Nicholas tells us: – “My late father CEF Peachey was at TRE Malvern.
He started at RAF Bawdsey where radar was first developed under Robert Watson Watt, then to Worth Matravers, then Scotland and finally TRE Malvern. He was not a boffin but was responsible for ensuring the security of the establishments. Between the wars he served in India as a mechanic in the RAF.
When demobbed he went to work for the Air Ministry and was sent to Bawdsey, where he was rapidly put in charge of security by Watson Watt. In 1939 when war broke out he immediately rejoined the RAF. Within days Robert Watson Watt intervened and my father was discharged and went back to Bawdsey.
Whilst at Worth Matravers I was born in Poole in 1941 not far from the harbour. According to my late mother I arrived coincidentally with a stick of bombs on the harbour. Shortly after during one of the straffing raids on Swanage my mother found peacefully sleeping in my cot covered in bits of glass and wood where the widow above me had been shot out. As far as I can make out there was a fairly brief time in Scotland before the establishment of TRE Malvern, where my father remained until 1948 when he took another civil service post in Suffolk and we moved. He never spoke about what he did, I only know the brief snippets my mother occasionally dropped and from one or two things an ex colleague told me after my father died in 1959.
One incident sticks in my mind.
We lived in Manby Road Malvern and one evening when it was almost but not quite dark my father said he had something to show us outside, so my parents my younger brother and I went outside and stood in the garden.
After a few minutes my father told us to look up and as we did so a huge glider swooped low over our heads and disappeared into the gloom.”
`Radar Families' 