140
« on: Saturday 21 May 11 16:25 BST (UK) »
I am trying to find any information about my grandfather, James Arthur Percival Cole, born at Barnetby-le-Wold, Lincolnshire on 28th August 1900, died in Newark General Hospital on 9th October 1956.
I am assuming that he did have a First World War service record, even though he would have been very young at the time. According to some of my late father’s writings he was a corporal in the RAF, stationed as a clerk at the Middle East Headquarters of the RAF at Kasr-el-Nil, Cairo, Egypt, but there is no indication as to when he was sent there. It was while he was in Cairo that he met and married my grandmother, Sophia Baronian, in 1922. One of the photographs shows the two of them together, location unknown but presumably in Cairo, and the other shows him with some of his colleagues I assume, again location unknown.
From what I can gather it seems that he transferred from the RAF to the Air Ministry while in Cairo, but continued to do the same job. At some time they moved from Cairo to Jerusalem and then to South Africa before coming to the UK in 1943.
I remember my father telling me that my grandfather worked for the Air Ministry at Haygarth House at Babworth, just outside Retford in Nottinghamshire. I’m not sure but I think that this was known as No. 5 Area HQ A.M.W.D. Babworth.
According to his obituary in the local newspaper, at the time of his death in 1956 he was a clerical officer in the Works Directorate of the Air Ministry and was stationed at RAF Scampton in Lincolnshire.
Apart from this I have no details of his service record and I’d love to learn a little bit more.
Show Posts