Photograph courtesy of Danny Mander
Los Gatan Danny Mander, a native of England, served with the military police during World War II and found himself accompanying Winston Churchill in a walk in a Teheran garden.
'I lived a charmed life," said Britisher Danny Mander, summing up his World War II experiences in His Majesty's Military Police.
Mander was under fire during the Battle of Britain; he outskirted German U-boats in a 40-ship convoy circling the west coast of Africa; while awaiting orders off the east coast of Africa, 20 of the ships were sent eastward and were captured by the Japanese. Mander's ship headed northward to the Suez Canal and danger in Egypt, where German Gen. Rommel, the Desert Fox, was making a near-successful attempt to Cairo. From there, Mander was sent to Teheran, the capital of Iran, where Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin decided first to knock out Germany and then to turn the joint powers against Japan.
But first, let's explain today's photograph of Mander with Britain's Prime Minister Winston Churchill at the Teheran Conference. Mander's article, which accompanied this photograph, appeared in the November 1974 edition of British America, a journal of the British American Club of Northern California.
Allied supplies poured northward by rail and truck from the Persian Gulf to help Stalin's forces whip the Germans at Stalingrad.
Mander was born near Liverpool, the textile area of England, and was in an apprenticeship to calico printing when, in 1940, he volunteered for military service and thus was given his choice of service. He selected the military police.
Germany had overrun Europe and started a mission of air-bombing Britain out of the war. Mander found himself on a motorcycle rushing to downed German planes, arresting pilots, if still alive, and confiscating anything that would aid British intelligence. While on this duty, Mander was at a meeting of military and royalty and he was introduced to King George VI and Gen. Montgomery, who eventually whipped Rommel in North Africa.
Mander writes of a once-in-a-lifetime experience when Churchill decided to take a walk in the Teheran delegation's summer residence. "I accompanied him, like a faithful dog, lagging a few paces behind. As he walked, he commented about flowers and trees along the paths. I occasionally replied to prevent it from sounding as though he were talking to himself."
Churchill decided to take a swim in the pool and invited Mander to join him. Being that Mander was his bodyguard, he obviously had to decline.
After the war, Mander followed relatives to Los Gatos and has been in the real estate business here since 1964.
This article appeared in the Los Gatos Weekly-Times, June 12, 1996.
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