The Newport ROF formed its own Home Guard group which trained with a regular Royal Artillery unit at their battery of rocket guns on a fixed site off the Ebbw Bridge/Light House Road.

“We would be taken by army transport to two-man team live firing exercises on one of the Bristol Channel ranges and in rotation spend one night a week of duty in a Nissen hut on the gun site. There was a pattern of twenty guns each firing two fifty-six pound rockets which were hand-loaded onto the gun frame.

A Channel listening post would radio 'aircraft incoming’ to HQ, which would signal ‘take post’ to each Nissen hut of sleeping amateur gunners.

Adjustments before firing were given by radio through earphones. Elevation and angle of rotation was by manual effort from the two-man gun team.

“With luck, the command to fire would not be given and the welcome order to "stand down" would signal the night's action, or lack of it, over for the moment. After the rockets were returned and were counted back into the ammo dump, we could return to a fitful morning's sleep.”

It is not strange, I suppose, that I have never found any mention of this backroom contraption known as the ‘Z Battery’ in any postwar publication of Second World War armaments.”