Jack came from Bridlington, a small town on the Yorkshire coast in England. As a teenager, in the early days of World War Two, he was a keen member of the Air Training Corps, and was especially good at Morse. In his spare time he went down to the harbour to lend a hand with the signals for the Air Sea Rescue unit. As soon as he was 18 he volunteered for the R.A.F. hoping to be a wireless operator/air gunner on the heavy bombers. In the very early days of his training he was approached by a mysterious man in civilian clothes who said, "You don't want to go up in those flying coffins. Come and work for me. I have a lot of very pretty girls working for me." That was enough to change Jack's ambitions, and he ended up working on one of the SIGINT intercept stations at Wick, way up in the very north of Scotland. Unfortunately there were no pretty girls posted there!
After Germany capitulated, Jack and several others were shipped out to India and Burma to work on Japanese intercepts. Very soon after the war in the Far East ended, they became the first members of the newly formed 367 Signals Unit that was based in several blocks of pre-war flats on the Wang Fung Terrace above Causeway Bay. These were in quite good condition, presumabvly having been used by officers of the Japanese occupation forces, and they were much more comfortable than the thatched 'bashas' of Burma. Here Jack is sunbathing on the roof of the block where he was billeted. The pagoda in the Tiger Balm Gardens can be seen on the right.