Lt. Peter Richard Bancroft
British Army 1986 Company. Pioneer Corps
from:Nant-y-Glyn, Cross Lane, Marple, Stockport, Cheshire
My Father, Peter Bancroft's War Time Service taken from the notes he made during his time in the Pioneer Corps in the Sudan during 1942 -1946. His date of admission to the Armed Forces was in February 1941, his medical having taken place at Pendlebury Orphanage, Lancashire Hill, Stockport, Cheshire on 8th of November 1939, where he was graded III due to his poor eyesight. Training at Wrotham, Kent in September 1942 after enlistment in A.M.P.C. II Centre at Oldham in August 1940. Then he was posted to the Pioneer Corps O.C.T.U. from Beckingham in October 1942.
My father having attained a B.A. (Com.) at Manchester University and previously educated at Stockport Grammar School, was catapulted into running an Army Company comprising of 380 West Africans and 7 Europeans in the Sudan age the age of 23. There is a daunting list of the men serving in Kapoeta on 8th May 1944, together with a list of those being sent to Kapoeta on 9th May 1944 to join Lieutenant Bancroft. My Father often worried what became of all of them, he use to talk about them to us, years later. He remembered vividly the men closest to him and how loyal they were. He fretted about what became of them and their families.
The wedding of Peter and Marjorie took place in St. Peter's Church, Mumbles on 17th January 1942, with Geoff Clough as best man. Dad met Marjorie during fire watch in London where Marjorie worked in a bank and served in the ATS in London. Peter and Geoff sailed from Liverpool on the Cunarda Franconia and served in Africa throughout the rest of the war, clearing landing strips for supplies. He returned after the war, very thin, set up home in Marple with his wife Marjorie.
