An extraordinary life
Hastings legend Peter D’Arcy Champney has reached his centenary. Dave Young shares a life lived to the fullest.
Peter arrived in Hastings almost accidentally, looking for somewhere to settle after spending most of his adult life in Africa and opting for East Sussex only because an in-law lived here. “When you return from living abroad, you’re almost lonely,” he explains, reflecting the experience of many expatriates.
Fortunately, he made friends, found a community, and has a flat in a leafy part of St Leonards with walls featuring his artworks. For many years, a well-known face in the pubs & restaurants of Old Town, Peter also occasionally frequents the Horse and Groom and enjoys going to the Albion to see a band.
He frankly admits his short-term memory is hazy, although events from long ago are much clearer. Given that his military medical record was once marked, ‘moribund’ Peter is lucky to be here at all.
As a young officer
Wartime
In the Spring of 1944, as a very young army officer he served in Italy with King George V’s Own Bombay Sappers and Miners. Leading a platoon and approaching the Rapido River under enemy artillery and machine-gun fire, his objective was to build a Bailey Bridge, a temporary fixture Peter enthusiastically describes as being “like Meccano”.
At that time, Allied forces were advancing north towards Rome. However, natural geography and formidable enemy defences combined at Monte Cassino to halt their progress.
There had already been three failed attempts to breach the German line during some of the bloodiest WW2 battles. At Monte Cassino, the Liri Valley is dominated by Monastery Hill and the Benedictine Abbey, one of the strongest strategic positions in Europe, from where defenders had an unobstructed, 30-mile field of fire.
During the conflict, the Allied troops suffered terrible losses. A well-known casualty of the conflict was Spike Milligan, then serving with the Royal Artillery. After being stuck over the freezing winter, particularly tough on Peter’s men, an ultimately successful push forward took place in May.
Like many war veterans, Peter’s recall is calm and understated. He poetically describes the sound of shells exploding as `’like the tearing of silk” and had a narrow escape when one hit soft ground 20ft away and failed to detonate. Unluckily, diving into a trench to avoid a salvo Peter was “a little too late”.
According to a fellow officer, Phillip Hamer Howarth: “D’Arcy… was badly wounded… I later visited him in hospital and found Peter very proud of the amount of penicillin he had been given. Penicillin was the new thing and had just arrived.” Evacuated to Naples, Peter was then embarked on a hospital ship to England.
There followed 18 months of operations, and he’s suffered the effects ever since. Peter credits the saving of his shoulder to Douglas Jolly, a New Zealand-born surgeon who joined International Brigade volunteers during the Spanish Civil War. Hailed as “one of the most notable war surgeons of the 20th century”, he became an expert in battlefield medicine, later writing a handbook used by armies in WW2, Korea and Vietnam.
Early life
Peter was born in Cairo. His father, an army doctor, served abroad and consequently he was educated at boarding schools in Cheltenham and Surrey. “We wouldn’t see our parents for months at a time,” he recalls. Peter’s grandfather, Reverend Henry D’Arcy Champney, ran a prep school in Cambridge, where an unhappy Aleister Crowley was a reluctant pupil. An adherent of the austere religious sect, Plymouth Brethren, Henry was, according to Crowley, “a sadist”.
At school, Peter took the army exam and on gaining one of the highest grades, was allocated to the Royal Engineers and sent to Cambridge University for an initial six-month engineer-ing course. After time at an officer training unit he was commissioned to the Bengal Sappers and Miners based in Poona (now Pune) in Western India and subsequently deployed to Italy.
Kilimanjaro
CREDIT: Stephan Bechert/ Unsplash
Into Africa
Following his lengthy medical rehabilitation, Peter returned to Italy for six months, having “a great time” in the post-war army of occupation and learning the language. From there he went to Bristol University to resume his engineering degree, but “flunked it”. In retrospect, it seems this came too soon after his traumatic war injuries.
Fortunately, the War Office found jobs for ex-officers and Peter travelled to Tanganyika (now Tanzania) in East Africa, where he worked initially as a land surveyor before moving into Colonial Service public relations. Remaining in the country until the 1960s, after its independence, Peter lived in Dar es Salaam and later Arusha, 3,000ft up with a cooler climate and view of nearby Kilimanjaro from his house. Part of his job was to visit and promote newly developed game parks, including the Ngorongoro Conservation Area and the Lake Manyara National Park.
After which, Peter worked in Seychelles as a government information officer, in the process becoming a self-taught sub-editor of the official newspaper. Following a further expatriate posting in Mauritius, he returned to England in the 1980s with his wife, Sybil.
The elegant Mr D’Arcy
CREDIT: Dave Young
Back in Britain
Next came employment as a manager at Crockfords Casino, in Mayfair. Commuting in a Mini from Hastings and returning at 2am, Peter reckoned he could drive home from London in little over an hour, “flat out”. After working briefly but “not happily” in advertising, Peter retired to pursue other interests.
A former choir boy, when younger he’d learned piano and duetted a Beethoven sonata with his mother, a classically trained pianist.
Thus prepared, he joined jazz workshops in Bexhill run by local saxophonist, Peter Barden and later gigged around Hastings. “Playing keyboards and bass guitar, neither very well. I could comp,” (a technique to carry chord changes), “but not solo,” he says, modestly. Local singing legend Lianne Carroll is a favourite artist of Peter – and is slated to sing at his centennial birthday celebration.
Peter has always loved cars – the faster the better. Although his driving days are past, he fondly remembers driving 3,000 miles in a VW Beetle from Cape Town to Dar es Salaam on dirt tracks. While in Africa, Peter also learned to fly a Tiger Moth and remembers looping the loop and landing on a Zanzibar beach.
In the 1990s he owned a series of camper vans and made an annual pilgrimage to the Womad (world of music and dance) festival. His current mode of transport (depending on the weather) is a mobility scooter resembling a Harley Davison motorcycle.
Photography was another interest; one of his images was used on a Tanzanian postage stamp. (Peter doesn’t own one, so if anyone locally collects these please get in touch with HIP.)
These days Peter still manages to live independently – aided by a team of helpers. He enjoys female company and has long had many women friends, jokingly known to each other as ‘Pete’s Posse’ they’ve each taken on a support role. “Cooking and cleaning are hard,” admits Peter. “Eyesight, hearing, balance, dexterity, nothing works.” Reading is tricky, but the Telegraph crossword is a priority every morning. He’s been listening to the radio all his life, from the World Service when abroad to Radio 4 now. “I couldn’t live without it.” An extraordinary life continues.
• Special thanks to Maggie Wilding for helping HIP tell Peter’s story.
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Thank you for this article. So lovely to read and keep as a record. I have known Peter for a mere 25 years and despite what this article says, Which I am sure he thinks too, his memory is extraordinary… better than most who are much much younger. He is quite an extraordinary man and a privilige to know.