useful. Corps lines were connected to the German UG system which was a Godsend.

There was a big demand for quad for buried routes but the supply was inadequate.

K Sec caught and shot two Germans teeing in. to their bn lines.

(ii) Line Equipment

Assault cable was only used by bns. The 100line UCs to everybody‘s surprise gave no trouble at all and have been very reliable.

Superposing was only done on one line to Corps.

(iii) Line Security

Code signs were used on lines from the start. They were not used by any higher or lateral formations.

To simplify procedure rear wireless link signs were used on line so that the some code sign could be used to the same formation whether using the remote control or the tele- phone.

8. Traffic

(i) This built up steadily reaching an average of 400 messages per day by D + 4. In addition the A Comd set was used to capacity for officer conversations when lines were out.

(ii) An analysis of one day's traffic shows:-

INOUT
P W DR 0RD F TOTAL P W DR ORD F TOTAL
- 51 75 - 3 129 10 168 95 15 1 289

9. DRs

Traffic was too spasmodic to justify a forward DRLS. Corps ran a two hourly service.

Visiting offrs and LOs were frequent and a large amount of traffic was cleared by them.

Up to D + 3 most forward routes were unsafe on account of snipers.

10. Pigeons

No notification of the arrival of pigeons has been received. Wireless comn with base was so reliable that there was no call for pigeons from div HQ.

The 9 Para Bn released a pigeon bearing the news of the destruction of the SALLENELLES battery at first light on D day.

Half the pigeons were released from div and all from bdes on D + 4 (approx).


(Archive transcripts © Copyright Normandy War Guide)

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Archive: 6 Airborne Div: report on signals operations, 1944 June

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