Longtime Ago People

The Navigator’s Son

• M I L E S • Season 1 • Episode 10

Share episode

Llewelyn Williams - David 1955

father/son 

What remains when a father disappears from a child’s life at the age of seven? When I sat down with David Williams, I found the answer lay not in grand gestures, but in fragments—sausages sizzling on Stanley Beach in Hong Kong, bowling club outings, and the fading images of a man he barely knew, yet whose extraordinary life continues to echo through the decades.

In this episode of Longtime Ago People, I journey through memory and history as David pieces together the remarkable story of his father, Llewelyn Williams. Born in 1922, Lew volunteered for the Royal Air Force at just nineteen, becoming a navigator after an officer famously told him, “Any bloody fool can drive a bus. It takes brains to get it there and back.” The odds were harrowing—more than half of Bomber Command airmen never returned home. Yet Lew flew around thirty missions before being shot down over France in June 1944.

What followed reads like a wartime thriller: the sole survivor of his seven-man crew, rescued by the French Resistance, captured by the Gestapo, imprisoned in Buchenwald concentration camp, transferred to Stalag Luft III (the site of the infamous “Great Escape”), and finally liberated as the war drew to a close. Tragically, the chemicals used to delouse prisoners would later cause the cancer that claimed his life in 1963.

But David’s story isn’t solely about wartime heroism—it’s about how we preserve the memories of those we’ve lost, how family stories sustain us, and how love finds a way to endure across generations. Through vivid recollections from relatives and his father’s friends, David has assembled a portrait of a man he barely knew, yet whose legacy shaped his life in profound ways. And when a loving stepfather named “Binks” entered the picture, David experienced what he describes as “a very privileged upbringing… because there was a lot of love going around.”

This conversation is a moving exploration of family history, resilience, and the powerful ways our ancestors remain present in our lives—even in their absence. 

Send us a text

“Follow Longtime Ago People wherever you get your podcasts.”

Copy this RSS feed and paste it into your podcast app.

https://feeds.buzzsprout.com/2503597.rss

Instagram: @longtimeagopeople

Blog: longtimeagopeople.com

Have a story echoing through time? I’m listening—300 words or fewer.

"In a world where you can be anything, be kind."


Miles:

some stories begin with silence, an absence that echoes through generations. Today, we're going to listen for what remains. In this episode, I'm going to talk to a dear friend of mine, david williams, about his father that he lost as a young child.

David:

Well, we're going to be talking about my late father, uh shemelin william, of the Hong Kong and Singapore governments, and before that the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve. So we're in a pub in.

Miles:

London, victoria. The Victoria, that's right, which is in Victoria, surprisingly. First question what's your earliest stories that you remember hearing about your father? I mean he died when.

David:

I was seven, we lived in a place called Stanley and we had this sort of top floor flat of a three-story building and they were shaped like a horseshoe around a big area of green with a guineas blade bar. You could walk down the road to the beach. It was about a five-minute walk and then you could just sit on Stanley Beach and we would go down to Stanley Beach and my father would bring sausages along and, as from the other kids, we would barbecue these sausages over the open fires on the beach. That's my earliest memory, actually. Yeah, and the other one was that they would go to the hong kong bowling club and this was in the days before drink drive, obviously, and they would give myself and my two friends who lived in the same block they would give us a packet of peanuts and a bottle of coca cola and then they would go in and basically drink after them and drive home.

David:

It's horrible. Think about it now. It really is, you know, yeah, and that was usually on the weekends. You know it was. It was a very privileged life. I mean, it really was. You know, it was very enjoyable. But yeah, he had, um, had a lot of sense of fun. He would always be organizing things, getting kids to have a game around us and that sort of thing.

Miles:

Same sort of question, really, because he lost his father at a very young age.

David:

It would have been in February 1963, so I was eight in the November, so I was seven, and I mean I didn't really know much about it because I mean it was, there were a strange generation talk about things. I mean I was just, you know, my father's oldest friend in the RAF. He just he just went away for a while and then I was staying with different friends and relatives around the city while my mother was obviously visiting in the hospital and then he died. And and my uncle, alan um I never really know whether it should be pronounced alan or alin because it's a-l-u-n but alan emling jones um, who was with my father in the raf not on the same squadron, but they were drafted in together and went training together and he told me that my, my father, my late father, had died.

David:

I remember a really delightful memory of alan because he was a smashing bloke. Later his sister died and was married to my stepfather and my stepfather subsequently married my mother and there was some kind of an estrangement there. I've already got to the bottom of it. But first marriage was to Alan's sister. So I mean there was a family connection there and a manner of speaking. But Alan and I remember my eighth birthday party in November 1963. So that's what.

David:

Seven months after my father's died and my birthday was November the 4th, which funnily enough is the same as my late father's but Alan decided that, as the following Sunday the day after was November the 5th, there should be fireworks, and he basically turned the back garden of my house into a sort of a Brock's benefit. He must have spent an absolute fortune on these things and you know, I just I just remember shrieks of laughter and the smell of burned cordites and and I was up until god my mother was very strict about things like this and alan wouldn't let her put me in my friend's bed until about 11 o'clock. I told him she was very angry then because she was quite, you know, she was quite solid. She was very disciplined about, you know, routines and things like that, and this was wildly disruptive.

Miles:

Did your mum have any particular stories about your father?

David:

There was only one I can remember and she used to tell this to everybody and they were actually apparently apparently they'd been out to now the ancient Welsh society which would have dinners and the initiation certainly involved eating a raw leek which he passed. And they went to this dinner party which I think might have been at the Plymouth Arms in St Fagans, just outside Carthage. They were driving home, you know her, in a evening frock and in a dinner jacket, but home, you know her in an evening frock and in a dinner jacket. But she decided he'd had too much to drink and she should drive and there was an A55 with a big chrome strip down the side and apparently she scraped this on the wall.

David:

Wow. And he said I think you've hit something. No, I haven't, luke. Yes, you have. Okay, you've hit something. No, I haven't. Stop the car. So she stopped the car and he said just turn around, go back up there. And he's standing there and he picks up this big clutch and he says what the bloody hell do you think this is? Are you saying Scotch mist? And that cost him a few bob? That you know, because, yeah, I mean again, I have to add, this was probably in about you know 1958 or something. They'd come home on home leave, as he used to.

Miles:

Let's talk about your father's wartime experience. This is quite extraordinary.

David:

I think he never sort of saw himself, I think, as a hero. He just saw himself as an ordinary man, and he's not highly decorated or anything like that. What actually happened was in 1922 he was born In 1939, at the age of 17, he joined the local defense volunteers, which later became the Home Guard, and I think he probably would have been drafted eventually. But what he actually said was that he wanted to volunteer for the raf. See. So, because he actually had already put in and said well, you know, if I'm going to serve, I will serve the raf. And the raf was over because of the battle of britain. I mean, they were just flooded with applicants, you know, they couldn't process them all, so he's kind of on on the back pedal for a while. That's remarkable, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, and, and then he was he. Then he was drafted in, I think, august of 1941. So he would have been nearly 19 at the time.

David:

They were talking about, you know, the usual sort of stuff. He was an aircraftman, you know, second class, which is where you start, do a lot of square bashing and that sort of thing. And then he wanted to be a pilot and they put them through all these aptitude tests and they discovered that he was brilliant at mental arithmetic and trigonometry and everything else, because he was actually a trainee accountant. At that stage he was actually at the Citadel in Cardiff. He was trained to become a member of the Chartered Institute of Public Finance, you know that's what he was doing. So, in he goes and he said, well, I want to be a pilot. And and the officer apparently this is a story that my mum did say to me he said the officer said, look, old boy, any bloody fool can drive a bus. It takes brains to get it there and back and that's what you've got. So I'm afraid you're gonna have to navigate the bloody thing. So that was that then. So, um, I don't know what happened, but eventually he finds himself on a ship going across the atlantic to canada, um, with you know what turned out to be later his best friend, alan, england jones, you know, and alan was also going over, and alan was going over, um, I think alan was actually, um, a bomb aimer over. They went and I think it was about six months. I think they trained them very, very thoroughly and then they would come back and they would do like a train stint in the UK, lots of train flights. How old was he at this point? He would have been just over 19, coming out to 20. Wow man.

David:

So then he joined this squadron in 105 Squadron Halifaxes, flying, I think, out of South Yorkshire. He was sort of navigating Halifaxes, right, flying, I think, out of South Yorkshire. He was sort of navigating Halifaxes and I think, from what my mother said, he flew something like you know, didn't quite do a complete tour. He flew something like 30 minutes. He found that you had to do 33.

David:

But the thing is, what people don't realise, you know, and I didn't realise, is that the casualty rate on every single raid was 5%. Basically, if 100 airmen went out on an average raid, five of them would be killed, which means that if you've got to do 30 missions, statistically you'll be dead after 20. So actually very, very few airmen made it Once you've done a tour. That's the way it was. People don't realise this. I think it's 50, you might have to check this. It's either 55 or 58 thousand airmen in Bomber Command were killed. The total number of men who served in Bomber Command was just over 105,000. So half of them were killed Statistically. I shouldn't be here, and neither should he? Well, so am I A bit of a relief. So that was it.

David:

Where they were, he was. I think he was quite lucky in the sense that I don't think Halifax has had quite the payload that Lancasters could deliver. We had more Lancasters because they could fly further and they could drop more, but Halifax was still quite successful. So a lot of what he did was actually over France. So they were hitting industrial targets, railway lines, bridges, things like that in France. So he didn't go on the mass bomber raids. They would be quite small local affairs, which meant that they didn't really. I mean, if you'd flown over the Ruhr or if you'd gone to hit Hamburg or Berlin, you were going to get everything thrown at you. But if you were over France, the Germans weren't that bothered.

David:

On the night of June, the 25th 1944, they'd hit a target in France and they dropped their bombs and they were coming back and they got taken out by flak. The skipper gave the crew the order to bail out. So he was actually at the escape hatch and trying to get out, and then the order to bail out. So you know, he was actually at the escape hatch and trying to get out, and then the aircraft was hit again. So he got out right and the other six guys didn't. They were all killed. But the aircraft crashed and they were all killed Somewhere at home. I've actually got a photograph of their graves because the Germans did actually get them out and bury them properly.

David:

So he landed and he had a flesh wound in his forehead and when he landed he sprained his ankle and so he hit his parachute up a tree as best he could and he hobbled off and found an outhouse. He'd lost his boots as well. Getting out, he found an outhouse, he found a pair of shoes in the outhouse, which he'd probably been, and he went off and he found this farmhouse and the guy in the farmhouse said look, there's lots of Germans about here. Please don't stay here, you'll get us all shot. So he said, all right, okay, fine.

David:

So he went off and found a haystack and he hid in that and slept for the night, and then he got up and he started to sort of go back towards. He wasn't sure whether it was the same farmhouse, but he wandered back to this farmhouse that he could see, and then he saw two chaps in uniform next to it. So he turned around and started to go the other way and they called him over. So he thought well, I'm caught, because he thought they were germans, but actually they were in the uniform of the french forestry guards, so they were actually frenchmen. And they said look, you know, we can hide you for the moment, but you know, you just have to stay out of sight all day and then we'll see what we can be done.

David:

So they took him to this farmhouse, which turned out to be the very same farmhouse where the guy said please hide, there are too many germans about. And that guy then said to him all right, in, you come. You know, there you. And they fed him, they treated him, they got a doctor to wrap up his sprained ankle, you know, do his bandage, fix his head, everything. And then they hid him out of sight and took all his papers because obviously they're very compromising and said we'll stay here for a bit, we'll take you to Paris. And they were there. And then eventually he's there.

David:

And you know, I do remember my grandmother saying that he said he absolutely panicked because this gendarme walked up the drive or agent policeman, anyway, he sort of like officer Crabtree, you know, in a low, a low, and he thought, oh Christ, I'm done for now. And this guy sort of came in and he said, right, so I'm taking you back to my place. He said, you know, and then you can stay there and we'll take you on to Paris. So my place, he said you know, and then you can stay there and we'll take moving on to paris. So he stayed in this place and they produced false papers and everything for him, you know, saying that he was some a wood, a wood cutter, which is pretty unlikely it was that. But anyway, then they stuck him in the back of a lorry and they drove off to paris and they, they put him in this, this house in paris, and um, and the gendarme was sort of with him then, you know, and and was off duty at that point, I think. And then he went away and they'd only been in the house about three days and it was raided by the guitar.

David:

So they took him in and they interrogated him and this was at a time when Hitler was sort of saying that all Allied pilots would have been murdered on capture, you know, because they would Imagine. I mean, we're now talking, now talking. You know, summer of 1944, france has been invaded. You know, um the americans, I mean germany is literally being bombed 24 hours a day. I mean, the americans are flying over in the day dropping a load of bombs on plate, and then the raf are coming at night and doing the same thing. It's unrelenting pressure. You know, they raided this house, the kristoffer and they. They took him away and the couple that that were in the house, and also the gendarme. After being interrogated, you know, they did because he didn't have any papers, you know. So they were a bit skeptical but then they sort of realized that he was probably telling the truth, because I mean, but I think they could tell really, probably because he was probably better nourished than most of the local french would have been. You know, they were starving them really at that point they sent all of them off to buchenwald, but the two french people and the gendarme, a couple of days later the gendarme disappeared. So I suspect he was murdered. I believe that the french couple actually survived because I have, you know, a recollection of my grandmother telling me, when I was about nine or ten, they'd gone over to thank them. My mother and father had gone over to thank them sometime in the sort of, you know, early 50s, before he went off to Singapore. So that was you know. That was actually okay.

David:

So I mean, he went to the concentration camp, yeah, well, there he was, and there was a guy, I mean I think a Luftwaffe officer, quite senior, not Goering he's named. I can't remember his name now, but he somehow I don't know whether he was walking by and told, or I read somewhere that he was going past the camp and was confronted by, you know, an RAF officer in uniform who said look, you know, there are a load of us in here and we should be in a period of time. Anyway, this guy kicked off some and Goering got to hear about these people, raf flight crew and Buchenwald basically gave orders that they were to be taken to Stalag Luft 3, which was the official Royal Air Force. Stalag Luft 3 was literally it was the camp for RAF air crew and particularly pilots. All RAF pilots went there because all, I think, all RAF officers, which my father wasn't, he was an NCO, he was a flight sergeant at that point and all RAF pilots of the sub-rank because some of them were sergeants and some of them were officers were all classified by the Germans as important prisoners. I don't know why, but they sent them to Stalag Luft 3 as many as they could. That's right, I guess.

David:

So yeah, and that, of course, is where the Great Escape took place, shortly before my father actually arrived there. It was so. He was there from about, I think, october 1944, and then in the early part of 1945, I think, or possibly the late part of 1944, it was in. It was near a town called saga, which is a small town next to the city of breslau, which I think breslau is now in poland and I think that's what used to be east prussia.

David:

Um and the red army were very close, so the Germans got all the prisoners up and marched them, you know, over two or three days about 60 or 70 miles to another camp called Lucknow, where they put them all in there. Then the Red Army pitched up, I think in about January, february time, and you know they didn't actually liberate the camp, but they basically took the Germans prisoner and took over the camp. They were still getting Red Cross passes and things through. After a lot of haggling. I think the Russians actually let them go. I have a suspicion that they were using them as hostages for the Russian POWs that the Germans had, because of course some of those POWs fell into American and British arms and it's a pretty nasty episode. But Stalin wanted them back and of course, like Cossacks, they sent them back and Stalin murdered all of them.

Miles:

You know it's horrible really Okay going on to your mum at that particular moment. So how long before she knew he was okay?

David:

From the moment that she knew he wasn't okay it vanished to when she knew that was three or four months, because it was only when he went into Stadlerville III, which was then visited by what they called the Protecting Power, which was the Swiss neutrals. They would go into these camps and they would actually I mean, believe it or not, this is an extraordinary thing about it now, because the standard rule was that you know, any prisoner being taken is only obliged to give his captors his name, rank and serial number and doesn't give any more, and you're not allowed to extract that information under torture. So of course, what you do is you do various blandishments. The Germans apparently used to have a sort of a form that you filled in and it would give you details of your home address and your date of birth, files, fingers and all this stuff in the app. Is it just so we can let your family know where you are? Obviously they're gathering. They do get valuable intelligence. Well, I mean, some guys would be fooled. Most guys wouldn't. They just write name, rank and say that's all you're getting. I'm not.

David:

The protecting power would come in and, apparently, they'd walk into these places and they would say well, you know, are there any new guys? Yeah, well, these are the new guys. So you interview the new guys. Do your family know? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you know? Okay, fine, we'll make sure they know. And then they would actually go back through diplomatic channels and say, well, we found the following people you know in these prison camps, and these are the ranks and the Germans information office to us. They would give us who they were and what regiment, what unit they were attached to, and they would then send that back.

David:

And then the war office would send a telegram to say so, the first telegram they got was probably three or four days after he hadn't come back, and it was obvious he wasn't coming back. We think he's missing in action, believed killed, because they knew the plane had gone down. Then they discover there's only six dead guys and he isn't one of them. So they don't know where he is at that point. So now they're coming back and saying, well, he's still missing in action. We can't confirm that he's dead. And then the last thing, when went to my paternal grandmother, whom I never knew, say and I still remember it now?

David:

that's our grandma, it said information received through the International Red Cross informs us that your son, flight Sergeant Carolyn Williams, is a prisoner in German hands, and that was it. They didn't tell you where they were, so that would have been About October, maybe November. So she then probably immediately toddled round from Crestley Road to Riches Road, which was about a mile away to tell my mother that he was about a mile away to tell my mother that he was alive.

Miles:

So we've got some paperwork here. This is to do with the concentration camp, yeah that's right.

David:

Well, I mean, this one is I mean, these are literally facsimiles of the. I found these on the internet under Allied Airmen at Buchenwald and that's actually literally, you know, I mean, that is actually his record card.

Miles:

there you can see he's got all the 20th of August 1944. That was when he was picked up.

David:

And then he's got the 4th of November which is presumably when he was taken and he was shot down on the 29th. Well, that's actually slightly inaccurate. It was actually the early morning of the 26th. They took off late night 25th, you know. They took six KIA, one evaded and captured, which is him, brained ankle on landing, captured 11th of August, so about six weeks, and then he was taken to. You know, house was raided on the 11th of August 1944, and everyone there was arrested.

Miles:

Okay, so how do you know all of this? How do you know all this?

David:

Most of it was from Grandma Mooney. That's Floss, yeah, floss. When my father died in 1963, joe and Floss came to live with us in Rose Park in Cairn. I mean, they basically stayed with us. My mother went back to work then. She had been a housewife but she went back to work at the City Hall where they welcomed her with open arms. So she went back there as a plant typist and I think it was more.

David:

I don't think she needed the money, because I think my father got a fantastic pension from the Crown Agents when he died and there was also. He bought life insurance as people did. And there was also the money for compensation from the German government because he got this testicular cancer which was a direct result of this fluid for compensation from the German government. Because he got this testicular cancer which was a direct result of this fluid that they used to paint on the head and the genitals when they went in to discourage lice. They did a concentration. Yeah, it was some sort of white stuff apparently, and it turned out it was high. I mean, I don't think the Germans knew it was carcinogenic, not that it would probably have bothered them if it was, but it was carcinogenic, not that it would probably have bothered them if it was, but you know it was carcinogenic, you know, and that's just a fact.

David:

I mean, I think Buchenwald was not Buchenwald, I think, was a concentration camp for you know politically undesirables. I don't think they put Jews in there per se it wasn't like Auschwitz but they put, I think they put in communists, lower Russian prisoners in the county, particularly commissars and that sort of thing. It was for people that I think the regime deemed you know, politically inconvenient as opposed to you know, jews and gypsies, you know, which was just there you go. How he met my mother was because he was a trainee, you know, public finance accountant, working in the audit department at cardiff city wall. And my grandfather, before the war, um, was in the town parks department, quite senior, and my mother, who'd left school at I think she'd left school at 14 and gone and done a pickling's course, so she was a. She was a by profession, she was a shorthand typist, slash, secretary, whatever you want to quote. So she went there and worked, I think, in his department and he sort of spotted her. She was, I mean, I've got photographs of her when she was younger. She was actually quite stunning. She had a massive sort of, you know, head of auburn hair, you know, and green eyes, you know, so very Irish looking, which is understandable.

David:

Joseph had married my grandmother, who was then Florence Lloyd, in 1921. My mother came along in 1924. Joe had actually been a professional soldier, born in 1883, joined the British Army, I think in 1900 or 1901, served in the South African War, served in the Great War. He was an RSM at that point, regimental sergeant major, and he was attached to a forward HQ. So it wasn't like you know, the big chateau where General Haig sat around, but it was like a forward HQ with an intelligence unit in it. The communications, like a consent, everything went back there. You know, it's almost like what's going on, who's doing what? And that was overrun in the german offensive of the. I think it was the late summer of 1918 before they ran out of steam. This colonel that I think he was sort of you know his direct co got wounded and he got mentioned in the dispatches for managing to get him back through. I would imagine it was in total disarray. Yes, we managed to get him back through the German new lines all the way back to where the British had reformed. It was only a few months after that that the war ended with the armistice. I think he stayed in the army for quite some time, because I think he went to Shanghai for a year or two, from what my grandmother told me, and then came back and then I think he went into local government and he was working in the secretary's department.

David:

So my father was sort of trying to court my mother. So, let's see, this would have been sort of about 1940, I think you know um my mother, and sort of yes, because that's right, because he would have been 16 then. So he was trying to court her then and my grandfather summoned him to his office just to see what this young man was like. And then he went home and said to my mother that's Daryl N Williams, that one with all the pimples. Is he the one you want to go after? She said it's not his fault, father, he can't help having pimples. No, I suppose not. He seems like quite a civil young man. Anyway, she wasn't put off by the pimples. No, not at all. I mean, she wasn't like that, she really wasn't. I mean I think he was regarded as extremely handsome, pimples aside. There you go. Clearly I didn't get my looks from him, but anyway. So they were sort of courting.

Miles:

So was he in the RF.

David:

At this point no. At that point no. He was a trainee. He was in the local defence volunteers every evening and all the time.

David:

And at that stage then my grandfather was also head of Cardiff Air Raid Precautions, which then became civil defence. So he was one of the fellows that would run around shouting put that bloody light out. But that was what he did, that, actually. On an aside, apparently he hit on the idea of setting fire to fields out to the west of Cardiff and Bury to fool the German bombers into thinking that that was where they should drop their bombs. So then they would come along and they would drop their bombs on empty fields.

David:

I don't think he got a vote of thanks from the farming community, maybe not, but it probably did save Barry Docks a lot more damage. I mean, you don't realise it now, if you go along to the old docks in Barry now and you look at places like Thompson Street, which runs down to the dock more or less, and you realise that there are big chunks of modern buildings there and you think, yeah, there are places here where obviously the bombs landed and knocked out houses, so you'll get, like you know, victorian terraces, and then there's a huge gap where they've got like a convenience store or something and a car barn, and you think, yeah, obviously you know there were actually houses along there which are now. You know they were bombed, but barry did get plastered. Quite a lot of cops got hit a few times, but not as much as barry, I don't think. Yeah, so I mean he was.

David:

He was some chief of health school defense, so they, they got engaged, I think when he actually went into the raf. That was the point at which, you know, I think, my grandfather sort of said well, you know, laura, I consent to that marriage. You're talking traditional Catholic family here, you know. So he wasn't, by the way, I'd be notionally C of E, but apart from the day he got married and the day he died, I don't think he ever went to church in his life.

Miles:

So why do you think your dad went into the RAF?

David:

I think it was a boy's own thing. You've got to look at it from the point of view of the time. You have the Battle of Britain, where I mean essentially, and all these. If you think about it, really it's extraordinary that they were able to. Actually they were outnumbered by 5 to 1.

David:

Now, okay, that's not a straight sort of, because most of the German planes were light bombers and the other issue that they had was that the fighter cover could only sort of stay over the United Kingdom, you know, to cover the bombers for perhaps 10 or 15 minutes. After that they were out of fuel. If you chuck in a plane around the sky, use them on a special. All fighter command had to do really was go up and wait for them. And they knew they were coming, you know, because they'd see them messing on the french coast on the radar. They just send up all of our defense guys. The messerschmitt 109 fighters would come over, you know.

David:

And obviously he thought well, this is where I want to be, this is great, this is, you know, all that propaganda. You know that I mean, you've seen the posters of the young lads, you know, with the flying helmets and all this. But you know, and he obviously felt a romance to it. Yeah, yeah, that's right. Yeah, I mean, I think that's the way he felt. Well, a lot of them didn't survive the first conflict. You know, they literally at the age of 19, took off and never came back. You know, that was it.

Miles:

But that's, that's what he wanted. Okay, so let's just talk about your mother now for a moment, and so your mother died quite young as well 1973. You had another 10 years with your mum, so you were still quite young then to lose your mum.

David:

I was 17,. Yeah, I was 17, that's right.

David:

But she did have a good life, oh God, yeah, I never got to the bottom of why Donald Noel Isaac was called Biggs, that's right. So Donald Noel Isaac was called Biggs. So she knew him slightly. She actually couldn't stand him. She thought he was incredibly arrogant. There was some sort of ball that she went to. And she said she went to this ball and he was there and it was a fancy dress ball and he always used to make me laugh when he would talk about this. And she said anyway, he was dressed as a pirate, apparently, and she walked in and he would always say and your mother walked in, looking as though the whole world was scum and there was a nasty smell, and he said I thought I'll take her down a peg or two and he dipped his pistol into his beard and sloshed it over the dress. He was probably, you know, well tanked up at the time and she was not happy. And I don't think it was exacerbated by the fact that my father so my father Lou knew Bink slightly and wasn't prepared to make a mistake. So these were quite cross about that. But anyway. So I don't know quite how it happened, but I think it was Alan that actually introduced us. They became really good friends.

David:

I just remember as a boy at the age of about nine. They got married in. I think it was in February 1965. So it would have been about two years after my father died. Binks' wife, inez, had died at about the same time. So he had three children and he had a boy called peter, who's still alive and lives in new zealand. Yeah, and peter was about 10 years old, he was 19. And then rhoda, my stepsister, who is about 18 months younger than me, so she's what 68. And ben, my stepbrother, and this will blow your mind Ben is actually two days younger than Chris, my little brother, your little brother, yeah, okay, so they're like that.

David:

They're like that Because from the age of about four. They were together and they shared a room and you know they're very close, near enough, shared a birthday, yeah, and near enough a birthday, yeah, yeah, yeah, and near enough a birthday, yeah. So I mean that, you know. So they're very, very close those two. Yes, so I mean, and it was, it was infallibly happy I mean it really was.

David:

I mean, bakes was he was. He was one of these guys that just basically loves children, I mean, and he was just brilliant with him. Um, he just knew how to get the best. He knew how to make everything fun. I can't recall a day in his company that wasn't well spent. I mean, even when I was a difficult teenager and a grumpy bugger, he was still brilliant. He just didn't. He was just such a good guy he really was. I was very, very fortunate. A very privileged upbringing really, because there was a lot of love going around.

Miles:

It was really good, but, yeah, just a couple more questions for you then, david. Do you ever for any moments perhaps they're unexpected where your father's presence seems to surface in your own life, is it?

David:

only, only in dreams, and then only if I wake up fairly quickly afterwards. Oh, I'm not, not really. I mean, apart from the fact that I mean I sometimes look at, I look at grandchildren. I think Christ, he looks like my father.

David:

You know, that's a bit, that's quite, you know, disconcerting, but the same thing, you know, it's like my grandmother, Flossie, who had the most famous frown in Southeast Wales. I mean, she could just reduce anybody to a spot of grease simply by glaring at them. And I mean, on one occasion she took me to school and she saw a policeman on the other side of the road trying to arrest a mystery who was getting better on me. I mean, this guy was actually, you know, he wouldn't get the cuffs on and he was starting to overwhelm this copper and all five foot one and seven stone of my grandmother, charged across the road after yelling stay here. And proceeded to battle this poor bugger after death with a parasol. But she hit him so hard she broke the parasol. She just threw it in the bin. I've hit his tree, I wouldn't keep it anymore. She battered it and the policeman said, oh, stay there a minute, man. And he said, no, I've got to get this boy to school, he's far too busy.

Miles:

You've definitely got some character.

David:

I was late as well. I still remember Brother John saying why are you late? Unfortunately, she was like I said. Well, I'm late because my grandmother was hitting a man in the basement and was trying to get him. She checked it out. I remember him coming to me with a sword and saying well, you don't need to serve a detention boy and I shan't be scalping you because you told the truth.

Miles:

It seems to me today, just listening to your story, that obviously you lost your father at a very young age and that was just devastating. He had a fantastic story. It sounds like Binks stepped in and filled that gap. Oh, big time.

David:

Big time, I mean, but people don't you know. I mean, it was just such.

Miles:

Some people don't get that.

David:

No, no, no, he was such a great guy. He really was. He was such a great guy, I mean really really funny. He had a laugh like a squatch in a cavalry charging over a tin bridge. He could light up the whole. I've always known about your Welsh background background, but it's quite interesting to hear about the irish background, the irish yeah. Well, you see now. Well, that's, that's joe.

David:

Now flossy moon, she, now her father her father, I think was a was a boiler maker, so she lived in the cardiff docks, there just around mount stewart square, that's. I remember her telling me a story that there'd been some sort of strike. I mean. So she was born in 1903 and she said she was about seven or eight at the time and her mother would send her out to the shop and she so she'd go down butte street to the shop to get things. Anyway, whatever this strike was, it ended up that basically turned into a riot and I remember saying, um, that that this sort of all kicked off as she's walking down and this she said, this seaman grabbed her by the arm and quickly whipped her into an alley out of harm's way and then apparently took her home because of this right. So they said where do you live? Because all the way home, knocked on the door you know, and presented and said you know there was trouble in the centre of Buta and for which, apparently, her mother gave him sixpence, which was very very delightful.

David:

You could probably get blind drunk on sixpence in 1911. Definitely, yes, I remember her telling me that story. And then she well, she was probably a flapper, if you think about it. When she married in the 1920s she probably had the sort of you know, the permanent way, you know marcel wave you know, and the short, yeah, yeah, and the short skirts and everything.

David:

She was a very good dancer, she loved dancing and I remember her telling me that that she met joe and, um, he was a bit hesitant because he lost his wife a few years before she died, just after the spanish flu epidemic. She got flu and she never really got over it, so she died about 1919. So they had this court she was about 16 at the time and they had this courtship, you know. That went on and then in 1921, they got married and then my mother came along in 1924. And Jo was, you know, he's a real, real martinet.

David:

I mean, flossie was ferocious, bless her. I mean she probably had to be because I think she had to give as good as she got with Joe, as we expected. I mean, the funny thing is she was a really traditional housewife. I mean, although she was a fully trained nurse and she nursed for a long time during the war, she kept nursing because it was part of the war effort. After that she time, and during the war, she kept nursing because it was part of the war effort. After that she then went back to being a housewife again, but she would always she cooked for him clean for him, you know, and did all that and that's what he expected.

David:

I have a vivid memory of him weeding his garden in crew before my father died, so I would have been about six and I remember he was weeding his garden and because it was sunday, he'd been to mass, yeah uh, with my and his only concession to the fact that he was weaving the garden was that he removed his hat and he removed his coat and he was out there in, basically, you know, highly polished oxford shoes, a waistcoat and his trousers with turnipsups, you know, and probably braces underneath, I'll bet, weeding the garb. And I remember being amazed because he had these very long. He rolled his sleeves up and he had these double cuffs and he had these, presumably to adjust the length of the cuff.

Miles:

Yeah, I remember those. I was so impressed that about 30 years- ago. I actually bought a pair. I haven't seen them for years. I mean, my grandparents wore it.

David:

And I bought a pair. I've still got them somewhere.

Miles:

I think they've probably gone rusty now Final question for you today, Considering that you didn't leave Dad that long and considering that you know his history. If you could talk to him today and ask him one question, what would that be?

David:

I'd probably like to say to him um, you know, I'm really sorry that you were only with my mother for about basically 14 years, but if it gives you any comfort, I've been with the same woman for 50 and I'm very happy with well.

Miles:

Thank you very much for your time today. It's been a pleasure speaking to you. We've spoken about intergenerational connections going through your grandparents and your and your parents, so thank you very much for that you.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Miles

Host