1918 – 1926
On 20 November 1918, Brigadier-General B.C. Fellows reported on Major Park to the Air Ministry. ‘His work has been of a very high order,’ he wrote, ‘and he is now recommended for a rest. He is also anxious, if possible, to obtain leave to New Zealand.’ It was then nearly four years since Park had left home, but another twenty-eight would pass before he saw New Zealand again. As for special qualifications, Fellows continued, he had a thorough knowledge of the duties of the commander of a squadron in the field. He was to leave France on 25 November and report to the Air Ministry on arrival in England.
For once in his life, Park disobeyed orders. By 25 November he was already in England and instead of reporting to the Air Ministry, married the girl he had met in London late in 1917 when returning John Milne’s effects to his widow. He and Dol were married at Christ Church, Lancaster Gate, by the Bishop of Hull, two weeks after the Armistice and only twenty hours after Park’s arrival in England. At home, Dol had been used to servants and chauffeurs; now, while Park was anxiously trying to make his way in the world, she had to settle for furnished rooms and travel by motorcycle and sidecar. Keith, always more concerned about appearances than Dol, found the situation embarrassing, but Dol took it in her stride. She relished change for its own sake and was therefore very happy as an officer’s wife. She positively enjoyed the upheavals caused by frequent and unpredictable postings from one place to another. As long as she and Keith were together, she never minded where or how they lived.
Park had applied for a permanent commission in the RAF in June 1918. He was ‘very strongly’ recommended by his wing commander, but nothing came of it and in February 1919 he applied again. He was then at a training depot in London Colney, Hertfordshire, and named five officers not below the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel to whom reference could be made: Lieutenant-Colonels A.V. Bettington and H.A. van Ryneveld, and Brigadier-Generals A.V. Holt, T.I. Webb-Bowen and L.E.O. Charlton. A medical officer noted on his application that he was temporarily unfit for full flying duties, but fit for light flying and general ground duties. Van Ryneveld, who was Chief of the South African General Staff during the Second World War, described him on 5 February as:
A keen and highly capable officer of strong personality whom it is most desirable to retain in the RAF. Besides being a keen and skilled flying officer he is excellent at administrative work, looks after his men and every detail of his station and takes a full part in the life of the station. He is well educated and fond of games.
Park was also exploring the prospects of returning to New Zealand. On 14 February his father wrote to the Minister of Defence in Wellington, applying on his behalf for an appointment in the Air Service then being considered in New Zealand. James Park outlined his son’s admirable war record with a no less admirable restraint, concluding that he ‘has spared no pains by study and service to qualify himself as an efficient airman.’ James asked only that his son, ‘as a young New Zealander’, be given a chance, ‘all other things being equal’. Keith Park’s name had been noted, replied the Minister, and as soon as Lieutenant-Colonel Bettington arrived in New Zealand (to advise the Government on aviation matters), all applicants would be considered.
Meanwhile, Park sought an appointment as instructor for the Canterbury Aviation Company in New Zealand. In March 1919 he asked for a two-year contract at £1,000 per annum and first-class passages to New Zealand for himself and his wife, who was now pregnant: their first son – Ian – would be born in October. The High Commissioner in London reported that Park had had charge of aerodromes in France and command of two training depots in England; he also had experience of no fewer than fifteen types of aircraft and ‘possesses executive ability of high standard’. The Canterbury Aviation Company had been established by Henry Wigram near Christchurch in 1916 to provide initial training for prospective pilots in the Royal Flying Corps. Now that war work had ended, Wigram sought a competent pilot who understood aircraft construction and was capable of recognizing and exploiting prospects in commercial aviation. Bettington, who arrived in Christchurch on 25 March 1919, told Wigram that the only candidate with whom he was personally acquainted was Park, who had served under him in France, but that he was unable to judge his fitness for the position in question. He thought the salaries being asked were too high and advised Wigram not to offer more than £800 per annum. The job went to Captain Euan Dickson, a graduate in mechanical engineering from Sheffield University, who had lived in New Zealand from 1912 to 1916 before returning to England to join the Royal Naval Air Service. He had a distinguished war record, taking part in no fewer than 186 bombing raids, and had been decorated four times. On the face of it, he was a better choice than Park would have been.
Park’s hopes of a position with the proposed Government Air Service were also dashed. In June 1919 he was informed that no decision had yet been taken to form an air service and there the matter ended.
New Zealanders [said Bettington in a speech on 31 July 1919] made splendid fighters in the air and did marvellously good work. I mention the names Park and Brandon, amongst many others. The New Zealander is left a good deal to his own resources when he is young and he generally is a much better man in the air than the average Londoner. He learns to think and act quickly in his ordinary life.
Park may have been disappointed that his old Commanding Officer had not urged his case more strongly to Wigram, but at least he had the consolation of this public recognition in his native land.1
Park’s first job after returning from France was to command No.54 Training Depot Station at Fairlop, near Ilford. He was there only four weeks, but during that time he had to deal with a nasty incident. Two of his three flight commanders were Stanley Lee and Cecil Bouchier, men who would enjoy successful careers and play significant parts in his life. There was little to do at Fairlop because scheduled instruction had ended and most of the cadets were waiting to be released. Lee arrived one morning to find that the cadets had gone on strike, following the example set at some army depots and RAF stations, in a bid to hasten their release. He and Bouchier were baffled and nothing was done until Park arrived. The Sergeant-Major told him that the men were in an angry mood, but Park merely asked him to assemble everyone in a hangar, where he would attend to their complaints. Park, standing on a box so that he could be easily seen, looked and sounded completely at ease as he spoke about the problems of dismantling a huge war machine quickly. There were no interruptions and when he finished, everyone went back to work. Park had no trouble communicating with men under his command at any time in his career. His method never changed: he simply explained what was going on in plain terms, making it clear that he knew his job and taking it for granted that his men would back him up. He had the personality, self-confidence, professional knowledge and clarity of thought and expression without which effective command is impossible, but in addition he had an uncommon concern to see that everyone understood his own place in the system – and, indeed, that there was a system.
From Fairlop, Park went to command the training depot at London Colney and applied for Lee and Bouchier to join him, which they were happy to do. Lee found London Colney even more ‘dehydrated’ than Fairlop, since there was not even a strike to liven things up. He and Bouchier did some ‘fun flying’: one would pilot a biplane, properly seated in the cockpit, while the other (without a parachute) clambered out and sat on the upper wing, presumably to enjoy a superior view and test his courage. That courage would, as Lee realized, have been subjected to an extra test if Park had caught them at it, ‘for larks of this kind were not his idea of humour.’
Park escaped from London Colney to Andover in Hampshire at the end of February to undertake a course at No.2 School of Navigation and Bomb Dropping. As the school did no official training at the weekends, the commanding officer arranged voluntary long-distance flights. Between 19 and 22 April, Captains Stewart and Snook carried out the longest flight yet attempted – an eastward circuit of the British Isles – in two Handley Page 0/400 twin-engined bombers, then among the largest and most powerful aircraft in the world. At that time, such flights attracted great popular interest and the newly founded RAF needed all the publicity it could get. During that same month of April, competitors were assembling in Newfoundland to attempt the first non-stop crossing of the Atlantic (a feat successfully accomplished in June by two former RAF officers, Captain John Alcock and Lieutenant Arthur Whitten-Brown).
At the end of April, Park played his part in keeping the RAF in the public eye. He and Captain Stewart (who had just returned from his round Britain flight) completed a similar course in better time. They flew in a single 0/400 (Serial No.F3750) named Last Days with a double crew: two pilots, two navigators, two wireless operators and three engineer-fitters. In 28 hours and 30 minutes of flying time, they completed a circuit of 1,880 miles at an average speed of 66 m.p.h. Other, shorter, circuits of Britain had been flown before. In July 1911, a Frenchman had completed a circuit of 1,010 miles at 45 m.p.h.; an attempt on a much longer circuit (1,540 miles) in August 1913 had failed and a second attempt, planned for August 1914, had been thwarted by the outbreak of war. The flight of Captains Stewart and Snook was, however, the first to complete a circuit of most of Britain and that of Park and Stewart the second.
They took off from Andover in darkness one morning at 2.15 a.m., flew south to Portsmouth and then round the south and east coasts in poor visibility to Waddington (near Lincoln) arriving at 9 a.m., frozen and deafened by thundering engines after nearly seven hours in the air, more than ready for hot breakfasts and hot baths, hoping for better weather. They did not get it. Some work had to be done on the engines and it was not until 1.30 p.m. that they took off again, flying northward along the east coast to Alnwick in Northumberland, where driving rain and low cloud forced them to descend dangerously low – to no more than 350 feet – peering anxiously ahead for a sight of Abb’s Head (north of Berwick), their cue to turn west for Edinburgh and a night’s rest.
Next morning, they flew via Aberdeen to Inverness, then down the Great Glen and over Mull of Kintyre toward Aldergrove, Belfast. Here they came to the most perilous moment of the entire flight. The visibility was too poor, in Park’s opinion, for a landing at the airfield, but his fuel was almost spent so he decided to land on a wharf at the Harland & Wolff shipyard. Although the light was better there, the wharf was only 400 yards long and 50 yards wide; there was also a stiff cross wind. It was a very difficult landing, but Park managed it. He knew that he could not take off again with any load, so next day he sent his crew by road to Aldergrove and took off solo with just enough fuel to get the aircraft there. The journey resumed that afternoon via Dublin to Bardsey Sound (an alarmingly long over-sea passage of sixty-eight miles in poor weather) and thence to Pembroke for a third overnight stop. The weather the next day was the best of the whole journey and Park flew to Barry, near Cardiff, before turning sharply south-west to Boscastle in Cornwall. He then flew to Plymouth and along the south coast to Bournemouth before heading inland to Andover.
Such are the bare bones of a splendid performance that many men would have talked about, with good reason, for the rest of their lives. It was, in the opinion of Flight, the leading aviation journal of the day, a ‘remarkable and record flight’; Park’s landing on the Belfast wharf ‘constitutes a record in itself. When Christopher Barnes was writing a history of Handley Page aircraft in the early seventies, he wrote to Park to ask if he cared to add anything to the brief press reports of his achievement which only hint at the fears and exhilaration of such a pioneer flight. Characteristically, Park merely replied that Barnes ‘had got it more or less right’. Men and women who knew Park well in later years – or thought they did – were quite unaware of the fact that he had even flown such a large aircraft.2
In June 1919, a few weeks after this flight, Park was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. As a rule, Park took the greatest pleasure in the many honours and awards that were granted him during his long career, but not in this instance. It was, he knew, awarded purely to console him for a chapter of bureaucratic accidents which deprived him of a hard-earned promotion. The bungling began in September 1918 when he was shown in the Air Force List as Lieutenant, Temporary Major, when he should have been shown as Captain, Temporary Major. He had been made a Temporary Captain as long ago as September 1917 and believed that he had been made a substantive Captain, Acting Major from 10 April 1918, when he took command of 48 Squadron. The Director of Air Personal Services at the Air Ministry agreed, but when the New Year’s Honours List for 1919 appeared, it announced that Lieutenant, Acting Major Park was now promoted to the substantive rank of Captain. Park visited the Air Ministry, pointing out that since he had already held that rank for eight months, no promotion had been conferred. The officials admitted that the intention had been to raise Park’s substantive rank one step and were most sympathetic, but the mistake could not be rectified. For some reason which he could never discover, Major Park would have to remain Captain Park. All that could be done was to give him a medal. The whole episode infuriated Park and left him with a lasting dislike for the Air Ministry and the type of officer who was at home there. He was also left well behind many contemporaries in the race to the top, and making up the lost ground took years of exceptional effort.
In fact, during the middle months of 1919, Park came desperately close to being struck out of the race altogether. He was medically examined at Leamington early in May and found to be ‘permanently unfit for further service’ as a result of war flying, wounds and sickness. He was suffering from ‘neurasthenia and general debility’. He had contracted malaria and dysentery and suffered gunshot wounds in the chest (some metal fragments remained there) and in the right foot. There was also marked evidence of nervous instability and the doctors thought it would be a long time before he was fit for any form of duty. Such was their verdict on a man who had within the last month shown the stamina to fly round the British Isles. No treatment was prescribed other than prolonged rest.
Park wrote to the Air Ministry on 7 July. ‘Since May I have been on leave,’ he said, ‘and now feel so much better that I consider my state of health does not justify a Medical Board passing me permanently unfit for further service.’ He asked for a re-examination. Two days later, the Air Ministry advised its bankers that Park would soon cease to be entitled to pay from Air Ministry funds. By this time, he knew that there was no opening for him in aviation in New Zealand and he had resigned from the Union Steam Ship Company there. He was twenty-seven years old, newly married, about to become a father, his health was officially considered impaired, he was about to be dismissed from his profession and he was 12,000 miles from home. Then, on 14 July 1919, an Air Ministry Medical Board found his condition much improved. Signs of nervous and cardiovascular debility were still evident, however, and he was therefore considered totally disabled for flying though fit for ground service.
The bankers were advised on 11 September that Park had been granted a permanent commission with effect from 1 August 1919. From that date he was a Flight Lieutenant (equivalent to Captain) in command of a store of Handley Page aircraft at Hawkinge in Kent. Stanley Lee found him there, ‘not over pleased with his job as commanding officer of a dump for surplus aircraft.’ Nor was Lee much better pleased with his own job, ferrying some of these aircraft, unwanted now that the war was over, to Hawkinge where the engines were dumped in the sea and the airframes burned. Early in 1920 Park’s situation improved when 25 Squadron re-formed at Hawkinge under Wing Commander Sir Norman Leslie. For some months there was no other fighter squadron in the kingdom and Park therefore had his first experience as deputy commander of what passed at that time for Britain’s entire air defence. Fortunately, neither he nor the system were then put to the test.
In 1920 it was decided to present a ‘tournament’ at Hendon, a display of flying by the RAF. Sholto Douglas suggested a flypast by three four-engined Handley Page V/1500 bombers. There were some in store at Hawkinge and Douglas arranged with Park to make three serviceable. They flew one each and a man named MacFarlane the third. According to the editor of the Aeroplane, the display by the three bombers on 3 July was the tournament’s highlight. lt was truly a terrifying sensation,’ he wrote, ‘as the twelve Rolls-Royce Eagles roared towards the railings. Even Air Commodores in the cattle pens called boxes, and war-stained Squadron Leaders in the enclosures behind them, turned pale.’ The editor was mightily relieved to see the tail skids pass fifteen feet overhead. So too was Trenchard, now Chief of the Air Staff. He was also mightily angry and delivered a stinging rebuke to Douglas. Trenchard’s displeasure filtered down to Park, who was more than usually anxious about his career at this time. He and Douglas were never on close terms after this incident and it may help to explain why, twenty years later, Douglas got rid of Park as commander of 11 Group when he became head of Fighter Command at the end of 1940. The incident made a lasting impression in high places: on 8 April 1921 Trenchard announced that a second tournament would be held in July, but big machines were not to fly off ‘as they did last year straight over the heads of enormous crowds.’
In August 1920 Park was sent to command a School of Technical Training at Mansion, on the Kent coast, and there he remained for eighteen months. Apart from its lack of flying opportunities, Manston was an attractive posting. It was here that the marriage of Keith and Dol took on a pattern which lasted for the rest of their lives. Dol, very much an extrovert, loved plenty of lively company, but she also realized that her husband’s natural reserve made such occasions difficult for him. Although proud of his integrity and courage, she made it clear to him that his ambition to get on in the service required him to master social graces. She encouraged him to play tennis, to attend dinner parties and dances and, best of all, to revive his old love of messing about in boats. Park’s physical condition improved rapidly and on 1 January 1921 he was promoted to Squadron Leader – the rank (equivalent to Major) that he should have had two years previously. In May and June, however, he was given an unpleasant reminder of his war service: an attack of the tropical fever dengue, a notifiable disease, which he had contracted in Egypt in March 1915. He had suffered its recurrence in Gallipoli, on the Somme and once in Liverpool, but this attack at Manston proved to be its last appearance.3
Since the Armistice, Park had marked time while the RAF was transformed from a massive wartime to a small peacetime force. Conscious that ill-health threatened to end his own career, Park was also well aware that the force’s very existence hung by a thread at this time. In 1921, however, even though that existence remained uncertain, it was decided to establish a Staff College. The first Commandant was Air Commodore H.R.M. Brooke-Popham, a pre-war graduate of the Army Staff College at Camberley and one of the first army officers to transfer to the RFC. He was an outstanding officer and among his assistants was Wing Commander Wilfrid Freeman, who would become one of the RAF’s greatest officers. Brooke-Popham thought the first intake should be limited to twenty officers, who should be nominated, although an examination system could be instituted to select students in subsequent years. Park was among those nominated and thereby given a clear indication that he was marked out for an important career if he took his chances.
In April 1922 they presented themselves at Andover for the opening of the world’s first air force Staff College. Among that first intake were at least seven officers who occupied vital posts during the Second World War, but even in that august company three stood out: Portal, Chief of the Air Staff for five years, Douglas and Park. Sadly, the rift which had opened between Douglas and Park at Hendon was not healed at Andover. Portal and Park, however, established a mutual respect which worked very much to Park’s advantage in later years. At several critical moments during the war, Portal would show how highly he regarded Park.
‘Our primary needs,’ wrote Brooke-Popham, ‘are the creation of a school of thought and the training of officers in the elements of staff work.’ But the course would last only twelve months – too short to create ‘a school of thought’, though long enough to make reasonable staff officers. The list of subjects set down for study was formidable: the nature of war and its principles, imperial strategy, the tactics and organization of air, ground and naval forces, supply and communications, the relationship of economics, commerce and science to RAF affairs, intelligence, domestic and foreign policy. Basic staff duties – writing letters, reports and signals – were also to be mastered.
The year at Andover was active as well as studious. The college had its own flight of two Bristol Fighters and two De Havilland 9As, on which staff and students could keep in flying practice and put their tactical theories to the test. Brooke-Popham had hoped that horses would be provided as well. Instead, he got twenty-six bicycles. Park therefore found himself pedalling over Salisbury Plain, in the company of other aspiring Air Marshals, surveying sites for airfields. They also visited railway yards in London and sailed with the fleet in the Channel. They attended formal receptions because Brooke-Popham believed that the college should set a standard for the whole air force in social duties as well as in quality of work. To a great extent the manner in which the RAF would develop depended on the work done at Andover. Newly founded, the college was unhindered by precedent and everyone there in 1922 realized that he had a special opportunity – and responsibility.4
At the end of the course, in January 1923, Park was marked for posting to Egypt. During that month, his father and stepmother, Janey, visited Europe and enjoyed a holiday there with Keith and Dol. It was quite a meeting: Dol had never met either James Park or Janey, Keith had not seen his father for more than eight years and had not previously met Janey.
In March he was medically examined and found fit for full flying duties. His posting to Aboukir, Egypt, for ‘technical duties’ was therefore confirmed. Keith, Dol, their son Ian (now aged three and a half) and a nanny sailed for Egypt aboard a troopship on 5 May, arriving on the 16th. Park had for reading aboard ship an Air Ministry pamphlet restricted to squadron leaders and above on ‘The Value of Egypt to the RAF’ (June, 1921). The vital importance of the Suez Canal to imperial sea-links, it declared, was obvious. A large portion of British air power operated constantly in the East and until Britain’s ‘Eastern Dependencies’ developed, technical supply and personnel must be provided via Egypt. Egypt was also Britain’s principal base for cooperation with the Royal Navy in the Mediterranean and a convenient training area where men became acclimatized to conditions comparable to those found farther east. It was essential that ‘the facilities for air work so laboriously built up’ should not be impeded ‘by any change of status of the country’.
In May 1923, when the Parks set sail, the Air Ministry had just compiled some ‘Notes for RAF Officers Proceeding to the East for the First Time’. These gave sensible advice on the climate and on keeping clothes and quarters free of vermin; on diet, drinking and exercise. The various Egyptian stations were described. Aboukir, where Park was posted, was an aircraft and stores depot eighteen miles east of Alexandria. Although all service quarters were supposed to be fully equipped, the notes warned that it often happened that furniture was ‘temporarily unavailable’. European goods were more expensive than in Britain, especially clothing, which must be examined carefully and regularly for ‘objectionable insects’. On the other hand, sporting facilities were excellent and officers had privileges in regard to membership and fees. The colloquial tongue of the natives was easily picked up, though not essential, but bazaars should be avoided until the art of bargaining had been mastered. How this was to be done without experience, the notes did not say. All educated Egyptians spoke French, which Keith and Dol did not.
Park liked Egypt. The self-reliance, the ‘make-do-and-mend’ attitude and generally good team spirit of service life abroad were very much to his taste. He worked and played hard. After finishing the official working day, he would play tennis in the early evening for a couple of hours and then, after dinner, go back to the office. He was never one to hang about the mess, drinking and gossiping. He either rode, played tennis, went swimming, fishing or sailing (alone or with his family) or he worked. Almost every morning he got up in the dark and galloped towards the sunrise, turning back for breakfast only when the sun had cleared the horizon. But his health remained uncertain. On 20 September 1923, a few days after moving from Aboukir to take up technical staff duties at the headquarters of RAF Middle East in Cairo, Park underwent a special medical examination. He was very thin and looked anaemic, the doctors reported. Park’s answer was that he had been working hard recently, but was able to play a couple of sets of tennis without – he claimed – feeling exhausted. No more was said, for the moment, about his health.
In August 1924 a rebellion broke out in the Egyptian Army in the Sudan. Four aircraft of 47 Squadron (based at Helwan, south of Cairo) were sent down there, reaching Khartoum on the 18th, only six days after the first warning that they might be needed. In October Park was transferred to air staff duties at headquarters. The situation in Egypt seemed normal when on 19 November Sir Lee Stack, Sirdar of the Egyptian Army, was murdered in Cairo. Air patrols followed the delivery by the British High Commissioner of an ultimatum to the Egyptian government that it withdraw its troops from the Sudan. As in previous years, the presence of aircraft did much to prevent serious disorder. Sir Oliver Swann, commander of RAF Middle East, reported to the Air Ministry in December that before the delivery of the ultimatum he had discussed with the British army commander what action the RAF should take. They had agreed that aircraft should fly over the principal towns to show British power to the people and to observe if mobs were gathering. Strict orders were given to guard against sabotage and all personnel carried firearms and travelled only in pairs, on or off duty.
Park, of course, played only a minor part in these dramatic events, but they helped to prepare him for the important position he occupied in Egypt twenty years later. He was made aware of the uncertain balance existing between the several authorities in that country: British and Egyptian, civilian and military. His sensitivity to their interplay, his natural courtesy and readiness to listen patiently, and his evident liking for the customs and manners of Egypt enabled him to enjoy three successful spells of service there. Of more immediate significance, he earned the respect of Sir Oliver Swann who gave him his fullest support when the question of his health came to the fore again in 1925. He was brought before a Medical Board in June to ascertain his present medical category and the Board found him fit for full flying duties. However, he was examined yet again in September:
This officer [the Board reported] has been flying for several years after being passed permanently unfit as pilot or observer. In view of his past history of neurasthenia and general debility together with his anaemic appearance it is considered that he would not stand stress.
As the future would show, this officer stood a remarkable amount of stress – not least that caused by the expression of this opinion. The president of the board decreed that Park was not to fly more than two hours a day nor above 5,000 feet nor to carry a passenger, though no restriction was placed on his performance of aerobatics.
Swann wrote to the Air Ministry in April 1926 on Park’s behalf. He asked that his medical history be reviewed with the intention of placing him in a more favourable category or that he be regarded as a special case. Park, said Swann, was a very fine type of officer. He was a most skilful and keen pilot. Although his physique and powers of endurance were limited, he should not be handicapped by being placed in a low category. Swann accepted Park’s statements about his medical record ‘with the utmost confidence’, but it was clear that there had been error or confusion somewhere. As a result of the report, Park, having done a good deal of flying in the past six years without ill effects or incidents, now found his activities very sharply curtailed and his promotion prospects, he believed, much prejudiced. In Swann’s opinion, he had been over-restricted. Swann had more than once ‘had the pleasure’ of being transported by Park on cross-country flights and although he agreed that Park should not undertake flights requiring great powers of endurance, he urged the Air Ministry to ensure that his chances of promotion were not impaired and to permit him to carry out normal flying duties, in any type of aircraft, with or without passengers.
The Director of Medical Services at the Air Ministry commented on Swann’s letter in May. He had studied Park’s medical record and thought the root of the matter lay in Swann’s remarks about his zeal. Many officers of great value to the service needed protection against their own enthusiasm. Since at least 1918, observed the director, Park had been suffering from the effects of diseases and strain incurred during war service, but he had reported sick only once in that time. His annual medicals, however, showed that he had never attained a high level of fitness. Swann was advised that Park’s medical category was not below that required and did not impair his service prospects.
Nevertheless, it was decided to summon Park home in June. He decided to combine duty with pleasure by taking some leave and bringing his wife and children with him – a second son, Colin, had been born in March 1925. Sir Philip Game, Air Member for Personnel, interviewed Park and arranged for him to be examined by the Central Medical Board in London on 30 July 1926 to determine his present medical position. Once again, Park’s career was at risk, but he cleared this hurdle comfortably and was graded AIB, fit for the full duties of his branch of the service. Instead of returning to Egypt, however, a chance meeting in London that summer was to land him a far more exciting job in England. From that time on, his career was safe and he moved steadily forward, out of the ruck.5