In fact, fantome, there was more. Gordon (his name came back to me) Davidson found it hard to settle down, as we may imagine, and dropped out of Dal. He went to the States and got work as a cowboy. One thing led to another, and he found himself appointed a deputy sheriff. In some local hostelry a miscreant was terrorising the good folks with undisciplined use of a revolver, I suppose I should call it a six-gun. By judicious use of personality, Deputy Davidson disarmed the naughty fellow and put him in jail to think things over.
Davidson returned to his studies, graduated, and was called to the Bar (the legal one, not the Wild West one).
One summer a generation later his son was working on a student job at one of the Alberta tourist hotels, Jasper as I recall. Among the other student workers was one from the US. In conversation it turned out that he was a son of the "disarmed" one, by now a pillar of the community. Small world, as they say.
Davidson was the classic quiet wee chap, below middle height, slightly built, whom you would never notice in a crowd.
At one of the smaller air displays a few years back there was a Fleet Air Arm marquee and among the swarm was one Hank Rotherham, late RN and RCN. Hank was CO of a FAA training airfield at Orkney when the rumours came from coastal observers in Europe that Bismarck had left Norway. The Cabinet had to find out if it was true, but the weather was so bad nothing was flying. The CFI at the training unit volunteered to pilot a Martin Maryland if someone would volunteer to navigate. Rotherham was an (O), he volunteered, so off they went, he as navigator.
Below cloud base they could scarcely avoid the waves so they went up into cloud and flew D/R. When by calculation of time they were all but hitting the Norwegian coast they came down to the wave tops and there was their planned landfall dead ahead. They crossed Bismarck’s former mooring at zero feet. She was gone. The entire base was shooting at them. Because there was no flying there was virtually no radio watch on any frequency. The only one they could raise was the training frequency at their home airfield. They made it back and as I recall Rotherham was taken to the mainland by destroyer and thence to London to brief Churchill. That is what sent HMS Hood and the Fleet out after Bismarck. He got the DSO.
My late Father used to say that when he was visiting anywhere, and there was an old bloke sitting in the corner smoking his pipe, he would make sure to talk to that old bloke. That old bloke, he would say, has been everywhere, has seen everything, and has done everything. Not far from the truth.