Apples Don’t Fall Far From The Tree

After looking with my sister at a few photos of my Dad during his military service and realising that we knew very little about his service, I wrote to the Army Personnel Centre to ask for a copy of his records. There are still more unanswered questions but the almost illegible handwriting over five years of dozens of clerks using unknown acronyms has revealed a few things we did not know.

First the overall timeline:

– Arthur Campbell Evans joined the Royal Signals in June 1942 from school at the age of 18 and was sent to Catterick Camp in Yorkshire for basic training before being posted to a battalion in February 1943. He was then sent to the Reserves and back to school in April 1943 “for the purposes of Engineering Cadetship Studies at Rotherham Technical College”.

– Then “rejoined the colours” in April 1944 and was accepted into the 6th Airborne Division, the Parachute Regiment or “Red Berets”, in August 1944. Shortly afterwards he was injured in training and admitted to hospital from December 1944 to May 1945. Very little was ever discussed about this but must have been fairly serious.

– In the Autumn of 1945, he embarked for the Middle East – Israel as part of the force charged with the British Mandate in Palestine and he served in Jerusalem, Haifa, and Tel Aviv. He was promoted to Corporal in May 1946 and was then embarked back to the UK and demobilised in September 1947. The British presence in Palestine ended with the Israel Declaration of Independence. the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and all that followed.

His release described him as “A thoroughly reliable NCO, well above average intelligence and keen on his work. Not a good disciplinarian, but can make a good team out of the right men. Very likable personality, and cheerful in the most trying circumstances”. When I left Intel I said that I had 29 years with the same performance appraisal but now I realise that my review and my Dad’s were also essentially exactly the same.

If you want to learn more about the “most trying circumstances” that the British Paras encountered in Palestine you can read about their work below; essentially the same experience as troops who have more recently served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Just another group of terrorists shooting at us who hope to be remembered one day as freedom fighters.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6th_Airborne_Division_in_Palestine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sergeants_affair