Bravo, Ted! & thank you RUSI. Superb, punchy talk delivered with a refreshing alacrity. It was my uncle, Jim, who was Tom (Senior) Blamey's driver and the man who he entrusted and gave the task of extracting your father, Captain Tom (Junior) from the frontline in Greece for the Catalina seat. This was a task uncle Jim always spoke of with pride in our family, and when as a kid I quizzed him about his service. I had no idea whatsoever, until very recently, of any wider discussion of this event. I presume Jim was also the bloke who drove Tom to select the evac beaches as you described and as they both arrived in Gaza at the same time may possibly have been the driver who accompanied Tom on the epic 800 click trips early in his ME command you described. It'd be terrific to have a chat, Ted and share family stories sometime, I must try and get in touch. I arrived at this talk, because I just looked at Jim's digitised service record online provided by the NAA, noting Jim's skin of his teeth escape from Greece, thence Crete, being dunked in the Med on each occasion, then onto further ME campaigns, and PNG. I see from his service record, as we knew, Jim, like Tom was, how shall i say, like Tom, 'forthright' in standing up to authority when others were disrespected, resulting in long term consequences for him when the subsequent discipline for this action meant he could not be next to his best mate in battle at Milne Bay and lifelong painful consequence. I suppose I should now also renew my RUSI membership! Tom Sear, Cyber, ADFA/Staff College.