Arthur Ellis Davies

Arthur Ellis Davies was born 21 August 1921. or at least I think that is the correct year, I was told that date by him many years ago but then I know that he retired from work around 1980 and would then of been 65 years old, there seems to be a 5 year error for me to correct. He died in 2000 I do know, but not which date.

I know he started work as a teenager in the locomotive repair works near Manchester, UK. As apprentice his job was to light the furnaces at 4 AM so everything was hot when the rest of the workers started. During WW2 he was in the North Africa campaign, which also implies his birth year was earlier than 1921, he was a sapper I believe with the Royal Engineers. In any case he ended up for a while as a signalman on the railway around Suez.

He was shot during the invasion of Sicily, which he described as "a monumental American cock up", As a sapper his groups job was to arrive at the beachhead last when the fighting was just about over, and establish the supply lines. He was in one of the first landing craft, with very little fighting experience and almost no ammunition. When he eventually rejoined his unit he was given the task of being signalman again this time on the rail system south of Naples, in a town called Torre Annunciata, near Pompeii and Mount Vesuvius.

I visted there with him in 1963 and met the old stationmaster and several other old friends of his. He seems to have stayed there for some time.

At some point during or just after the war he met Dorothy Grist, a land army girl from Gateshead, C. Durham, in Bicester, they married and had 2 children.

After the war he returned to working for British Railways as a signalman in Manchester, Piccadilly and after 1957 in South Devon where he was also a union official with the National Union of Railwaymen.

After the marriage of his second child he left his wife and moved to live in Starcross, Devon where he died.