From P.E.I. Autobiography.
"Inevitably, some replies to Vincent's (1946) appeal for staff came in almost too late for consideration, but two deserved special treatment. One was from Denis Minett, who had been a well-known rider of Nortons at Brooklands, but had been injured in a fall in South Australia and then spent the war years in England with an aircraft firm; in fact he was a member of the Institution of Aeronautical Engineers, but wanted to get back to two wheels. We could only take him on temporarily as a tester, to which he agreed, but when the factory was reorganised he was put in charge of engine assembly. The other, and even later applicant, who was serving with the British Army in Holland after being a prisoner-of-war in Germany, came across the advertisement by accident, hence the late reply, but we thought that such determination merited an interview. The son of a Scotsman and a French mother, he had been brought up in Holland and could speak and read three languages with a smattering of two others and was an ideal person to fill the need for someone to show foreign visitors around the place and to deal with overseas service complaints or queries, so he was taken on the strength. His name, Paul Richardson, became interwoven with the history of the Company for many years, and many remarks in his quaintly-accented English were conversational gems. Almost his first assignment was setting up a new Service Department in the No. 2 factory, during which he instructed a young apprentice to paint "scrap" on one empty tea-chest and "litter" on another, but what he actually wrote was "SRAP" and "LITIR". The errors delighted Paul so much that from then on the boxes and their contents were never call by any other name.
Paul had a remarkable life-story. After being captured by the Nazis in Holland he was sent to a P.O.W. camp in Cologne, where he escaped and made his way to Berlin, but the man he thought to be a friend disowned him. Paul stole a bike to get quicly back to Cologne and after some weeks he again escaped and reached Holland by train. There he obtained a boat in which he sailed German officers and their girl-friends in the Zuyder Zee, and just managed to escape from one Nazi lieutenant who pierced his disguise. From then on he had to disappear, in perpetual fear of betrayal to the S.S., but finally joined up with the invading British forces in Nijmegen, where, much later, he came across our advertisement."
"Inevitably, some replies to Vincent's (1946) appeal for staff came in almost too late for consideration, but two deserved special treatment. One was from Denis Minett, who had been a well-known rider of Nortons at Brooklands, but had been injured in a fall in South Australia and then spent the war years in England with an aircraft firm; in fact he was a member of the Institution of Aeronautical Engineers, but wanted to get back to two wheels. We could only take him on temporarily as a tester, to which he agreed, but when the factory was reorganised he was put in charge of engine assembly. The other, and even later applicant, who was serving with the British Army in Holland after being a prisoner-of-war in Germany, came across the advertisement by accident, hence the late reply, but we thought that such determination merited an interview. The son of a Scotsman and a French mother, he had been brought up in Holland and could speak and read three languages with a smattering of two others and was an ideal person to fill the need for someone to show foreign visitors around the place and to deal with overseas service complaints or queries, so he was taken on the strength. His name, Paul Richardson, became interwoven with the history of the Company for many years, and many remarks in his quaintly-accented English were conversational gems. Almost his first assignment was setting up a new Service Department in the No. 2 factory, during which he instructed a young apprentice to paint "scrap" on one empty tea-chest and "litter" on another, but what he actually wrote was "SRAP" and "LITIR". The errors delighted Paul so much that from then on the boxes and their contents were never call by any other name.
Paul had a remarkable life-story. After being captured by the Nazis in Holland he was sent to a P.O.W. camp in Cologne, where he escaped and made his way to Berlin, but the man he thought to be a friend disowned him. Paul stole a bike to get quicly back to Cologne and after some weeks he again escaped and reached Holland by train. There he obtained a boat in which he sailed German officers and their girl-friends in the Zuyder Zee, and just managed to escape from one Nazi lieutenant who pierced his disguise. From then on he had to disappear, in perpetual fear of betrayal to the S.S., but finally joined up with the invading British forces in Nijmegen, where, much later, he came across our advertisement."