Soldier – Birch, Anthony – Training as Pilot (picture)

November 1941

South Yorkshire Times, November 15, 1941.

Training as pilot.

Anthony Birch, son of Mr and Mrs W Birch 64, Old Road, Conisbrough, has just been posted abroad for further training as an RAF pilot.

An old boy of Mexborough secondary school, he obtained the Horsfall Scholarship, tenable at Durham University, completed one year at Durham and then decided last August to volunteer for the R.A.F., and qualify as a pilot officer.

He is now a leading aircraftman and has been drafted abroad for additional training.

By coincidence, a former colleague at school, leading aircraftman Dick Walker, of Alexandra Road, Mexborough, has gone with the same draft.

Anthony, who is 19, was a Sunday school teacher and altar server at Conisbrough Parish Church and for three years, was secretary to the St Peter’s altar servers.

His father, who is clerk to Conisbrough Urban Council, served throughout the last war in the Grenadier Guards.