Sean Feast speaks to Fighting High author Dave Gilbert about engineering, the epitaphs on the graves of lost Bomber Command aircrew, and why the work of the International Bomber Command Centre will never be finished.
Serendipity is defined as ‘the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way’. It’s a word that Dave Gilbert uses to describe the multiple journeys in his life, from his early years with Marconi and winning a Queen’s Award for International Trade, through to his present-day achievements as an author and Trustee of the International Bomber Command Centre (IBCC).
Originally from Hibaldstow, a small village about 20 miles north of Lincoln, one of Dave’s earliest memories is seeing Vulcans thundering over on their way back to RAF Scampton: “It was an impressive sight at any age, but a quite overwhelming one when you’re just two!” Dave says. “Perhaps it was a sign of things to come.”
Given his background - his father, Peter, was an electrician, and his mother, Sheila, a home maker from farming stock - Dave believes it was almost inevitable that he would end up either in engineering or agriculture: “I developed an interest in electronics quite early on,” he says, “and by my early teens I was collecting eggs at the local chicken farm at the weekends to earn enough money to fund what became a hobby and eventually a career choice.”
In terms of further education, Dave opted for a city university: “Sheffield was the ideal choice for me,” he says. “It was just far enough away, but not so far I couldn’t go home for the weekend (with my washing of course). Best of all, the Peak District was my back yard.”
Studying at Sheffield for a degree in engineering
At the time, sponsorship through university was quite common, especially for engineering students. Dave was lucky enough to be sponsored by Marconi’s semiconductor division, which was based in Lincoln, and with whom he worked a pre-university year: “In those days it was called ‘a thick sandwich’ but nowadays I suppose it would be described as a pre-university internship,” he explains. “Either way, it really galvanised my interest in electronics and meant I could be that rarest of things at university (at least at the time) – the one with a car!”
Having met his wife Jane at school and dated from the end of his first year at Uni, the pair were married quite soon after Dave graduated and set up home in Lincoln. He was working back at Marconi, and Jane in a bank, but it was always Dave’s intention to start his own business and eventually the perfect opportunity presented itself: “As is so often the case,” he remembers, “the call came at the most inopportune time, when our children – Katie and Joe – were small.
“The first few years in the life of Pretorian Technologies were tough. I was drawing almost no salary from the business, and we were having to be very careful with money, but at least it meant we didn’t need to borrow or risk our house. That probably limited the company’s rate of growth in the early days, but it slowly started to gain traction, and the turning point came when we won a major contract from Walmart.”
Not long after that, the company took a completely different direction. Instead of manufacturing industrial and commercial products, it chanced upon an opportunity to start making adapted computer mice for disabled users. Before long Dave was getting calls from disabled users and their care givers asking what else he had in the pipeline. A serendipitous opportunity from which he never looked back.
“Here we were being presented with the opportunity to improve the lives of people who need a little extra help to lead a normal life. Who wouldn’t want that? Of course, we knew we were massively limiting the growth of the company in making that decision, but it’s a decision I would make again in a heartbeat.”
Winning a Queen’s Award for International Trade
In parallel with Pretorian, Dave had also started another company, thINKtank, which manufactured replacement parts for inkjet cartridges to allow them to be refilled and reused: “It achieved truly meteoric growth,” he explains, “which eventually resulted in a Queen’s Award for International Trade.”
There are two parts to such awards: one is a reception at Buckingham Palace, the other being a local reception at which the Lord Lieutenant presents a certificate and engraved rosebowl. Dave chose to hold his firm’s reception in the august surroundings of Lincoln Cathedral’s Chapter House: “I had never met the Lord Lieutenant Tony Worth before, but we immediately hit it off and kept in touch afterwards,” he says.
(Dave, with his wife Jane and Tony Worth at the presentation of the Queen’s Award for International Trade)
Fast forward several years, and an invitation turned up in the mail from Tony to attend the launch event of what was at that time to be called the Lincolnshire Bomber Command Memorial. Dave was very busy with the businesses, so almost didn’t go, but was persuaded to do so after calling the number on the invitation and speaking with the now CEO of IBCC, Nicky van der Drift: “I often wonder what life would be like had I not gone along to that event,” he says. “Less busy, for sure, but much less fulfilled too.”
At the reception, Dave listened to the architect explain how the names from the Bomber Command losses would be taken from the rolls of honour in Lincoln Cathedral and laser cut into the memorial: “I’d seen the books to which he referred, and I knew they were huge leather tomes, hand-written in copper plate,” Dave continues. “After the event, I thanked Tony for inviting me and asked how the names would be transcribed from the rolls into a digital format suitable for manufacture of the memorial. His response: ‘I have no idea – have you?’
“Well, I’m an engineer, so I reckoned I perhaps did, and in that moment I became the volunteer Losses Archivist! Another instance of serendipity, you might say.”
Building his knowledge of Bomber Command and its losses
Dave knew how to handle ‘big data’, but fully recognised his knowledge of Bomber Command needed improving. It was a steep learning curve, but never a chore.
“At first sight it seemed I didn’t really need to know that much, since the job was a simple transcription exercise from the cathedral rolls to a spreadsheet. I reckoned it would take around eight months and that would be the end of it. But as many will know, the subject matter is endlessly engaging, and I very quickly realised that these were not simply lines of text in a book; they were people whose lives were cut tragically short and whose stories I was in a position to tell.
“That’s the moment when I realised that this project was much more than creating memorial walls, but also an opportunity to create an on-line database to allow people to see the underpinning stories of each one. Its scope could be ever-expanding and could include the human story as well as the operational. And because of the way IBCC was funded, it would be free at the point of use, for all, forever.
“For example,” he continues, “by including details of the schools they attended we immediately create a connection with every single pupil that has since passed through that establishment, likely in the tens of thousands, and where there’s a connection, there’s interest. Similarly, if we could document the clubs they belonged to, or sports they pursued, even the pub they drank in, connections could be made with a huge number of people in subsequent generations. I believe IBCC to be the only place where visitors can immediately find both operational and biographical information on each of losses we have listed.”
(The International Bomber Command Centre. Photo courtesy of the IBCC.)
Of course, Dave admits, there is always more information that can be found and added, and as such it’s a job that has a beginning but no end. But that’s part of the excitement: “Visitors to IBCC may have noticed there’s a bolt missing from the ‘Because We Remember’ totem as they approach the memorial walls,” Dave explains. “I erected that panel myself, the day before the opening ceremony, and as I came to put in the last bolt I realised that it should symbolically be left out to signify that we are not finished, and must vow never to be so. I keep the bolt on my desk as a permanent reminder of that vow.”
The idea behind Epitaphs of Bomber Command
One of the categories of information that was added to the database a few years after its first publication was epitaphs: “I’d had it in mind for a while after serendipitously chancing upon a single inscription, that of Sergeant William McDonald of No. 50 Squadron: ‘MOTHER I’VE WEIGHED THE RISKS, WHICH I PREFER TO LIVING IN A WORLD DOMINATED BY NAZIS’. On reading it, I was chilled to the bone, and I quickly realised that there must be thousands of emotive inscriptions that could relate the human story in a similarly powerful way. That became IBCC’s ‘lock down project’. When people were confined to their homes and needed something meaningful to do, I put a call out on the local radio stations and with the help of around 50 volunteers was able to capture them all and, crucially, to add some interpretation to many.”
Ultimately this led to a conversation between Dave and the Fighting High publisher Steve Darlow, which has resulted in the publication of Epitaphs of Bomber Command: “Writing a book had always been on my bucket list,” Dave adds, “and in the very unlikely event that it’s the only one I should ever write, it’s absolutely the right one.”
(Left. Steve Darlow and Dave Gilbert at the IBCC)
Having cut his teeth on Bomber Command losses, Dave have since added the Second Tactical Air Force and bombing losses in the Mediterranean, Middle East and North African theatres, taking the total number of losses to 68,000. This year’s project is Coastal Command, which will take the total to more than 80,000.
Dave says there have been a couple of opportunities to bring some of the serendipitous moments full circle: “One was that as part of my role as Trustee at IBCC, I made it my business to apply for a King’s Award for Voluntary Service (from the same series of awards as led to me meeting Tony in the first place) on behalf of all the fabulous volunteers we are so lucky to have. We were delighted to be awarded that most prestigious of all voluntary awards, and for me it was a fitting way to thank Tony, who tragically died shortly before IBCC was opened, for changing my life in such a positive way.”
Thirteen years on from when he started, Dave still can’t quite believe his luck: “This opportunity landed in my lap entirely unexpectedly when I was at my busiest and I could so easily have passed it by,” he says. “I must be the luckiest person alive – half the week I get to help disabled people, and the other half I spend honouring those who gave me the freedom to so. And all of it stems from a handful of serendipitous occurrences in my life.”
Copies of Epitaphs of Bomber Command signed by Dave Gilbert and Steve Darlow can be found here.