The life of Alfred Sinclair Johnstone began in 1900, but that life ended when he became John Davies in 1919.
The full story, based upon what we now know, is told in my book The Boy Bugler. This page is intended as a companion to the book and, I hope, an invaluable resource for those interested in an extraordinary life spent, in so many different ways, among the machinery of war.
Engineering remained a constant throughout his life. In later years this found expression particularly in model engineering, a lifelong passion which he pursued with remarkable ingenuity and skill.
Woolwich, 1919
Woolwich was an important centre of the newly formed Royal Army Ordnance Corps, with its depot and School of Instruction based there. John Davies arrived at Woolwich in the summer of 1919 and remained with the Corps until, later that year, he was sent to Devonport in preparation for overseas service.
In October he embarked for Egypt, where he would spend the next several years.
Egypt
In October 1919, John Davies left Devonport for service in Egypt. It was the beginning of a posting that would keep him overseas for several years and become an important period in his life.
His surviving photographs provide an unusually rich record of those years — of military service, travel and a country very different from the one he had left behind.
Alexandria
Davies was posted to Mustafa Barracks in Alexandria, where the surviving family photographs provide a much less formal record of his life than the official military portrait.
They show the men with whom he served and the workshops in which they worked — an early glimpse of the practical engineering that would remain at the centre of Davies’s life long after he left the Army.
The Marriage Certificate
It was in Alexandria, Egypt that John Davies met Eleonora Maraki, who was the daughter of a Greek farmer from Crete. Nora was said to be a dressmaker. They married on 11th December 1923 at the British Consulate in Alexandria.