WWC member Peter Morley has had an article published in Old Bike Mart magazine about his love for old motorbikes, inspired by rides around the countryside with his dad in the 1950s. Titled “ ‘Baby boomers’ and motorbikes”, it tells how his dad – pictured right – was demobbed at the end of the second world war, and got himself a job at an oil refinery – and an 175cc Excelsior to get to it. The family soon graduated to a motorbike and sidecar to travel around in, “a 1952 AJS Model 18 and an open plywood sidecar … the sun always shone during those years.”
Peter’s article tells how his dad, who served in the army as a dispatch rider at Dunkirk, had also been “a professional ice skater before the war but there wasn’t much call for that in 1945 and he took whatever work he could get: hotel porter, labourer or handyman. We lived in an old tin hut on a war-time airfield at Holmsley in the New Forest, and in other make-shift accommodation, including a converted bus that had been used as a mobile morgue during the war. Eventually, the government’s social programme brought us a council flat. Dad got a job in the oil refinery, and hence the bike.”
In the article Peter, pictured right, talks about his father’s war service: “He had been a dispatch rider for his six years’ war service and I could often catch him singing the song of his unit, ‘Here we are, we’re 88DR. Rain or shine, we’re always there on time, we keep riding and riding along.’ I can’t remember more, perhaps there were verses he censored for civilians. I have a nice picture, captioned ‘Satan’s Cavalry’, of 88DR training in 1939. Dad gradually shared a few stories with me during relaxed moments and it was clear that not many of Satan’s Cavalry kept ‘riding and riding along”. Dad said there were twenty-two of them but only five came home.”
At the end of the article Peter explains that he now has a quest, “to acquire a 1939 Triumph 3SW like the one Dad left behind at Dunkirk. I was looking out for one and somehow bought a 1928 side-valve Triumph, an NSD. This is a good project while I continue to look for the army Triumph.”
Woking Writers Circle 