The first surprise was that the museum was actually inside the camp at Blandford Forum, so we had the full check-in procedure at the guard room at the entrance. Complete with various squads of soldiers carrying very serious looking weapons. As luck would have it, we had our senior bus passes and our old-style driving licenses with us, and this was sufficient documentation to get us past the provos, that is to say the military police under the Provost Marshall, not to be confused with the military police in the Royal Military Police, aka redcaps, a former non-commissioned officer from which we once knew well, the source of many interesting and entertaining anecdotes. It seems that the two organisations are quite different, perhaps something to do with division of powers.
The museum was filled with toys for the boys, but made a valiant attempt to provide interest for the girls as well, with mementoes of various sorts from the women's arms, such as the FANYs.
The handsome model of a signalling station illustrated, I think from the early nineteenth century, was a variation on the semaphore tower, with the six panels offering 64=2^6 permutations, more than enough for the alphabet, the digits, some common words and some punctuation. Chains of the things from London to places like Plymouth and Portsmouth.
Then all kinds of contraptions for sending Morse code, some of which one could try one's hand at.
Then field telephones. I came away with the impression that the laying down of telephone cable in and around the trenches of the First World War was a hazardous business.
Then wireless, which did away with wire, that is to say cable, but opened the door to eavesdropping. I was pleased to find various examples of our version of the German Enigma machine. We hear lots about this last, but not much about what we did.
We also had something called Aspidistra, a black tube, about six inches in diameter and three or four feet high, which served as some kind of transmitter. Not sure if was any relation of the rather smaller black tubes which the naval uncle had to deliver by small boat to the beaches of North Africa in order to guide the landing craft in. Not a job for those with weak nerves. Bing admits to beacons being used for this purpose, but I failed to find any black tubes.
Interesting displays of more modern signalling equipment, with the diagrams making it look very like the Internet and mobile phone networks we have now - which was spot on as this sort of thing was very much where the Internet came from. Lots of Ptarmigan, the flashiest thing of its kind when it was invented in the 1980's and now consigned to the museum. Bing knows all about it.
An interesting display of medals which had been awarded over the years to members of the Corps.
A café selling, inter alia, what was described as NAAFI tea and bacon rolls. Both rather good. The décor was vaguely old, so I got to sit next to a cylindrical stove, the sort of thing that I imagine used to warm army huts and offices until after the Second World War.
A good museum. We shall go again should opportunity arise.
Shortly after leaving the museum, we happened to go past the rather grand front gates of the Bryanston School of reference 4, flanked by palm trees in pots. Wikipedia offers the not very encouraging: '... During the mid-1930s, Bryanston School was the location of Anglo-German youth camps where the Hitler Youth and Boy Scouts tried to develop links. In 2005 the school was one of fifty of the country's leading independent schools which were found guilty of running an illegal price-fixing cartel...'.
PS: regarding the illustration, we did not see any pigs during our week in the west country. Plenty of cows, horses, ponies, donkeys, sheep, geese and chickens, but no pigs, goats or turkeys.
Reference 1: https://www.royalsignalsmuseum.co.uk/.
Reference 2: http://www.army.mod.uk/signals/signals.aspx.
Reference 3: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/10/royal-army-dental-corps.html.
Reference 4: http://www.bryanston.co.uk/.
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