8 Issue No. 42 David (Dave) Charles Clark, fourth son and eighth child (of eleven) of Godfrey Charles Clark, dairyman and later refuse collector, of 35 Murray Road, South Ealing and his wife Ethel, only daughter of William James Lester, engine driver at the gas works, was born in Brentford on 19 December 1922. On 21 February 1917 at Hounslow, Middlesex, his father enlisted in the Labour Company of the Queen’s Royal West Surrey Regiment. One of Dave’s elder brothers, 6348704 Private John Herbert Clark, 2nd Battalion, Queen’s Own Royal West Kent Regiment, was killed in action in Burma on 1 January 1944 and is buried in the Commonwealth War Graves Commission Cemetery at Taukkyan, Yangon (formerly Rangoon), Myanmar. His gravestone reads: Loved in life; Treasured in death; A beautiful memory all we have left. The Last of the Forgotten Army Dave explained: “There were too many of us for my parents to look after – eleven altogether – and we only had a flat, so I spent four years in a home run by nuns. I was the only one who was sent away and it was a hard time because I was often beaten. When I came back home, I went to Little Ealing Boys’ School. I just had to learn what I could and have no memories from those days. After leaving school at fourteen, I went to work in a shop. There were three shops, all in a row in South Ealing and all owned by Charlie Herapath: a wood shop, a wallpaper shop and a tool shop [Charles J. Herapath of 23 Ealing Park Mansions was described in the 1939 Register as a builders’ merchant]. I worked in the wood shop and learned carpentry: it was an apprenticeship, I suppose. I learned to make windows, doors and cupboards and I was paid five shillings a week. It was a lot of money then. Although I had to pay my parents for food and lodging, I still bought lots of sweets, I remember. “I worked in the wood shop until I was eighteen. Although I tried to join the Royal Navy at one stage, they said that I was still too young. The war had just started, and I had to do something and I fancied the Navy. Eventually, though, I enlisted in the Royal Air Force at Acton, and they gave me a medical. After basic training at the recruitment training camp at Padgate [near Warrington in Lancashire], I was posted to the former Butlin’s Holiday Camp at Filey in North Yorkshire [which had been requisitioned on the outbreak of war and renamed RAF Hunmanby Moor], where I was trained as an Air Gunner group V. I also did some training with the Army as an infantryman. It was a period of my life which I wanted to forget because it wasn’t very nice: I was always being shouted at and told what to do. The RAF Regiment was formed on 1 February 1942, and I was assigned as airstrip defence at RAF Cardington in Bedfordshire. In 2802 (Field) Squadron, there were two infantry flights and one air defence flights.’ Mosquito fighter-bombers and Halifax heavy bombers were based at RAF Gravely in Cambridgeshire, just 15 miles from Cardington, where Dave explained that his carpentry skills were put to good use: “I used to make sections for the wings and fuselages for Mosquitos, and I also made plywood drop-tanks.” The Mosquito, nicknamed the ‘Wooden Wonder’, was largely of wooden construction and plywood drop-tanks were fitted under their wings for long-range reconnaissance missions. His youngest daughter, Vicky, said: “Ironically, Dad also had a motorbike and sidecar as his first vehicle, and we were all transported around in it for many years. His first sidecar was from a converted fuel tank [which was some seven feet long] but he part-exchanged it for a ‘safer’ one for Nan, Mum and us children to be transported in!” Dave continued: “I came home on leave from Cardington with a one day’s pass but there was no-one at home – so I went to see my sister, Frances. She worked at a munitions factory in Park Royal and I knew where I could find her. Her friend at work was called Sophia and she introduced the Dave Clark and Roy Crouch, Penang, 1945 Dave Clark
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