YESTERDAYS 1941
Captain Guy, above, always of an adventurous nature, joined the British Navy at the age of 15, bought himself out 10 years later, and went to America.
He was a Canadian citizen and at the outbreak of the war, returned to England to join the RAF. He was unsuccessful, so returned to Canada and there joined the Canadian Air Force.
He was chosen as one of the leading ferry service pilots and had flown across the Atlantic many important people, including the Duke of Kent.
In 1933, at the age of 24, his roaming spirit involved him in an unfortunate incident at California, where he was charged with the murder of Captain Walter Wenderwell, a wealthy globetrotter, who was found shot on board his yacht.
Guy, then described as a Cardiff seaman, was arrested because he resembled a “man in grey” who had visited the man before his death.
Guy was acquitted of the charge. Two Cardiff sailors returned “from the dead” on Sunday.
For months no one had heard of them. Everyone – except their mothers – believed they were dead.
On Sunday they limped back to the doorsteps of their homes once more, after an experience likened only to hell.
The boys, still haggard and bowed under the memory of the horrors they had been through are Thomas Spriggs of Portmanmoor Road and James Sexton of Richard Street, Cardiff.
They were serving as firemen on a Greek steamer. On June 13 they were torpedoed in the Atlantic and only one lifeboat was usable and 27 got into it with room for only 17.
They were in the boat for 17 days getting weaker and suffering from exposure and underfeeding. One of the crew died but the rest stuck it out until they found their way to French West Africa and were able to stumble ashore. They were picked up by police who told them they were in Free French territory, given some boiled rice and put in a cage behind barbed wire for three months where the conditions were terrible.
They were eventually released and at last found their way to a British cruiser and eventually made their way home. The British theatre is soon to lose one of its foremost modern exponents of Shakespeare, just at a time when the work of the national dramatist is taking fresh hold upon the hearts and minds of the public.
Actor-manager Donald Wolfit will go into the Navy next January, so he told Cardiff Rotarians this week.
Mr Wolfit has almost as much affection for Cardiff as the city as for him, and the reason was disclosed.
Most wireless listeners will remember the broadcast of the Royal Command Variety Entertainment a few years ago. That was the time when almost irreparable harm, so it was said, was done to the theatre.
It cost theatres thousands of pounds and syndicates lost heavily because people forsook their customary seats in the stalls for armchairs and the receiver set at home.
At the time Wolfit was playing in Cardiff and says his was the only play filing the theatre. Twelve winners of the George Cross were among the many heroes of the three services and the civil defence forces whom the King decorated at a recent Investiture at Buckingham Palace.
Mr John Farr, a foundryman, brother of Tommy Farr, the boxer, received the George Cross for exceptional bravery when an explosion occurred in the factory which he was employed. Two novel excuses for using indecent language were heard at Ystrad Court today.
James Samson, of Stuart Street, Treorchy said he was talking about the latest Hitler speech, and all he said