Where are you now?

This is the photograph of the second course for Teleprinter Operators and Message Centre Chiefs to be run at the Muhabere Okulu (Signals School) at Mamak, Ankara, Turkey. Also in the photograph are the Cadre. It is so long ago that I hardly remember the names of them.

In the middle row are a Yedek Subay (?), Orhan Hataysal (Intepreter), Jemal Shenkartal (forgive my spelling), Major Bernard Pig (later changing is name to Ashmore), Major (Bin Bashi) Isener, Captain (Yusbasi) Mehmet Caner, Mr. Clarke (An American), My Technical Support member of the Cadre.

In the bottom row are from the right, Capt Ozel (wearing my cap), Bashgedikli (?) another Tech Support man. Sorry, but I cannot remember the remainder.

You might have observed that this group of Senior Non Commisioned Officers are a little younger than the first course. When we were trying to establish a time scale for the various parts of the course, we had to take into account things like one's dexterity. We think we got it right in the end. These men finished each module of the course exactly on time and reached a very high level of competence. It was a great pleasure to have been responsible for their training.

One thing that I learned during this experience was that the Turkish Army is very disciplined. That proved a little of a problem during the first course but we overcame that with the second and subsequent courses by letting the intepreters take a greater role in the instructing. It was our intention to have people trained as instructors as well as everything else. Quite a task.

To this day I remember with gratitude the help given me by those around me at that time.

GingerNut: British Training Staffs, Ankara, Turkey

It was not all work and no play for the students on the courses so sometimes we took a break from the classroom. As you can see from the four photographs that on the day that these were taken it had snowed.

These young men were members of one of the enlisted men courses. I think that we had participated in a Snow-ball fight and then decided to take some photographs. Then , believe me, we went back indoors where it was warm.

It was essential that our fingers were flexible to be able to type at speed and after getting our fingers cold we had to do exercises to get our fingers warm again.

GingerNut: British Training Staffs, Ankara, Turkey

The photograph shows a class of enlisted men learning to touch-type. There are no two machines the same in the room. A Yedek Subay was assigned to assist me as Orhan Hataysal would have been busy doing other interpreting tasks.


Yesterday I stated that I conducted Teleprinter (Teletypwriter) Operator and Message Centre Chief courses at the Turkish Signal Corps School (Muhabere Okulu) at Mamak, Turkey.

Operators have to be able to touch-type. We had to start somewhere, so we concentrated on getting the touch-typing part of the course prepared. That entailed the use of something that the students could learn to type on. We had no typewriters. Necessity is the mother of invention, so made a mock keyboard where the students could practice the fingering. It didn't work. Our Cadre did a trawl of businesses in Ankara and we begged any unused typewriters. The response was marvellous. We could have started a museum of typewriters with some of them, but chose to convert them to the same type face and keyboards as a teleprinter. I was absolutely amazed at what those cadre chaps could do. As most of the donated typewriters were not QWERTY, we had to make them thus. Those cadre people systematically chose the typewriters that looked most like QWERTY typewriters and altered many parts to end up with a QWERTY typewriter. Blanks were made to cover the keys.

Height adjustable Operator chairs were also manufactured.

Training manuals had to be prepared along with Charts for the instructor. We did lots of practicing of sharing work with the fingers across the keyboard and decided to make our own system. The left hand stayed pretty much as in any typing manual, but we gave the right hand a lot more work to do. Nevertheless we decided to keep JKL(Carriage Return) under the right hand with G and H uncovered.

The aim of the first part of the course was to try to get the student to be able to touch type at 25 words per minute without error. That was very quickly acheived by the enlisted men where the older, more senior Non Commisioned Officers took a little longer.

One day we were visited by an American who asked me what I would like that would assist the course. I replied "Twenty five typewriters." Within a couple of weeks 25 brand new typewriters were delivered. They were Smith Corona. Thank You.

To maintain rhythm we had a metronome in class clicking away and often we played marching music.

Whenever I needed to have a good interpreter in the classroom, Orhan Hataysal would be there.

Hi, I didn't get any responses to my first Blog. I'm going to add a second bit today.

These Gentlemen are members of the first course that I undertook in 1949. They were all very senior NCOs. Standing behind them are the Cadre at that time. The Cadre were made up of officers and NCOs both from the Turkish Signal Corps and the Royal Corps of Signals.

I'm so sorry, but I cannot remember many of the names of the people there, except perhaps a few of the back row. Capt. (Yuzbashi) Shenkartal (Excuse the spelling.), Capt Ozel (?) (Yuzbashi), Major Smith, Major (Binbashi) Ishener, Myself, Orhan Hataysal (My Mentor), Capt Akkurt. At each end were my helpers whose names I have forgotten.

British Training Staffs, Ankara, Turkey

This photograph was taken in 1951 at The Muhabere Okulu, Mamak, Ankara, Turkey.

The British Training Staffs were made up from various Regiments of the British Army who were posted to Turkey to help train the Turkish forces. In the photo above are four members of the Royal Corps of Signals personnel and the then commandant of the Training School.