The US Army field telephone sets (CY 1181 TT) are the ones we used in WWII. Each set weighs 10 pounds. There is a small crank on the side of set that pops out so that you can turn it to activate the ringing circuit. In the center of the phone handset there is a small switch that you hold open only when you are talking or listening –to save the batteries. We used them to check field telephone lines that we were installing, or lines that had been previously installed. In combat, wire was often thrown into the ditch alongside of the country road. At intersections, we would string the telephone wire from wooden or concrete poles. We climbed wooden poles with spurs strapped to our legs to climb 20 or 30 feet. Concrete poles had hollow openings so you could climb them, but my size 12 boots would sometimes get stuck in them if they were too small. The ½ mile reel of telephone wire shown in the photo has very thin insulation. We used a twisted pair that was coated with thick insulation that could take a lot of abuse. We also used two-pair cable (providing at least three circuits) when there was time to make a more permanent installation. The cable was pretty unreliable - if you hung it over a very wide road the weight would cause a break.
I carried a phone when patrolling a line, making periodic calls back to base to verify that the circuit was working. After Normandy, the front lines moved faster and farther every day, so we left the phone set on the truck and only used it occasionally. In Brittany and beyond, we “patched into” commercial lines and no longer had to lay as much wire and cable.
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