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This story A8090552 is submitted by the British Schools Museum on behalf of Mrs Rosemary Ransome.

My father, John Arthur Monks, signed up to the RAF in September 1935 for a six year term. Little did he know then that the outbreak of a world war would keep him in uniform for far longer than that.

He never talked much about his time in the RAF and his war-time experiences and, when I was young, I wasn’t really interested and never bothered to enquire. Oh how I regret that now! My father died in 1981 and so for me the opportunity to find out more has been lost. There are so very many questions I would like to ask him now - but it’s all too late.

He was born in Birkenhead, Cheshire and after leaving school he worked as a garage mechanic in Heswall on the Wirral. When he joined the RAF he trained to be an aircraft mechanic and served on the aircraft carrier HMS Courageous, visiting Singapore in 1937. He also served on the carrier HMS Ark Royal, joining her just a few days after she was commissioned in November 1938. He was very lucky to have been transferred from both these ships before they were torpedoed and sunk.

He was a good trombone player and was soon recruited into an RAF band. A picture of him in the band can be seen above. When my father died, I came across his trombone in its original case in the attic and I keep it still as a treasured memento. I’m not at all musical but I can at least manage to get a sound out of it, albeit a rather discordant noise — there is a definite knack to playing a trombone and not an easy one to master.

In 1937 my father was posted to the RAF base in Pembroke Dock, South Wales and it was whilst stationed there that he met and fell in love with my mother Gwendoline May Hitchings. They were married in 1942 (a photograph and details of their wedding can be found on this website at Article A8095845). At the same time, my father’s good friend, Bill Rowlands, fell for my mother’s elder sister, Doreen, and they also got married.

Because I know so little of my father’s war-time history, I wrote to the RAF record office to see if they could let me have a copy of his service record. Unfortunately, they were only able to provide me with a very brief outline - but it did show me that in 1941 my father was ‘Mentioned in Despatches’ for gallant and distinguished services. Regrettably I have no idea what the exact circumstances were but I would dearly love to know. The records indicate that notice of the award was posted in the Supplement to the London Gazette dated 1.1.1941 but all my attempts to find a copy of this notice have so far failed.

The records also show that during the war my father was attached to 268 Squadron and was stationed at or posted to many RAF bases across England — Grantham, Henlow, West Drayton, Snailwell, Ringway, Westzoyland, Ibsley, Old Sarum and Morcambe to name but a few. The text of a letter sent by my father from RAF Snailwell to his mother in the autumn of 1941 can be found on this website at Article A8089293.

In December 1944 he was posted to the Middle East Forces in Egypt. A copy of a letter he sent from Egypt to his mother in May 1945, just after VE day, is posted on this website at Article A8088366.

Fortunately, throughout the war my father was lucky enough to escape injury — the only spell he had in hospital was in Egypt in February 1945, not long before the end of the war, to have an impacted wisdom tooth removed!

On returning to the UK my father was posted to RAF Hednesford from where he was demobbed on 30 August 1945, having reached the rank of Flight Sergeant

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