RADC Association
Assisting past and present members
Thank you RADC
Wally gives an account of his RADC Career
Author: Wally Happy
Date: 1955
The Korean War was raging during my apprenticeship when my cycling club-mate returned with the MM, and advised seriously, against my joining in. My father remarried in 1939 after my mother died in 1938 when I was five. ‘Evacuated’ to my step grandparents at Tandridge on the A25 I witnessed the tired and battered soldiers returning from Dunkirk. Then from the village infant’s school I saw the Battle of Britain. We were equidistant from Biggin Hill Kenley and Croydon.
Having lived through the Blitz in London until V2s arrived and spent the rest of the war in a mining village in the Aberdare Valley in South Wales. (Actually the happiest days of my childhood, they didn’t teach French but I came second in the class for Welsh). It is no wonder that I had more than a little pride in my country and its’ achievements.
Cycle racing although tough seemed easy to me. After basic training at RAF West Kirby and before posting to 3 Radio School Compton Bassett I was given a bike an Air Ticket to Dublin and sent to ride the Tour of Ireland 8 day stage race by the Hercules Bicycle Company. I sat next to Roy Bentley the Chelsea FC (my home town) Captain. He assured me that I was just as Professional as him and that I should only continue in this tough sport so long as I was satisfied with what I was getting out of it, bearing in mind the sacrifices and effort I’d already made. When a rider died after being impaled on the shaft of a cart when the horse bolted into the bunch as we descended a mountain, it was brought home to me early in my career, exactly what he meant.
The TPO/TRO Course of thirteen weeks was excellent and I didn’t want to leave not even for the posting I was given to live at home and work in civvies for the rest of my National Service at RAF Signals Office London. They didn’t know I had to share a bedroom in my parents working mans flat. A bed space in a billet at Biggin Hill would have been like heaven to me. All too soon January 1956 came and I was back at the Central Dental Laboratory in Finsbury Park where after stoppages my pay was just £6 per week. I’d left home and was paying £3 for my room in SE London. I tried desperately to get out of Dental Technology but couldn’t do anything else. The Suez Crisis broke and I persuaded the old Unit to call me up for my 2 weeks reserve training they did and the London County Council had to continue to pay my salary, such as it was. There I met a RoyalAuxillary Air Force Cpl who suggested that if I needed to earn more money because I was getting married I might join. I did and was still serving in 3604 Fighter Control Unit when I transferred to the RADC as a Regular in Jan 1959. A part time job at Guys Hospital in 1956 on Research work with Dr D J Anderson was my salvation casting tiny appliances for animals in silver and gold during my 20 hours which paid £5. I had the other 20 in which to earn some more.
After the six month contract at Guys I secured a full time job at the USAF Dental Clinic, but it was 25 miles from home. It was great there and I thought of emigrating but didn’t have the fare. We got married in September 1957 and moved into a two roomed flat overlooking Sydenham Railway Station with no bathroom and a shared toilet. The situation was desperate I could have bought a maisonette then for £1400, I’d left the RAF with over £200 in the Bank and a car, but I didn’t earn enough to qualify for a mortgage.
A breakthrough seemed to come when I got an established post as a Senior Technician at the Royal Dental Hospital Leicester Square in July 1958 but it was a disaster after working with the Yanks, it was truly terrible and I still didn’t earn enough to get a home for us. I was assured on interview that I would be required to do Saturday morning duty only once in every four weeks but my name appeared on the duty roster for duty every week, I rebelled.
My pals from evening classes had done their National Service in the RADC and they all said it wasn’t too bad. I thought it can’t be worse than this. Working for peanuts being exploited and not even earning enough to buy a modest place to live. Therefore if it was worse, at least the pay would be better.
There was pay during advanced technical training, better leave, Education and full employment for 22 years with a Pension after that. I joined and had it all, even my sport. The Oi/c Army Cycling Union knew my palmares and soon had me captaining both the Army Track and Road Race Teams. At that time there was a need to raise a Regular Army in order to bring an end to National Service. Army Public Relations used champion sportsmen like me to the fullest to aid recruiting. After two years in Aldershot and nearly four at QA Military Hospital Millbank London I was posted to SHAPE Paris France, and me a racing cyclist who’d had a slight chance to take part in the 1955 Tour de France with Hercules Cycles/Great Britain. In August 1964 I exported a twin (bungalow style) mobile home as there were few MQs there. Paid for it from allowances in three years, when Gen de Gaulle required us to leave by April 1967, on the rear party I pulled out in August because the DO and I were both Francophiles and had volunteered to stay behind to look after and despatch the families and their mobile homes to join their men in Mons Belgium. The French language I’d been taught by the RAEC in Camp Voluceau was used to negotiate for the QM a cheaper rate for transportation of the Mobile Homes by a local contractor.
Within two years of enlisting and when only a Corporal I had a house, a new one, in Church Crookham. Nobody believed it could be done, but I realised that my pay had gone from £11 per week in London at the RDH to £13 in Aldershot so I simply took my Pay Book along to the Building Society and showed them that half of it was for allowances and they were Tax Free! The powers that be did not take long to recognise this as a useful recruitment inducement and ‘the Military salary’ was quickly introduced.
General Henry Quinlan was my CDP in Paris, which was great for my family and me because I knew him from QAMH London when he was still serving and used to hide in my Lab drinking tea and socialising whilst leaving my telephone number with his Colleagues at the War Office should they really wish to see him, whilst he was visiting his ‘Outstations’.
He was better than a father to me; we’d talk about his getting out of France long after Dunkirk with his New Mobile Dental Unit and his Technician and Clerk 100% in tact and then being told by his CO to drive if off the jetty into the sea. He insisted that we London Irish types should learn to control our tempers for our own good. As he a full blooded Irishman had had to. He would ask me questions on obscure subjects and then informed me that he was going to recommend me for a Commission as I’d answered every possible question that would be asked on the Regular Commissions Board.
My next employing Officer concurred, but I hadn’t the confidence coming from such a humble background. At the end of my career I was to bitterly regret that decision for most of my friends had made a successful transition. The Queens Warrant which I knew would come and never did, was proof that one should seize an opportunity when it presents, and grow with the responsibility that follows. But my thanks are forever to the RADC for giving me the knowledge that they thought I would suit. In Paris he would baby-sit for us, we would take the cot and the baby boy over to his chateau and he and his wife would care for him all night, so long as we were back for him to take her to Mass at 0800. He took a holiday in Rome and said that was a place I should visit. “Not me Sir” said I, “I’m not a left footer and have absolutely no interest in seeing the ‘Cape of Good Hope’”, “no you fool”, said he “I’m not talking about the religion I’m talking about the Ladies”.!
We took a touring holiday with the Foreman of Signals and his family through France Switzerland and Italy, toward the end there
was a telegram for me when we reached a campsite in Italy from the General ordering me to return to Paris at once for on routing to the International Sports Festival in Crystal Palace London the last line said “I requested permission for you to live out”…….he knew
my in laws lived less than a mile away! The Army was challenging all comers in the Boxing Ring and on the Competition Cycling Rollers (where you race the bikes held by stewards on rollers that drive hands on a clock face). I got through to the televised final and then won it for the Army. Those PR bods never missed a trick but I enjoyed a week’s allowances whist living ‘out’.
I did two tours in Dusseldorf and loved it, so did my wife and son. But this included a six month unaccompanied tour in Cyprus after the Turks invaded which was great except that when I returned it was to find that the Queens Warrant that I’d earned had been given to a miscreant. In the interest of the Corps of course. For that reason I didn’t complain then but I did during my last tour when they suddenly discovered that after I’d signed on to complete 22years they asked me to leave for my National Service would mean I would get a pension two years early. I just treated them with such respect as they deserved, which wasn’t much and they set about reducing me. But my wife had secured a post as a housekeeper with the Consul General, the first paid job she’d been able to get in 20 years and we had plans for the use of her pay. Every indignity inflicted on me reached the Government and that gave me the strength to resist and see it through to a conclusion. Thus enabling us to buy a large piece of land in Normandy France obtain planning permission export and erect 2 W H Colt of Kent Swedish Chalets each with 4 bedrooms and a huge triple garage. It was hard assembling 18 tons of building materials between 1981 and 1983. On earnings related whilst I looked for a job as a Ceramics Instructor in this beautiful pastoral region! We opened them for holiday lettings in 1983 but they weren’t profitable and we struggled financially until 2004. Once again I called on my Military expertise to help pay the bills and joined 372 Maxillo Facial Surgical Team RADC(V) from 1986 being demobbed on the day the first Gulf War was declared on 15 Jan 1991 at age 58.
In May 2004 I told the Mayor of our Commune that I would soon be in difficulties with rates and taxes to pay for three buildings. To help me he allowed me to split the land and sell off the 2 chalets. At about that time Jean-Claude Janvier from the next hamlet who saw an RAF Typhoon Pilot killed in July 1944 asked if I could arrange a recognition ceremony at his grave for the 60th Anniversary of his demise. Major Vince Ward helped me and through him GSM Joe Fairburn and his team who were organising the march past at Arromanches of veterans for the Queen offered to lay a wreath a month before. Four immaculate SNCOs laid a wreath from the present to the past and it brought tears to the eyes of the locals who buried F/Sgt Robt. Blair 257(Burma) Sqn one of nearly 200 Typhoon Pilots killed whilst in action in support of the ground troops. He has pride of place on their war memorial at La Cressoniere and I find it touching to see the cross of Saint Andrew beside the tricolour at his grave as each November 11th we join with the French ‘Anciens Combattants’ as they lower their standards beside each grave and call the names including his followed by us all saying ‘ils mort pour la France’-‘they died for France’.
The resulting publicity, I am sure, led to us selling the chalets to a French Air Force Officers daughter her baby son and daughter and her accountant husband who commutes to Paris daily by TGV (fast train). Daniel and Delfine Sanchez live there as their residence. He the grandson of a Spanish Civil War Refugee. They are good friends and we keep in touch by email. I cannot describe the satisfaction it gives us to know that all we went through should have such a ‘Happy’ ending. We never gave up and this is the reward. A Spanish/French family living as our neighbours in a British made, British built home in Calvados France. Last year the Alencon motorway opened with a junction at Orbec which is just 10 miles from our second home. We now reach it in 6 – 7 hours via the Tunnel, whereas by Portsmouth Ferry it was nearer 13 hours and sometimes longer.
Thank you again Royal Army Dental Corps.