Harold Vezey; he was commissioned into the Devonshire Regiment and attached to the Machine Gun Corps, serving in France from 9-5-17. He was born about 1894 and in the 1911 census he is shown as a clerk in a printing works. In 1917 he married Katharine Dyer, the daughter of a banker. After the war, he ran a printing company called Henderson and Spalding which specialised in lithography. In 1941, he took on an Austrian inventor, Paul Eisler who had fled persecution in the 1930s and they worked on printed circuit boards and filed a number of patents. The circuit boards were used by the Americans in developing a proximity fuse to counter the German V1. The ideas had great merit, but they never proved financially successful, although they were used in airborne instrument electronics. He died in 1955.
Harold's oldest son, Laurie (born 1918) was a successful naval officer in World War 2 winning the Distinguished Service Cross for sinking a submarine, and being Mentioned in Despatches for rescue work during the surprise German bombing of Bari Harbour.
Documents available: Medal Index Card; London Gazette page(s); 1911 census; marriage record; probate record; brief biography of Lt L. Strong, RNVR
Condition: EF (mounted on card); please see photographs
