By the age of 10, David Cunningham could build a cart, a sled and even an aviary for his father’s canaries. Carpentry became more than a career for David – he believed that it actually saved his life during wartime. Few people knew of the importance of his military role, even his own family.
“Dad used to talk about the war, and I believed that he’d had a relatively quiet time in India,” says David's daughter Linda Kelsey Collard. “Then I read his memoir, which was aptly entitled My Life in Wood.”
David was born in 1922 in Plaxtol, a village in Kent. “He enjoyed an idyllic childhood spent dancing round the maypole, harvesting berries in summer and sledging in winter.”
At the age of 15, he joined a local building firm as an apprentice carpenter, learning his skill from master craftsmen who had made horse-drawn carriages in the late 19th century. After the Second World War broke out, David was quick to enlist in the 70th Battalion of the East Surrey Regiment. Three years of training and postings around Britain followed, the highlight of each being ballroom dances which David loved.
In 1942, he was sent to India as part of the Royal Corps of Signals, attached to General Staff Intelligence. They were stationed in a hill camp at Jutogh, near the city of Shimla (also known as Simla) in northern India.
David was unaware at this point of why he had been chosen for such a posting. Many of the other men had an expert knowledge of radio.
The scenery and wildlife around Jutogh were spectacular. The Himalayas were visible in the distance, and sometimes the soldiers would spy a snow leopard washing its paws just as a domestic cat would.
Soon after David’s arrival, he was asked by a senior officer to set up a woodwork shop within the camp’s main workshop where the radios were maintained. It was a key role of responsibility for such a young man, and required him to buy equipment, keep accounts and train local workers.
“As unit carpenter, Dad was asked to make specialised crates for the radios that were being used in covert operations. Now he began to understand why he had been sent to Jutogh.”
Japan had invaded Burma (now Myanmar) in December 1941. Shimla was home to the exiled Burmese government, and David’s corps was providing key surveillance support.
The radios were placed in the secure crates that David had made and flown with an Anglo-Burmese officer over the jungle where they would be dropped into a clearing. The officer would bury his radio and, wearing civilian clothes, go into Burmese villages to gather information. He would then go back to the burial site, dig up the radio and send messages to India.
David also modified army vehicles to include benches where radio operators could sit to send or receive messages. It was an important task, and the vehicles became part of an advance radio station supporting the Allied liberation of Burma.
“Dad’s aptitude for carpentry saved him from the front line twice. On the final day of his service in India he was posted to the border of Afghanistan, where the death toll was very high. Luckily, upon arrival with his new unit an officer handed him his release papers because carpenters were needed at home to ‘rebuild Britain’.”
After his return, David married his sweetheart Stella and settled down to family life. He had a successful career in civvy street, becoming an aeronautical design engineer and creating the overhead fittings for Concorde.
David passed away in 2003 at the age of 81. “Dad was an unsung hero of wartime, and I’m thrilled to be able to keep his story alive,” says Linda.
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