Diary of John Faithful Scott-Rumble (nickname Jock)

Today I brought a desk diary that my father kept between 1943-1944 and then was when he was in the RAF (FLT LT JFS Rumble). He was an RAF dentist. He had qualified just before the war started. I have a copy of the document when he got his commission in the London Gazette in 1941. He spent of the most his time during the war in Sri Lanka (Ceylon). He had a hut out there built by a local native. The dentist drill worked by someone. He kept this diary during that time.

One of the stories at that time was that he was pining for a girlfriend back in the UK. She was German. We don't know how a German girl was living freely in London during the war. I think eventually she was seeing some of the American visitors and that relationship fizzled out. A few years later he married another woman, my mother. My mother was called Joyce Florence Rose.

He was a great chess player and he played lots of chess out there. He had a friend that was a tea planter and they used to spend time together in the hills.

He was in hospital in Sri Lanka during the war. I think was a tropical ailment.

Postwar - He moved to Sevenoaks in Kent and, in those days, you had to buy your way into a dental practice. He was there from the late 1940s-1967 when he got a job in Eastbourne. He was a pillar of the community.

He died of cancer when I was 19 years around 1971.