Part 4

Additional Material on the “Lionel” Hallidays: General Francis Edward Halliday (1834-1911); the General’s eldest son Lionel Edward Halliday (1872-1959); his second son Francis Noel (1889-1928): and Lionel Edward’s four sons.

Introduction to Part 4

The Author of Hallidays, Colonel Cecil Alexander Tollemache Halliday (C.A.T.H) was a distinguished member of the “Medstead” branch of the family and, in preparing his history, he was able to draw on a considerable body of data on his own close kin. This Part of the Blog is intended to put some flesh on the lives of individuals in the “Lionel” line skeletally outlined in C.A.T.H’s admirable work (See Chapters 8 and 9 of Hallidays). The material provided here is drawn from family records and memories, official records, books and Wikipedia. This section is written primarily for close “Lionel” branch family and introduces background information that may help the younger reader understand the historical context of the peripatetic lives of their progenitors. It is inevitably difficult in the twenty-first century to comprehend the rationale for a “Royal Marine Artillery”; how Sri Lanka’s thriving tea industry developed in the late nineteenth century; and how it came about that a British company straddled global telecommunications in the first half of the twentieth century with its personnel fulfilling the functions performed today by national Post Offices.

The author is only too aware that this blog contains virtually no data on the wives and daughters of the individuals whose lives are here recounted. It would certainly benefit from the inclusion of material on his great grandmother, F.E.H’s wife, Louisa Walter, his grand-mother Constance Pardoe as well as on F.E.H’s five daughters.

1. General Francis Edward Halliday

The General’s life is introduced in Chapter 10 of Hallidays. During the nineteenth century links were close between the “Medstead” and “Lionel” Branches. Both Branches produced military officers who tended to retire in Hampshire or the West Country. General Francis Edward (F.E.H.) communicated regularly with his first cousin Lieutenant-Colonel Stratford Charles (S.C.H.) whose unpublished history is acknowledged by C.A.T.H, his grandson, as the source for much of Hallidays.

Hallidays tells us that F.E.H., barely out of his teens, saw action in the Baltic in 1855 as a lieutenant in the Royal Marine Artillery (RMA) an arm of the British forces that existed only between 1804 and 1924. The genesis of this now defunct service is interesting and recounted in the History of the force, published in 1930, by Edward Fraser and L.G. Carr Laughton. Essentially the RMA originates in a change in the technology of naval gunnery in the late eighteenth century. Until the Napoleonic wars and even for many years after, naval guns were muzzle loaded and fired only solid lead or cast-iron shot, usually from very close quarters broadside on. Before the arrival of the ironclad in the 1840s canon balls could pass through even the toughest oak hulls and create holes at water level or destroy the rigging essential for manoeuvring sailing ships. Success in the great sea battles up until including Trafalgar depended not on the accuracy of the gunners but on the navigational skills of ships captains and crews in maximizing the exposure of enemy ships to a salvo of solid metal from one’s side-mounted guns (“broadsides”)..

In the Napoleonic wars the British navy began to experiment with the use of shell ammunition, which exploded on impact and was more effective than solid metal as an anti-personnel device and for causing

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explosions through lucky hits on powder magazines on enemy ships and land forts. Specialized ships (“bombs”) were commissioned. These carried a mixed compliment of naval personnel to perform sailing duties and gunners seconded from the land-based Royal Artillery to man “mortars” that could be adjusted for range and which fired explosive shells. Perhaps inevitably this arrangement lead to problems as artillerymen, and their officers, resented the harsh discipline of the navy officers. After an intense exchange of missives between Woolwich (the Royal Artillery H.Q.) and the Admiralty, a solution was devised in 1804 (interestingly based on a model introduced in France by Colbert in 1682); the navy undertook to train its own artillerymen to man the mortars on the “bombs”. The Royal Marines (founded in 1664) were asked to supply “from their most intelligent and experienced” personnel to be known as the Royal Marine Artillery for action on “bombs”.

Later the Royal Navy looked to the RMA to spearhead its adaptation of ships guns to breach loaded rifled weapons capable of firing shells accurately at distant targets. The change in gunnery technology was itself the consequence of replacing the old sailing ships with iron-clad steam-driven vessels. It was also a natural transition for the RMA to provide field artillery support to the Royal Marine Light Infantry as this amphibious force came to be deployed in campaigns often waged as some distance from the coast. During F.E.H.’s career as a HQ staff officer, the RMA supplied artillery support for the Royal Marine Light Infantry in “colonial wars”. These included the suppression of the Indian Mutiny (1857). And in one year, 1860, the force saw action in Vera Cruz, Mexico: in China in punishing Taiping attacks on Europeans; and in New Zealand in quelling a Maori rebellion. Later the RMA was engaged ashore in Africa in wars against the Ashanti (1873-74) Zulus (1879) the Boers (1881). There was evidently plenty of work for RMA staff officers located at HQ in Eastney near Portsmouth in recruiting, training, transporting and provisioning RMA units active in the far flung, if now largely forgotten, campaigns of the Imperial age.

As recounted in in Chapter 10 of Hallidays, F.E.H. followed his uncle, Francis Augustus, into the RMA. He was, in 1846, enrolled, aged 12, as a cadet at the Royal Naval College, Deptford, where his instruction included “common and decimal arithmetic; the first six books of Euclid; algebra as far as simple equations; plane trigonometry and the use of logarithms; and elementary principles of mechanical drawing”. Then came courses in practical gunnery. F.E.H. earned his commission as a lieutenant in the RMA at age 21 in 1854. Britain was then at War with Russia and F.E.H. saw action early in the Baltic. Whereas John Delap’s commission in 1758 would have been purchased. Hallidays p.19 describes the genesis of the purchase system discontinued in 1872. The navy commissions of his son, grandson and great grandson (F.E.H.) , were earned through service as midshipmen or after rigorous training.

In the Baltic, where F.E.H. saw action, the allied navies faced no threat from the Russian Baltic fleet which declined to leave the protection afforded by the forts at Kronstadt that controlled access to St. Petersburg then Russia’s capital . To force the Russians to maintain garrisons that absorbed troops that could otherwise have been transferred to Crimea, the allied navies made a number of raids on smaller Russian positions along the Gulf of Finland. Sweaborg at the entrance to Helsinki harbour (then Russian territory) was, after Kronstadt, the major Russian fortress on the Gulf of Finland. At Sweaborg, the RMA, in an echo of the “bombs” of the Napoleonic war, fired shells at the forts from converted barges carrying a single 13” mortar. At the successful Sweaborg operation, on August 9, 1855, F.E.H. was the sole officer on one of fifteen British and five French mortar vessels involved in reducing the fortress. F.E.H. along with his fellow mortar vessel officers was mentioned by name by Admiral Dundas, the British commanding officer, in his despatches to the Admiralty reporting the successful action. The rapid firing of mortars had however crippled the unit. 3000 rounds had been fired in seven hours. Three mortars had exploded and others left in a dangerously weakened state. No replacements being available, the mortar boats were towed back to England and, with winter setting in, did not

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return to action in the Baltic which freezes in the winter. The war concluded in April 1856 with the signing of the Treaty of Paris thereby avoiding a further spring naval campaign in the Baltic.

The Baltic naval campaign may seem a “side show” overshadowed by the land campaign on the Crimean peninsula where Britain and France, together with their Turkish ally landed on the Peninsula and fought a number of inconclusive battles marked by incompetence. The Earl of Cardigan (a distant Tollemache relative by marriage) led the disastrous Charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava and Florence Nightingale gained fame by reforming the chaotic medical services. The allies captured the Russian naval base at Sevastopol but the vastness of Russia condemned the land campaign to stalemate. In fact a naval historian, Captain Peter Hoare in The Habit of Victory suggests that the experience of Sweaborg was critical in inducing the Russian Tsar to accept peace in 1856 on terms proposed by the allies. He writes:

The (Anglo-French) plan for 1856 was to threaten St. Petersburg the capital of Russia by steaming directly to an assault on Kronstadt using nine armoured floating batteries, two hundred and fifty gunboats and a hundred mortar craft. The bloody siege and capture of Sevastopol, on the edges of his empire in September 1855 had had little effect of the decision of the Tsar to accept allied terms in early 1856. What concentrated minds in St. Petersburg was the threat that the Royal Navy which had fired Copenhagen in 1807, burned Washington in 1814 bombarded Algiers in 1816, destroyed Acre in 1840, taken Bomarsund (a Russian fortress on the Aland islands in the Baltic) in 1854 and ruined Sweaborg in 1855 and was now preparing to attack the capital. The Tsar sued for peace.

After Sweaborg, 1855 F.E.H. military career was fortuitously free of any recorded action. He was attached as a gunnery officer to the flagships of the British Mediterranean Fleet based on Malta: the Duke of Wellington (1856) Marlborough (1857) and Royal Oak (1868) but the fleet was not engaged in hostilities in these years. It seems that early on he was drawn into staff work at HQ and he received regular promotions at a time when the RMA was expanding: Captain in 1863; Battalion Major (1867); Major (1877) Lieutenant-Colonel (1880), and Colonel (1884). Apart from his two posting to the Mediterranean fleet and a short spell in Cambridge (1875-1878) as a recruiter, F.E,H. ‘s career was centred on Portsmouth and in particular as a staff officer at the Eastney barracks to which he was promoted Commandant in 1886. His tenure as Commandant at Eastney was short – six weeks. It is possible that the “inspection” recorded light-heartedly in Hallidays (p.59) had unfortunate consequences. Alternatively, it is possible that F.E.H’s was appointed commandant as an “honorific” (there appears to have been no financial advantage to the rank) in the knowledge that he was on the point of going on half pay at age 52. Half-pay is a euphemism for laid off – technically transferred to the pool of reserve officers liable to recall in the event of major hostilities but in practice free of duties). However, as was the usage of the time, he was promoted to Lieutenant-General in 1888 and full General in 1893 steps which increased the “half-pay”. There is an amusing account in Hallidays (p. 60) of F..E.H.’s reaction to the news of his last promotion. He retired definitively, at age 65, in 1899.

After a career passed for the most part at Portsmouth it is not surprising that F.E.H. should on retirement have decided to locate in nearby Itchen Abbas. Later F.E.H. and his wife Louisa move to Taunton where he died in 1911. His widow continued to live there until her death in 1915. Somerset became the home base for F.E.H’s male descendants until L.E.H. moved back to Hampshire in 1930.

In addition to his evident capability as a soldier, F.E.H. had other talents. He enjoyed amateur theatricals. He was also an excellent artist. His water colours of Valetta Harbour (c.1856?), then the home base of the

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Mediterranean Fleet, adorn the walls of A.L.H.’s Ottawa home together with a depiction of F.E.H.’s home on the Itchen stream.

As a postscript, in might be noted that the RMA played a prominent role in the Boer War and WWI. In the latter it manned newly introduced howitzers (that had never seen a ship) on the Western Front and smaller artillery pieces in the Dardanelles campaign. They were also present in military operations in Africa. But in a more traditional role they were in action at sea -manning the heavy guns of battle ships and battle cruisers at Jutland. By 1918 the RA numbered perhaps 5000 of a combined Royal Marine establishment of 55,000. But in the inevitable contraction in numbers that followed “the war to end all wars” the decision was taken in 1923 to formally amalgamate the RMA with RMLI into the “Royal Marines” a force which survives today and from which both units had descended 120 years before.

1.1. Lionel Edward Halliday

Chapter 13 of Hallidays, provides a brief sketch of the life of Lionel Edward Halliday (L.E.H.), the elder son of General Francis Edward Halliday. Here an attempt is made to fill in some of the details based partly on recollections of his descendants but primarily from a “scrapbook” he compiled between 1894 and his death in 1959. The scrapbook comprises an assortment of hand-written entries and press clippings. The written material covers both biographical data (family births and deaths, places and dates of residence in Ceylon and England, and changes in weight over time) but also copies of poems. The selection of poems copied reveals much about the man: a romantic sentimental nature and wide reading, not only of English poetry but also romantic of works in German, French and Latin. The press clippings also record family births, marriages and deaths as well as reflections of L.E.H.’s working interests notably the auction prices of teas on the Colombo market.

Little is known of L.E.H’s early schooling. As recorded in Hallidays, L.E.H attended schools in Southsea before being inscribed, aged 16, presumably as a boarder, at the United Services College at Westward Ho on the North Coast of Devon (near Bideford). Despite its official sounding name, USC was a private academy established by a group of military officers serving in India who, in the fashion of the time, wanted to educate their sons at “home” in Britain. Unlike other English “public” schools, the USC was not intended to prepare its students for university but for entry to officer training colleges at Sandhurst and Woolwich (army) and Dartmouth (navy). Perhaps unfairly, the USC has been described (Encyclopaedia Britannica 1976 in its entry on Rudyard Kipling) as “a new, inexpensive and inferior boarding school.” Kipling was born in 1867 so will have preceded L.E.H. to USC by at least five years and they did not overlap. For Kipling, the College was to have a lasting influence and his time there is immortalized in that upbeat saga of boarding school adventures, Stalky and Co published in 1899. L.E.H. ‘s scrapbook contains press clippings relating to Stalky (in real life General Dunsterville) and to Kipling.

L.E.H. left no record of his impressions of USC; we have no idea whether he was happy there or what influences the school had on him. However, his scrapbook confirms a considerable capacity for languages and the fact that he was on the USC first XV in 1889-90 (probably front row forward). We know that after leaving USC, L.E.H. did indeed attend Officer Training for two years (September 1890-June 1892). But his Scrapbook does not reveal where. In any event, he never received a commission. L.E.H. was very probably disappointed at his failure to follow in the footsteps of his four immediate forebears all of whom were commissioned in the army, navy or marines.

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In the Great War L.E.H. enrolled as a volunteer rifleman with the Ceylon Planters’ Rifle Corps . But L.E.H. aged 41 in August 1914 was probably considered a bit ancient for active service. Press clippings show that he was in attached for “drill and musketry” to local detachments of the Corps and attended annual “camp” for a month each year until 1921.

With a career as a military officer precluded, L.E.H. opted for agriculture; first, abortively, in Manitoba (Oak Lake) 1894-95 where he endured a harsh climate (without modern heating) for little more than a year and then as a tea planter in tropical Ceylon. L.E.H. was to remain in Ceylon from 1897 until his retirement to England in 1931.

First introduced to Ceylon in 1867, tea did not emerge as a major export crop until 1880 with the conversion of coffee acreage to tea following blight and pest attacks on coffee. Ceylon imported seed from China and Assam and most teas were hybrids of the two major tea varieties, Chinese Bohea and Indian Viridis. After an initial period of exponential growth until around 1897 when L.E.H. arrived the industry continued to grow at a more measured pace fuelled by strong demand and rapidly in line with demand from Britain, North America, Australasia and Russia (until 1917). 75% of tea acreage was in the hands of companies, two thirds of which were British including L.E.H’s employers. It has been estimated that by the 1920s, 900 European planters supervised a labour force of 350,000 mainly Tamil workers. Tamils were either long residents of Ceylon or indentured labour from India. Ceylon’s main ethnic group, the Sinhalese, formed only a small part of the plantation labour force.

Typically of that epoch L.E.H. received no theoretical instruction in tea planting but was expected to “learn by doing” as an assistant to an experienced planter. It has been written that a Ceylon “planter was perforce rather a jack-of-all-trades, farmer, builder, road maker, engineer, doctor or dispenser”. From early in his assignment he would have been called on to recruit, house, feed, medicate and discipline Tamil labour gangs

in the planting, cultivation, picking and curing of tea. L.E.H.’s scrapbook reveals that during his 34 years of service in Ceylon, he transferred between estates

no less than twenty times. The names of the estates are exotic, almost romantic. Meddacombra near Dimbula in the Central Province, where L.E.H. apprenticed as a planter 1897 and where his brother followed at the outset of his career as a planter in 1902, was the largest of Eastern Producers and Estates Limited’s properties and indeed one of the biggest estates on the island (2500 acres under tea cultivation). It boasted no less than 9 Europeans and had its own tea factory. Evidently it was an ideal training ground for beginners. Meddacombra

with an elevation of 3500-5000 feet falls within the “high” growing zone. Thereafter L.E.H. moved to other E.P.&E.L. estates: Bululwalle, (Matale District) a low elevation property, Hope (Hewaheta back in the high zone with its own factory)where L.E.H was listed 2nd of 4 Europeans, Norwood, Danduhelana and later Villani Gu

(Dickoya) and finally Coondegalla (Ramboda) where L.E.H. is listed as the sole planter. After his third home leave in 1912, and leaving his wife and four young sons in England, L.E.H., for

reasons unknown, switched employers from EP&EL to Lipton working first on an assemblage of estates known as the Pooprassie Group (Pussewala and Galaha). Although L.E.H. subsequently worked for very short stints on other estates owned by Lipton’s: Atherton (Kotmale), Goodenstone (Mozella) these were probably as a temporary replacement for younger men volunteering for war service and L.E.H. was soon back on Pooprassie where he remained from May 1914 until May 1917 and to which he returned as estate manage with two assistants from 1923 until his final home leave in 1929

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Apart from rugby as school, L.E.H. does not appear to have been an active sportsman. In Ceylon he was a member of clubs that provided golf and tennis but perhaps more relevant, the clubs were the centre of planter social life.

L.E.H.’s first term in Ceylon was marked by a severe but unidentified health problem. L.E.H. kept a detailed record of his body measurements starting with his schooldays. His weight was fairly constant at around 150lbs from 1897 to 1900 but catastrophically fell to 129lbs by February 1902. Dysentery or typhoid (enteric fever) seems the likely cause. But there is no record of his being hospitalized (as he was when contracting “enteric fever” in 1920).

Seemingly L.E.H made a complete recovery and he married at the end of his first home leave on October 28 1902. He was 30; his wife, Constance, the daughter of Edward A Pardoe of Bishop’s Hull, Somerset was 19. They were back in Ceylon by November 1902 with the return sea voyage constituting a honeymoon.

L.E.H. and Constance’s eldest child, Alec, was born in England in April 1904. The fact that the mother returned on her own while the father remained in Ceylon perhaps reflects Constance’s or rather her mother’s concern over the adequacy of health facilities in Ceylon. Be that as it may, the other three sons were all born in Ceylon on or near the estate being managed by L.E.H. as the time.

In April 1907, L.E.H. due again for home leave and accompanied by Constance and the two elder boys returned to England, staying near Taunton. Home leaves were a regular feature in the life of tea planter. It seems to have been generally accepted that Europeans working in tropical countries had to take periodical trips to a temperate climate for reasons of health. Leave was apparently more frequent (every four years) for planters working in the lower and therefor hotter estates than in the higher altitudes (five years). Home leave involved a round boat trip of two months (Colombo/Liverpool via Suez) and six months with relations or in a rented home. Except during the Great War, L.E.H. returned to England every five years.

On L.E.H’s third home leave in 1912 he and Constance were accompanied by their four boys and, as family lore would have it, four ayahs (native nanny) They rented a house in Taunton and Constance and the boys remained there. The two elder boys completed their schooling in Taunton (mainly Queen’s College). No indication of what happened to the probably apocryphal ayahs!

For L.E.H. now alone, life in wartime Ceylon must have been very lonely. His poetry selections of the period are highly romantic evocations of absent love and the importance of letters. In 1920, L.E.H. was again in poor health suffering from “enteric fever” (typhoid). Before proceeding on home leave he was at Hatton Nursing Home from May until September 1920. Data in the scrapbook shows a rapid return to normal weight in the period after the sojourn at the Nursing Home.. He then enjoyed a period of recuperation with his brother in the Kilani Valley.

After a home leave, again spent in Taunton, L.E.H. returned to Ceylon. Constance remained in England where the two younger boys were still at school. In Ceylon L.E.H. was joined by his eldest son Alec (tragically dead in 1924) and later by his third son George both of whom followed their father into tea planting. As recounted below, second son Lionel and fourth son Roy chose different careers and did not follow their father to Ceylon.

L.E.H. s scrapbook reveals glimpses of his work and interests in Ceylon. There are numerous press-clippings showing the Weekly Tea Market Reports published by the Colombo Brokers’ Association and

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containing average auction prices for the teas of the major estates. There are some assorted Tamil phrases presumably learnt for the work place. Press clippings cover practical topics such as the efficacy of plantain juice as an antidote to the bite of a cobra or the deadly Russell’s viper. As an estate superintendent, L.E.H. was the recipient of an official communication from the Governor of Ceylon in 1919 with directions on how the Peace Treaty was to be celebrated. Evidently the estate managers were integrated in some degree into local administration. They were also expected to enforce labour regulations and L.E.H features in a case in a Police court against a Tamil worker who had falsified his name and work records to avoid revealing that he had been employed on another estate which he had left with outstanding debts.

In 1930 during his sixth and last home leave, L.E.H and Constance moved from Somerset to Buriton Field, Liphook, a village in the South East corner of Hampshire near where the county abuts both Sussex and Surrey. The house was part of Constance’s inheritance from her own parents. L.E.H retired there from Ceylon in 1931.

Constance died, from causes unknown, in 1939 (aged only 58) but L.E.H. continued to live at Buriton Field until around 1956 when he sold the house and moved into the Liphook home of one of his two “daily” cleaning ladies (“chars”), Mrs. Trussler; the other was Mrs. Simmons. At Buriton Field these ladies took it in turn to clean and cook. They were resourceful in supplementing his cuisine in a time of wartime food rationing (extended for meat until July 1954) with local “off ration” food such as rabbit. “Pater” or more affectionately “Pops” as L.E.H. was known to his sons spent much time in his large garden where he grew vegetables for the table as well as flowers. A local gardener undertook the heavy digging and lawn-mowing. By 1948, when A.L.H. first met him, L.E.H. limped and invariably used two sturdy walking sticks. The cause of his arthritis no doubt the incessant walking on steep slopes to supervise labour gangs on tea estates. Perhaps inevitably his son George also a tea planter suffered the same immobilizing arthritis.

Buriton Field was “home” to L.E.H.’s sons, Leo and George when they took leave in England from their work in South America, Africa and Ceylon. A.L.H. got to know his grandfather in 1948, and remembers him fondly. With his moustache and cropped hair he was certainly military in appearance and managed his time. His political views reflected his ‘Imperial’ experience. In 1948 the British Government was Labour whose policies were much execrated by L.E.H. As a naïve twelve year old, A.L.H. asked the husband of one of L.E.H’s nieces, an enthusiastic Labour supporter, to explain the government’s policies. L.E.H. withdrew immediately doubtless employing his favourite expression – applied with particular vehemence to the deeds of Labour: “Pish Tosh Bah”.

Staying with his grandfather in 1948, A.L.H. was introduced to the cryptic crossword. As befitted his political views, L.E.H. was a devotee of the Daily Telegraph whose crossword was a daily source of entertainment. A.L.H. remembers being impressed by the eclecticism of the Buriton Field library that included volumes of the poetry Goethe and Heine in the original German. L.E.H. had a neighbour, Sir Laurence Mason retired from the Indian Civil Service. They had much in common including disapproval of the Labour Government’s decision to grant independence to India, Pakistan and Ceylon.

A.L.H. met up with his grandfather again in the mid 1950s when, as a student at Oxford, he made a visit in a friend’s car to Liphook. By that time L.E.H. was very frail and needing the full time care provided by his former ‘char’ Mrs. Trussler and her husband. The short two hour visit is recalled with pleasure but A.L.H. has no recollection of the topics of conversation; they certainly did not include politics! (A.L.H. was a member of the

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students Labour club and the discourse between old Imperialists and the “modern” anti-colonialists had become embittered over the Suez crisis).

L.E.H. aged 66 at Buriton Field with A.L.H (12) in 1948

1.2. Francis Noel Halliday

The record of the life of Francis Noel (F.N.H), L.E.H.s younger brother is sparse indeed. There are no surviving personal papers. He was born on January 20 1880 when his father, the General, had returned to Southsea from Cambridgeshire. There is no record of his schooling. At age 22 Frances was witness at his brother’s wedding in October 1902. He never married himself.

In 1902, F.N.H. followed his brother into tea planting in Ceylon and like his brother before him, his introduction was on the Meddacombra estate of the Eastern Production and Estates Ltd. Thereafter one can trace his working career through the annual Ferguson’s Directory partially available on the Web which lists his estate

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address and provides some description of the particular estate. From Meddacombra he moved to Aropolakande (Tebuwana Kalutara ) a much smaller tea estate also owned by Eastern Producers and Estates Ltd. From the same source we know that F.N.H. was absent from Ceylon during the Great War. He volunteered with the Ceylon Planters Rifle Corps (CPRC). A short history of the Corps by Major Anton Edema, (available on line) records that the Corps was raised in 1900 and saw action in Boer War. In September 1914 a contingent of the Corps was called up for overseas duty (8 officers and 221 other ranks). After training the unit was embarked and sailed in convoy, via Bombay, to Port Said where it disembarked to be stationed for a few weeks in Cairo. In January 1915 the unit moved to the Suez canal in readiness for a Turkish attack that never transpired. In April the Planters, incorporated into an Australian division, were landed at Gallipoli were they served as a guard unit for General Birdwood the Commander of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC). The Gallipoli campaign foundered in the face of strong Turkish resistance lead by Kemal Ataturk and allied force were withdrawn with the evacuation completed by January 1916.

Unfortunately, it has not proved possible to trace the involvement of F.N.H. in the Great War. Was he part of the contingent assembled in September 1914? He may already have been in England on Home Leave when war broke out. Did he participate in the Dardanelles campaign? Did he indeed remain in the CPRC or was he like so many of his fellow planter soldiers commissioned in Egypt and transferred to another unit to see action in other theatres. All we know for certain is that he is listed in Ferguson’s 1912 and 1917 editions as being “in Europe”. Given the exigencies of wartime censorship, the 1917 reference need not preclude action or at least postings in the Middle East. At all events, this is an area for further research.

With the return of peace the biographical data becomes more dependable. In 1920 F.N.H. is listed in Ferguson’s as a planter on the Ehellivagoda Group (Kilani Valley) . But this position marks a change from the pre-war pattern. Ehellivagoda was a low elevation rubber estate owned by the Pangula Rubber Company founded in 1910 to establish rubber plantations to meet the expanding needs of the automotive industry. It was in 1921, according to a newspaper clipping in his scrapbook, that L.E.H. recovering from typhoid came to recuperate in the Kilani Valley with his brother.

F.N.H. is again listed at Ehellivagoda in the 1923 edition of Ferguson’s but the next annual has him “Planter and manager” at Pangula’s second and eponymous estate on the Island. F.N.H. then appears to have switched companies; he is listed in 1924 as “Planter and Manager” on the Ettie Estate (Kegalla) owned by J.J.Vanderspar a Ceylon company dating back to Dutch times (pre 1815), that had recently jumped on the rubber bandwagon. F.N.H. was to remain at Ettie until 1926. But he is listed in Ferguson’s for 1927 as the sole “Planter and Manager” at Maneragalla (Pusselawa) estate owned by the Mackessacks, a Scottish family established in Ceylon. Maneragalla is a 240 acre property devoted to tea rather than rubber. F.N.H. had reverted to his pre-war avocation. But the move, perhaps motivated by a wish to be nearer his brother was short. In a 1929 Ceylon newspaper clipping found in the L.E.H. scrapbook it is announced all too starkly:

On the 16th December suddenly from heart failure at Pooprassie after a long illness patiently borne, Francis Noel Halliday, younger son the late General F.E. Halliday, Royal Marine Artillery and brother of L.E. Halliday. Aged 49.

1.3 Georgina (Mansfield) 1.4 Edith (Applethwaite) 1.5 Medora Halliday 1.6 Gertrude (Manley)1.7 Violet (Clark)

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Contributions or Web references welcome

1.1.1. Edward Frances Alexander (Alec)

L.E.H.’s eldest son Alec was born in Dawlish Devon on April 10 1904. We know he was at “The School Wellington Road” with his younger brother Leo. Both passed the “Preliminary Examination” on the same unspecified date (1916?). It seem likely that Alec, like Leo, was then admitted to Queen’s College Taunton but there is no record of his academic achievements. Shortly before 1924 he moved to Ceylon to join his father in tea planting (possibly on the same estate). He died on January 21 1924 of a “gun accident” the normal euphemism for a gun-induced suicide. A.L.H. never discussed the matter with his father, but his mother certainly understood it was a suicide. The local press reports on the funeral service at Holy Trinity Church Pussellawa. His father was present but not his mother. However, this does not mean that she was not in Ceylon. She may simply have felt unable to face the funeral. This photo of L.E.H., Constance and Alec was evidently taken shortly before Alec’s untimely tragic death.

1.1.2 Lionel Noel Percival Halliday (Leo)

L.E.H’s second son, invariably known as “Leo”, was born March 30 1906, in Norwood Ceylon. In 1907 he accompanied his parents (and ayah?) on their “home leave” to England where they resided at Norton Fitzwarren near Taunton in Somerset. He was back again in Taunton with his parents in 1912. There he remained probably living with his mother. His paternal grandfather died in 1911 and his grandmother in 1915. Of his education we know that he attended Queen’s College probably as a twelve year old in 1918. Prior to that he and his elder brother attended “The School, Wellington Road” Taunton.

Leo achieved some academic distinction. In 1919 aged 13, he passed the College of Preceptors’ Exam from Palmer’s School, Wellington Road, Taunton with a distinction in Scripture, not a topic that seems to have engaged his interest as an adult. Palmer’s school no longer exists. After “Palmer’s”, Leo was enrolled in Queen’s College Taunton, a still-functioning Wesleyan establishment. A press clipping from the Somerset Gazette of 16 September 1922 and showing “Queens College Successes” mentions “L. Halliday” (aged 16) but does not elaborate on the nature of the “success”.

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On leaving school, L.N.P.H did not follow his father and two brothers into tea planting in Ceylon. He was strong in mathematics and in 1922 or soon thereafter he joined The Eastern Telegraph Company where he was trained as an engineer. Where the training occurred is unclear but the Company certainly had a training facility in Bodmin (Leo attended the facility there on refresher courses between postings). He may also have spent time in Porthcurno the Company’s overseas cable terminal. He learnt Morse code invented in 1837 in which each letter and numeral is transcribed into a combination of long and short electric impulses translated into sound or light that are legible to the trained observer or specialized printing machine. The Code is the language of the telegraph and was later adapted to wireless communication. As an engineer Leo would have mastered the fundamental physics of electro magnetism employed in cable and later wireless transmission as well as the mechanics of the equipment used.

Eastern Telegraph was formed from an amalgamation of pioneering cable companies in 1869. Despite its name, the reconstituted company took over the first successful transatlantic cable (laid in 1866) and then laid cables to the Far East, Australasia and South America. The merged company enjoyed a Government sanctioned monopoly of cable traffic to the UK and public financial support in buying out existing cable companies. Cable communications were clearly regarded as a strategic sinew for the far-flung British Empire. However, Eastern Telegraph’s comfortable monopoly of cable traffic faced a formidable rival, the Marconi Company that enjoyed, again gratis the British Government, a monopoly in radio traffic. Initially, radio communications were conducted though long-wave signals limited in distance by the earth’s curvature. But in 1924 Marconi initiated short wave service to Australia. Competition between the two rival technologies was always likely to favour wireless, which does not require the heavy up-front investment of cable laying. In the late 1920s the British and Commonwealth Governments became concerned over the possibility that commercial competition between Eastern Telegraph and Marconi would result in the elimination of the former. This possibility was regarded by the Governments (and their militaries) with some alarm. Cable was regarded as a much more secure means of conveying military and diplomatic traffic: unlike radio it is not exposed to the vagaries of the weather and sunspots, jamming, and above all could not be intercepted by unfriendly governments. (The advantage of cable in regard to security is by no means absolute – in both World Wars belligerents used cable-laying ships to locate and destroy enemy cables. Thus in the Mediterranean where as a result of Italian cable cutting on entering the war in 1940, Malta was forced to rely on wireless for communication with London).

In response to the security threat posed by a potential collapse of Eastern Telegraph, the British and Commonwealth Governments engineered, in 1929, the merger of Eastern Telegraph with the Marconi Company to form the Imperial and International Communications Ltd renamed Cable and Wireless in 1934. The creation of a de facto private monopoly, albeit one enjoined to provide ‘reasonable’ prices now seems perverse. Evidently at the time the British and Commonwealth Governments considered that reduced competition and higher costs were a worthwhile price for the security of having a single commercially solid entity responsible for Imperial communications. Financial strength enabled Cable and Wireless to develop new technologies and make the investments necessary to maintain a complex and expanding network in peace and war. Although the British Government reserved the right to nationalize Cable and Wireless it was left in private hands during the war in which it performed commendably in maintaining communications despite frequent targeted attacks on its installations, particularly in London, Gibraltar and Malta from enemy aircraft. The Company’s Head Office at Electra House on the London Embankment was hit by a V1 rocket).

The changing technological and corporate scene affected Leo’s career. Originally trained as an engineer to service cable traffic he switched to wireless at least by 1935 (Stony Hill Jamaica was a wireless transmitting

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station) and thereafter his formal training in the England and hands-on experience were directed to the construction and maintenance of short-wave radio stations.

But this is to get ahead of ourselves. After some basic training in the UK, Leo was sent to Madeira for a further six months course in cable telegraphy before taking up his first appointment to Rio de Janeiro Brazil. Rio in the 1920s seems to have been a very congenial place for the young bachelor. Leo played rugby and was, he claimed, selected for the Brazilian national side. This may not have been a signal honour. In Brazil, where soccer is god, rugby was restricted to the small British expat community and the only international competitor would have been Argentina.

Leo c. 1927

Among the expats, there was rivalry between the British and the Germans. It may seem surprising that the respective yacht clubs persisted in holding a joint New Year’s Eve party every year an eagerly anticipated event for both communities. Predictably and after the inevitable over-imbibing, a German would raise his arm and yell “Heil Hitler” a signal for general fisticuffs that must have tested the local police. However, it was perhaps this opportunity to demonstrate national macho pride that caused the event to retain its popularity in the inter war years.

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It was in Rio that, in 1928, Leo met his wife Margaret (“Margie”) Hall. They were soon engaged and she followed Leo to England where he had been recalled for further training, this time in London. Margie and Leo were married at St. Stephen’s Church, Hampstead in August 1929. Leo’s mother attended (L.E.H. was still in Ceylon). Brother Roy was best man.

No account of the “Lionel” branch of the Hallidays is complete without a brief sketch of the life of Margie. She was born in Thirsk, Yorkshire in 1906. Her mother died in 1915 and she lost contact with her father with the result that she and her elder sister, Violet (Vi) were cared for by maternal aunts. She had an older brother, William, who moved to Australia as a young man but who corresponded with Vi and met up with his sisters in England in 1954. He lived in Sydney until his death in the late 1990s. Margie’s formal education was haphazard and disjointed. In 1923, aged 17, Margie accompanied her elder sister Violet to Rio de Janeiro to work as “au pairs” for a Scottish family. Margie returned to England in 1926 and after secretarial work in London she returned to Rio to join her by now married sister. On her second stay in Rio, when she met Leo, Margie worked as a secretary for an American company Emprezas Electricas Brazileras.

Margie c. 1927

In 1931 Leo was again posted to Rio where his only child, Anthony Lionel, (A.L.H.) was born in September 1935. In October, the family travelled to Jamaica, changing ships in Trinidad where, Margie was ever ready to recall, she had to throw her new born overboard to be caught (or not) by a deckhand on a tender. Leo worked at the wireless station on Stony Hill above Kingston Jamaica until 1938 when they voyaged to Britain where they stayed at Buriton Field with L.E.H. and Constance (who was to die the following year).

At the conclusion of their six months leave, Leo was posted to Salisbury, Rhodesia, the beginning of the “African” portion of his engineering career, which lasted from 1938 until his retirement in c.1960. Soon after his arrival in Salisbury (now Harare), WW II was declared. Cable and Wireless employees were deemed to be providing an essential service and were not permitted to join up. They always worked under a secrecy

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agreement and could be moved at the will of the company. Leo was posted to West Africa to help maintain communications between Britain and her far-flung empire and forces. It is likely that he was also involved in U-boat location. The military had devised a system whereby their radio stations would pick up U-boat transmissions and either through de-encryption or by means of triangulation locate the submarine which would then be a target for aircraft or surface ships using depth charges. Although Leo’s participation in the Second World War was limited to essential civilian work his war was not without its dangers. On his posting to Lagos in 1940 he travelled in an unprotected convoy of 11 merchant ships from Cape Town. 9 were torpedoed and he always attributed his safe passage to the fact that his ship was too slow to stay with the convoy whose vessels were ruthlessly stalked and sunk by a U-boat pack.

In West Africa, Leo was stationed successively in Lagos (Nigeria), Accra (Gold Coast now Ghana), Free Town (Sierra Leone) and Bathurst (Gambia). We know virtually nothing of Leo’s West African postings. Although West Africa escaped the strafing, bombing, and even forced evacuation or imprisonment that was the lot of many of his fellow company men, Leo’s postings cannot have been pleasant. The region is notably unhealthy with its risks of malaria and other mosquito borne diseases. Margie and A.L.H. remained in South Africa, first at the Wilderness near George and then Beacon Island, near Knysna, both sea-side resorts on the South Coast of the Cape Province. Margie took work as a receptionist at the resort hotels.

Leo c. 1960

After the War Leo returned to South Africa under instruction to move to Ceylon but shortly before embarkation Cable and Wireless determined that he should after all return to Salisbury. Instead of a leisurely

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sea voyage, it was to be an uncomfortable four days by train. After two years in Salisbury (1948) Leo was given home leave to England where he Margie and A.L.H. stayed at Buriton Field with L.E.H. From England Leo was once again posted to West Africa then regarded as extremely unhealthy for Europeans so Margie and A.L.H. returned to Salisbury by Solent flying boat (a novelty, prior to that time all travel on postings and leave was by sea). The flying boats did not operate by night so that flights were punctuated with over-nights stops at Syracuse (Sicily), Luxor (Egypt) and Entebbe (Uganda) before arriving at our destination, Victoria Falls. (The Solent flew on to Vaaldam near Johannesburg).

At a time of post-war infatuation with socialist ideas, Cable and Wireless was nationalized in Britain in 1947 with its British operations transferred to the HM Post Office. In the post Imperial age it was perhaps inevitable that the countries of South America and the newly independent former colonies of Britain came to regard as anomalous as both a risk to security and a deprivation of revenue that their international communications should remain under British (government) ownership. Accordingly there was a massive transfer of Cable and Wireless assets to national post offices. In only a few places, such as the Caribbean (even post-Independence) and most notably Hong Kong, did Cable and Wireless (privatized in 1981) maintain operations into the next century.

Southern Rhodesia was caught up in the spirit of the age, opted to incorporate Cable and Wireless’ operations into its own Post Office. In 1954, communications services were assumed by the Government of Central African Federation. The Federation which endured 10 years was brokered Britain comprised Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) then run by the minority white settlers and Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) and Nyasaland (Malawi) both directly administered by Britain. At the time the Federation seemed a rational device for spreading the wealth of the Zambian Copperbelt to the region and thus providing an incentive to the white settlers to share some political power with Africans. But within ten years the experiment foundered on the rocks of black nationalism seeking majority rule in the Crown Colonies and the white settlers unwilling to share political power with Africans.

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Margie c. 1950

Leo remained with the C.A.F. post office services until his retirement around 1960. He then took on other clerical work with the Rhodesian government. He disliked Ian Smith’s unilateral Declaration of Independence by Rhodesia in November 1965; an act that he saw as disloyal to Britain. This attitude put him at odds with the bulk of his contemporaries in Rhodesia’s white community who considered failure to approve Ian Smith’s rebellion as quasi treasonable. Sensing a troublesome future for Rhodesia, and wishing to be closer to A.L.H. and his family then living in Geneva, Leo and Margie emigrated to Malta where there was already a small community of ex-Rhodesians. The move entailed the sale of a house, which had been the Halliday home since 1962, but capital controls had been reinforced in 1965 and it was some years before the proceeds of the sale could be transferred to Malta.

Malta in fact offered much to “refugees” from Britain’s rapidly contracting colonial empire. The Maltese climate was certainly less salubrious than Salisbury’s; its summers were scorching and without any central heating stone built houses could be dank and chilly for one or two months in winter. But Malta’s climate was infinitely preferable to what would have awaited had they chosen to live in Britain. Malta offered other advantages. With the British withdrawal of its armed forces from Malta, the new independent Government (1964) sought alternative employment for its 350 000 population. Domestic service was in plentiful supply – a boon particularly for Margie who had enjoyed help in the house for all her married life. Malta also faced an acute shortage of foreign exchange as Britain ceased paying rent following the closure of its naval and air force bases. To remedy this, the Maltese Government sought immigrants who would bring in foreign exchange without taking scarce jobs from Maltese. Foreign Pensioners were ideal; they were not permitted to work but were taxed at an extremely generous rate and only on the funds actually transferred to Malta. Pensioners transferring the stipulated minimum of £2000 sterling were taxed at 6d. in the pound (hence “sixpenny settlers”) or 2.5%.

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Leo and Margie soon settled into their new life in in Malta.. They rented a semi-detached apartment in the centre of Attard on the main Valetta to Rabat road with a 30year fixed lease. They purchased a Morris “mini” which was still on the road 30 years later. There was swimming in the summer; walks in winter. The ex-colonial British community indulged a life style similar to the one they had left with much socializing over evening cocktails. Margie in particular made many good friends, learnt bridge, and taught yoga. With A.L.H. and family now settled in Canada Margie and Leo travelled to North America (Ottawa, Washington, and Chicago) every other year and in alternate years hosted A.L.H. and Pippa and their three children in summer. The falling cost of international air travel made possible the annual exchange of visits. Leo and Margie were thus able to play an important and continuing role in the lives of their three grandchildren, Caroline. Suzanne and Philip. The advent of cheap air travel meant much greater contact with widely separated family members than had been possible for Leo’s father and grandfather.

Sadly this settled and agreeable ordering of the lives of Leo and Margie was not to endure. In 1975, Leo was diagnosed, while staying with A.L.H. in Ottawa, with cancer of the bladder. Treatment proved futile and after a last, Xmas time, visit to his family then in Washington at the end of 1976, Leo died in Malta in August 1977 and is buried in the Ta Braxia (Protestant) cemetery near Valetta.

That Margie was to survive as a widow for another 30 years is testimony to her genetic heritage. The Foggetts her mother’s family in Yorkshire were also remarkably long-lived. But “nurture” may also have played a role. She certainly loved her scotch whiskey in the evening and a glass of wine at dinner. But she never smoked, ate very sensibly (a lot of yoghurt) and made sure she exercised regularly. She learnt yoga in Salisbury in the 1960s and taught its disciplines in Malta into her 90s.

In their personalities, Margie and Leo were very different. He was retiring and she gregarious. She had a ready wit while Leo did not shine socially. Undemonstrative by nature, Leo was a devoted kind and considerate husband, father and grandfather. Margie was also a wonderful parent but unlike Leo whose horizons and aspirations were more limited, Margie was ambitious and it was largely through her efforts and prodding that A.L.H. entered Oxford. Despite the marked differences in their temperaments Leo and Margie maintained throughout their nearly fifty years of marriage a bond of affection and mutual support. Margie was a caring nurse in Leo’s last years.

As a widow, Margie, with great resolution, sought to maintain her life-style in Malta. She continued to drive the “mini’. The fact that the car survived the rust-inducing marine climate is testimony to the ingenuity of her Maltese mechanic, Lino, to whom the car was bequeathed when she turned 90. Margie maintained her busy social life and yoga teaching. In 1997 the lease on her Attard house expired and she moved to “Villa Messina” a privately owned nursing home in Rabat. There she was very well looked after enjoying a pleasant room with a garden view and furnished with microwave and fridge. The fare left something to be desired particularly for someone who enjoyed her food and was an excellent cook.

As a widow for thirty years, Margie of course risked running out of friends as mortality and occasional moves back to England removed her contemporaries. Fortunately Margie had throughout her life demonstrated an amazing facility for making friends of all ages and walks of life. She was much appreciated by A.L.H.’s social contacts in Ottawa,Washington and Chicago. The staff of Villa Messina, clearly loved her. In her declining years in Malta she was blessed with several devoted younger friends who drove her to cocktails, church services, and shopping. One in particular, Audrey Dougherty, herself widowed in Malta was to prove a particular support.

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Margie was, at around the time of her move to Villa Messina, confronted by major financial problems. In those days widows received only one third of their deceased husband’s pension. With nationalization, Leo’s Cable and Wireless pension entitlement was transferred first c.1950 to the Southern Rhodesia Government and then in 1954 to the Government of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. The pension assets of the Federation were vested in the British Crown Agents who continued to pay a regular if inflation-reduced pension. However that portion of the Cable and Wireless pension vested in the Southern Rhodesian Government passed to the Zimbabwe Government in 1980. In the economic chaos that characterized Zimbabwe after 2000, the Zimbabwe dollar collapsed and even when paid the pension was worthless in Maltese pounds.

In the face of this calamity, Margie’s reacted with typical enterprise, even chutzpah. She wrote to Cable and Wireless describing her circumstances, to ascertain whether she enjoyed any residual pension rights from the corporation to which her husband had devoted most of his working life. With the inevitable negative reply, came good news; Cable and Wireless had set up a charitable trust named for a former Chairman of the Company, Edward Wilshaw to meet the financial needs of widows like Margie. She was granted an ex gratia pension sufficient, with some help from A.L.H., to cover living expenses in Villa Messina and her annual summer visits to Canada. But better was to follow. Presumably because there were by now very few beneficiaries of the trust, Cable and Wireless decided in around 2003, to include them in the regular pension plan of the Company. As a recipient of a regular inflation protected pension, Margie was, for the first time in her life, able to save.

Margie continued with annual summer visits to North America often staying with friends in England en route. She spent most of her Canadian summers at the lakeside cottage that A.LH. and Pippa had purchased in 1995 making sure to have a daily swim in the lake and twenty minutes of yoga on the deck. . But after 2001, when the Atlantic crossing became too difficult, A.L.H. often accompanied by Pippa, would visit her in Malta twice a year for three weeks usually in the spring and the fall.

In 2003, aged 97, Margie had a fall and broke her hip. Although she recovered fully, her walking became more hesitant and she began using a cane and then a “walker”. At this time at A.L.H.’s urging she compiled a “memoir” intended primarily for the edification of her three grandchildren and nine great- grandchildren and describing her life in Yorkshire, Brazil and Africa. Her powers of recall were impressive.

A.L.H. and Pippa were in Malta, braving the January weather, for Margie’s 80th and 90th birthdays which were celebrated appropriately.. However the 100th anniversary was of course particularly special. Festivities began early. The British High Commissioner had got to know Margie and arranged for her to attend a reception thrown for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Malta November 2005. She was in a wheel chair steered by her great friend Audrey Dougherty. There is a wonderful photo of her being greeted by the Queen. She was much taken by the Duke of Edinburgh – “so handsome”. On the eve of her birthday, A.L.H. and Pippa flew in from Canada with the three grandchildren. Margie was interviewed by the local press and visited by Malta’s President and Minister of the Aged (a fairly young female MP) as well as the High Commissioner. A large reception was held in Villa complete with a “power point” presentation of photos of her life set to the music of the period depicted.

Inevitably after all the excitement of the “century” there was a bit of a let down and Margie’s enthusiasm for life waned. A.L.H. visited in October and again in March 2007. But by August it was clear that her health was failing and in August, Villa Messina called A.L.H. suggesting he should come urgently. He made it to Margie’s bedside about an hour before she succumbed to pneumonia as he was feeding her evening meal. To the end she remained entirely lucid.

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Margie has no known grave. She bequeathed her body to the anatomy department of the University Hospital. A.L.H. and Pippa arranged a memorial service at the Anglican cathedral for around hundred of her friends and staff from Villa Messina most of whom, staunch Maltese Catholics, had never before set foot in a Protestant establishment but wanted to say goodbye to a good friend.

1.1.3 George Under construction

1.1.4 Roy

The youngest of L.E.H.’s four sons was born in Condegalla Ceylon in 1911. His father’s scrapbook contains no material on Roy’s schooling. But a Google search reveals that he was for at least part of his schooldays at Wimborne (Dorset) Grammar School (W.G.S). The School website is worth quoting:

Neville Halliday, the son Lionel Edward and Constance M.T. Halliday of Liphook Hampshire was a Boarder at W.G.S and thus in School House. In the Cadet Corps in 1929, he was a First Class Shot. In 1946 one of the former boarders wrote tributes to some fellow pupils who shared his youth at W.G.S. He describes N.A.R. thus, “ .. a vociferous generous-hearted senior boarder, helped many of us in our early days in School House: rather worldly in outlook even when about sixteen, he seemed overnight to graduate from “Paradise” levity to “Monkey Hole” gravity – but that very infectious grin of his remained, as I am sure it does now,”(“Paradise” and “Monkey Hole” were dormitories).

It is interesting that Roy was a “boarder” at W.G.S. as his mother was living in Wimborne from at least 1925 until 1928 so it is quite possible that he started as a day boy.

Another W.G.S. contemporary (a Captain in the Royal Engineers) wrote in 1944 of Roy and another: They had the qualities of fine soldiers and leaders, young in those days but since proved beyond doubt” He added (it was on the eve of the Normandy landings) I eagerly await the coming invasion when the sad fate of these may be avenged; and, if I could choose a section to land with me at the appointed time that section would still come from No.1 tent, the camp at Kimmeridge, so many years ago”.

On leaving school Roy enlisted as a Cadet at the Air Force College, Cranwell (Lincolnshire) whence he graduated (25th out of 27) as a Pilot Officer in the summer of 1931. He remained at No 3 Flying Training School (possibly as an instructor) before joining 209 Squadron in April 1932. 209 Squadron had been formed during the first world war and flew Camels in fighter combat role. Disbanded in 1919, the Squadron was reconstituted in 1930 at the Royal Naval base at Mount Batten (Plymouth). Thus began Roy’s work with flying boats which was to be an important feature of his career. While at Mount Batten Roy was promoted Flying Officer (Jan. 1933).

From Plymouth Devon Roy was assigned in April 1934 to the Short Brothers Experimental Establishment at Felixstowe in Suffolk. Shorts were later to develop and mass produce the famous “Sunderland” which first flew in 1937 and was to become prominent in in WWII. But in 1934 Roy’s was probably involved in the RAF’s trials of the S.18 “Knuckleduster” first flown by Shorts test pilots in November 1933. The “Knuckleduster” prototype failed its RAF trials and never went into production. However the experience gained undoubtedly helped in the development of the Sunderland.

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Roy’s next move, in January 1935 was to RAF Calshot a “sea drome” on the Hampshire Coast near Southampton (and within easy reach of Liphook and the comforts of his parents home at Buriton Field). Calshot like Felixstowe was used to test seaplanes

Roy’s career now next transfer in July 1935 was to take him away from sea planes. He was sent to “No. 1 Armament Training Camp at Catfoss in Yorkshire (a long way from home comforts of Buriton Field or the night life of London). Catfoss used nearby target ranges for air-to-air and air-to ground gunnery as well as bombing training. No doubt this was designed to prepare Roy (promoted to a Flight Lieutenant in April 1936) for his next assignment, to India, more specifically to Risalpur, 45 miles from Peshawar in what is now the North West Frontier district of Pakistan straddling the Khyber Pass to Afghanistan. Today Risalpur is the site of the Pakistan Air Force academy. In 1937 it was used by the British as a base from which to intimidate and if necessary attack the Pathan tribesmen who then, as now, were impervious to the advantages of alien governance and peaceful pursuits. In the North West Frontier of India, as in Iraq, in the 1930s, Britain considered its air force as a cost effective instrument of internal pacification. But one has to wonder – apropos the modern drones - whether air raid could be tailored to minimize civilian casualties. We have no record of Roy being involved in any attacks.

In 1938, Roy was promoted Squadron Leader and seems to have then be transferred briefly to Karachi whence (probably after some home leave) he was sent to Middle East Command Head-Quarters in Cairo. It is unclear whether this posting involved operations or was purely staff work. There he remained until February 1941 when, according to the records of 461 Squadron he was transferred to HQ of Z Wing, and organization that has so far eluded the usually reliable Google Search (help welcome). Again he may have ben involved in staff or training rather than operations. He was appointed Wing Commander in March 1941.

In April 1942 Roy took up an assignment No 4 Operational Training Unit located at Loch Erne in Northern Ireland. Loch Erne was a base for Sunderland flying boats mounting anti U-boat patrols over the North Atlantic.. It is unclear whether, at Loch Erne, Roy flew operations or was simply training on Sunderlands for his next assignment.

In May 1942, Roy took over as Commanding Officer (C.O.) of the newly formed Royal Australian Air Force 461 Squadron, stationed at Mount Batten Plymouth. It was here of course that Roy had first been introduced to flying boats in 1930. Fortunately, and in contrast to earlier assignments, this final short phase of Roy’s career is well documented in the history of “The Anzac Squadron” (461) by Norman Ashworth. The book tells us much about the man.

Other than Roy himself, pilots of 461 Squadron were Australians trained along with Canadians and New Zealanders under the Commonwealth training scheme. 461 Squadron came under operational control of RAF Coastal Command. Flying Sunderlands the Squadron’s principal role was to hunt and destroy German submarines operating against allied shipping in the North Atlantic, Sunderlands were equipped with radar and sonar for location and with cannon and depth charges for destruction of the submarines. The planes also had machine guns mounted fore, in the tail and on both sides of the fuselage as defences against attack from enemy aircraft over the Channel or Bay of Biscay. The Germans name them the flying porcupines.

The original personnel for the new squadron were temporarily detached from a pre-existing Australian flying boat squadron RAAF, No. 10, stationed in Mount Batten. The C.O for No. 10 Squadron also acted as temporary C.O. for 461. Beginning on April Three newly minted Sunderlands were collected from Pembroke Dock in Wales and pilots on secondment from No. 10 Squadron put the new planes through their trials. The

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squadron, perhaps arbitrarily, dates its formation from April 25 the day Australians commemorate the 1915 Gallipoli landing of the first world War. Hence 461’s sobriquet the “Anzac Squadron”.

Roy arrived in Mount Batten on May 24 and formally assumed command on May 27. The official history of the Squadron by Norman Ashworth, fills in some of the detail on Roy’s last assignment. It should be noted that apart from operational difficulties of organizing a squadron from scratch, Roy had the additional problem of being a “Pom” in charge of Australians, always a delicate task. Australians had an understandable preference for fighting as an identifiable national unit under their own officers. Moreover, Roy was considered as being inexperienced with Sunderlands. As the Ashworth history puts it:

While the first Flight Commander, Squadron Leader Lovelock was an experienced Sunderland Captain, Wing Commander Halliday was not. However notwithstanding his lack of Sunderland experience and his reported difficulties in understanding his independently minded Australian airman, there can be no question of Halliday’s determination to lead his squadron from the front. It was he who was the aircraft’s captain during the Squadron’s first operational success, an air sea rescue mission, and he who was captain during a subsequent, albeit unsuccessful, air sea rescue mission, in which he and all but one of his crew tragically lost heir lives. Halliday also flew captain on training flights and as “passenger” on a number of operational missions. He also captained the Squadron’s first operational mission. .

At the time of his assuming command, Roy was in charge of a skeleton establishment: apart from himself personnel comprised: a Flight Commander, Adjutants and Orderly Room Sergeant. The squadron then received three of the most junior air crew from No.10 Squadron with some experience with Sunderlands and three others freshly out of gunnery school who apparently had never before seen a flying boat. Training of pilots was conducted under the constant threat of enemy air attacks on the ultimate targets of opportunity, a lumbering Sunderland with an inexperienced crew. Night training had to be transferred to the relative safety of Pembroke in Wales.

On July 1 Roy, little over two months after assuming command, captained 461 Squadron’s first operational mission an anti-submarine patrol described as uneventful. On July 6 a squadron Sunderland survived an encounter with a German Junkers 88 flying out of a Biscay air field in occupied France.

In addition to patrols intended for anti-submarine or anti-surface ship action, 461 Squadron was also involved in air to sea rescue of allied airman forced to ditch their planes in the English Channel and Biscay. Roy was involved in the first of such action by 461 Squadron. As recorded by N. Ashworth :

“…on the 8th of July 1942, No. 461 Squadron was ordered to carry out an air-sea rescue of a Whitley crew which had been forced down in the Bay of Biscay due to engine failure. A volunteer crew captained by Wing Commander Halliday set out on the mission in Sunderland T9090 (UT-B) and flew for hours over the sea without making any sightings. At last the dingy was seen the by the second pilot and Halliday made a skilful landing on the turbulent sea. It was impossible to get the Sunderland near enough to the dinghy for the men to come aboard, so Pilot Officer R. Baird, the second pilot, climbed along the wing of the aircraft, threw a rope to the survivors and pulled the dingy towards the Sunderland. All the men were rescued and the Sunderland took off again safely and reached base”.

It is this incident that is commemorated in a staged photo in the collection of the Imperial War Museum photo (evidently taken in a studio) showing Roy handing out cigarettes to a rescued crew (probably actors). (Ref. Coastal Command CH 6160).

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But a month later, on August 12, Roy was killed. As recounted by Ashworth who in part quotes John Herrington: Air War Against Germany and Italy , 1939-1943. Australian War Memorial, Canberra, 1954, p.286.:

Tragedy struck the Squadron on 12th August when if suffered it first operational loss, including its commanding officer, Wing Commander Halliday. On that day a Wellington of No. 172 Squadron RAF under the command of an Australian, Pilot Officer A. Trigg was forced down in the Bay of Biscay due to engine failure. The survivors in the water ware sighted by Halliday and his crew in Sunderland T9090 (UT-B), after an earlier brief encounter with a German FW-200, Condor, Herington recounted that “Halliday found the dinghy almost lost in the waves; a 25-knot strong wind and heavy swell made the sea very dangerous but after jettisoning his depth charges and 500 gallons of petrol he determined to make a landing. Trigg saw the Sunderland touch down on the first wave and the execute a long bounce over three waves and stall into the sea. The tip of the starboard wing broke off and the starboard outer-engine scream madly and broke into flame. Metal sheets rent apart as the Sunderland broke its step and a cross wave then hit the starboard bow dragging the damaged wing under water. The aircraft nosed very quickly into the sea and sank. Trigg could not see any survivors”. But Halliday and his crew, had managed to scramble thorough the badly warped escape hath, Flying Officer Laurenti going back to rescue the navigator, Flying Officer Watson, who had lost consciousness and was trapped in the aircraft.

One dinghy was released and inflated but it burst shortly after the survivors clambered in. Their only hope now lay in the derelict dinghy which they had seen while circling and Watson volunteered to swim for it. The heavy seas severely taxed his strength as he had concussion and though he managed to reach the dinghy after some three quarters of hour’s effort he collapsed. … .” His comrades had all disappeared and were never seen again.

After five days Watson and the crew of the Wellington was rescued by a motor launch an in a final word on the costly catastrophe. Ashworth notes the story was told and retold in Coastal Command messes its lessons having a salutary effect of all aircrew …it created a legend of heroism both of seeker and sought, which fired the imagination and determination of all who might one day find themselves in similar plight.

Whatever its beneficial effects on morale, Ashworth in summarizing the experience of 461 Squadron addresses the advisability of open ocean landing. He writes: “One of the more difficult manoeuvres in a Sunderland and one for which it was not designed was landing in the open ocean. Certainly No.461 Squadron’s experience in this regard seem to suggest that, at best, it was something that should have been attempted in the most favourable of circumstances. Of the six attempts at open ocean landing by Squadron aircraft (two by Roy) three were successful and three resulted ultimately in the loss of the aircraft. Certainly after the first rush of enthusiasm for sea rescues, it the early months of its existence, instances fell dramatically. During the remainder of the War, 461 Squadron attempted three further air/sea rescues (sadly only one was successful). Ashworth also notes that COs in Coastal Command (as opposed to Fighter and Bomber Commands) did not normally participate in actual operations.

A Canadian friend himself involved in air/sea rescue work (in Catalinas) kindly reviewed the Ashworth history and notes that training for this risky manoeuvre cannot realistically be undertaken in rough sea. But at the same time in actual operations the commanding pilot is called on to weigh the risks of coming down in a heavy swell against an all too human urge to succour fellow airmen adrift on the ocean.

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As a footnote, it might be noted that 461 Squadron moved from Mount Batten to Poole in early September 1942 and shortly after had its first U-boat encounter. In October it was diverted for transportation duties associated with the allied landing in North Africa. Poole Harbour had a number of shortcomings as a base and after May 1943 until VE day in 1945 the squadron was stationed at Pembroke in Wales.

A poignant footnote to Roy’s successful career as pilot, not recorded in any official record but recounted by Leo and Margie: he was invariably air sick when flying..

Although tragically short, Roy’s life was well lived. By all accounts he was a charming, congenial man with a great zest for life. His photo certainly explains his reputed popularity with the fairer sex.

Roy c. 1933

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