In the artillery the eyes of the army, which is the aviation section, provides the artillery with airplane and balloon service and in order to cooperate successfully with them the wireless operator must have a special training. For three weeks or so we did nothing but buzzer practise; that is a buzzer, which is an electric bell without the bell, is connected in circuit with a battery, a telegraph key and some twenty head-phones. The beginners put on the receivers and an instructor worked the key.
As I could easily take twenty words a minute I was made an instructor. Then there were lectures on the elements of electricity and magnetism and by the end of the first month the class was ready for the fundamentals of wireless telegraphy. All of that was old stuff for me and as they say in the army it was pickin’s.
The time came when we were introduced to the real wireless apparatus and although the sets were portable and of shorter range than any I had handled since I was a kid operator they were certainly beauties. There were three different types or wireless sets; each one was designed to cover a certain distance, and each sending set had its special receiving set.