RC Chick wrote in the letters column last week (Penarth Times, 25 February) about Dave Charnley. I served in the Royal Engineers for nearly 40 years and remember Dave Charnley serving in the Training Regiments as a physical training instructor.
He continued boxing throughout his national service and in 1959 became the British Empire lightweight champion by beating Willie Toweel.
He also had two other major fights while serving. In 1958 he beat Don Jordan who later became world welterweight champion and he also beat Joe Lopes.
If you were a sportsman you could, almost weekly, bump into a professional sportsman of most sports. I was fortunate to play in a regimental side which contained Sammy Chung of Reading, who later went on to become manager of Wolverhampton Wanderers and the Oman national side.
In the Army cup I played against a Catterick regiment which contained Albert Quixall and Allan Finney.
Both were at Sheffield Wednesday and Quixall certainly played for England.
He also moved to Manchester United after the Munich air crash. I am not sure about Finney although he certainly got an England A cap. On the cricket field I played with and against Roy Virgin who opened the batting for Somerset.
While serving in Gibraltar I commentated on a match between the Gibraltar Football Association and Leicester City. In goal for Gibraltar was Tony Macedo of Fulham and England.
In my after-match summary I said that if Macedo was the current England goalkeeper then the Leicester goalkeeper would surely be the next England keeper.
Who was that keeper? None other than the great Gordon Banks! Those were the days when people like Stan Matthews, Tommy Lawton and other great players were on a maximum of £20 per week. How thing have changed, not only among professional sportsmen, but in the Army. I joined as a 15-year-old boy entrant at Harrogate and my wage was 12 shillings and 6 pence (62-and-a-half pence in today’s money), I was allowed to draw 25 pence.
Today I have looked up the pay of a young boy entering the Army Foundation College at Harrogate and could not believe that it was the magnificent sum of £262 per week.
I suppose that compares well with the difference between Matthews and Wayne Rooney, and myself and a boy soldier of today.
Dennis Tucker Via e-mail
