The 1940s Family, War & Engineering

The 1940s were a defining decade in Jack Davies’s life.

The war placed him firmly within the world of military engineering, where his practical knowledge of vehicles, machinery and armoured equipment increasingly became his profession. At the same time, family life continued at home and another side of Jack was developing just as rapidly.

By the immediate post-war years he was already deeply involved in model engineering. Photographs taken at Christmas Pie, Normandy, show substantial projects under construction, including a miniature locomotive and his traction engine. These were not retirement projects undertaken decades later, but sophisticated working models being built while Jack was still pursuing a demanding engineering career.

The surviving photographs from this period therefore capture several strands of his life running alongside one another: family, wartime service and research, photography, and an increasingly ambitious passion for engineering at home.

The Davies Family 1942
A family portrait taken during the height of World War II.

REME No. 13 Command Workshops — 1945
A group photograph of inspectors at No. 13 Command Workshops, REME, Aldershot, taken in 1945. The original Gale & Polden caption identifies Jack as “W. Davis,” although his name at the time was John Davies. Given Gale & Polden’s reputation as military photographers and the likelihood that the names were supplied from official records, the error is difficult to explain. Whether it was no more than a clerical mistake, or whether there was some reason for avoiding even his assumed identity, is open to question. This is unfortunately the only copy of the photograph I have been able to obtain, and it survives as a poor-quality scan.

Jack Davies with “Old Faithful,” his pre-war Morris Minor, c.1949.
Jack Davies with “Old Faithful,” his pre-war Morris Minor, c.1949.

The Cycling Davies Family1949
The Davies Family on bicycles outside their home Litchfield, Flexford Close, Normandy - from left to right Christine, Violet, Alice and Alfred

Higgs Boson - The Motor Cycle - 6 May 1943

This Workshop Has Spelt Enjoyment!

In May 1943, The Motor Cycle published this three-page article under the name John Davies. He describes his home workshop and the rebuilding of a 150cc New Imperial motorcycle for £1.

Written while he was working as a senior examiner for the War Office during the Second World War, the article also contains some intriguing autobiographical details. He recalls his first motorcycle ride at the age of fourteen, joining the Navy “as a boy”, his time in Egypt, and his discharge in 1925.

A full transcript of the article