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What did you do in the War Dad?? I guess that's a question that many of my generation
have asked their Dads
over the years, but up until recently other than a few funny anecdotes
I'd hit a brick wall of silence. Recently I discovered the website
for REME - the Royal
Electrical and Mechanical Engineers - the Regiment Dad was in during the
War. I asked Dad if he might like to go to visit the museum
there. I suggested they may be interested in seeing some of his
old pictures and this website is the result.
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Dad is Joseph Thomas Hicks
Joe to his friends, the best Dad in the
world to me.
Born 27th February
1918, he was one of the first conscripts into the army at the outset of
World War II, and one of the first radar engineers to be transferred to
REME on its formation in 1942.
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Joe and Ivy |
Ivy and Joe now
Picture taken Xmas 2003 |
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I've done the website work, the rest of this project was done by
Dad. The same skills that made him a radar expert in World War 2
have not been wasted. His career after the war was in the retail
trade although he always had the job of mending all our family's radios
and electrical appliances whenever they went wrong. At the age of 80 I
gave him an old computer of mine to amuse himself with and Mum
hasn't been able to tear him away from it since. He soon had to
buy himself a new one though, it couldn't keep up with all latest
gadgetry Dad wanted!
Dad's original
account of this was full of 'army speak' and initials - "ACAC"
and so on which meant nothing to me, so I've tried to translate so that
I and any other non-army people would understand it. I hope I've
not made it too simplistic so as to annoy those reading who would have
understood perfectly without!
Kay Drury, February
2004 |
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Early
Days>> |
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