Nestled in the Nilgiri Hills of Lovedale, the Lawrence School was where Ray Dunlop first learned duty inside an institution. The military spirit first instilled by his father also carried through the school corridors, and across the campus the steady march of boys in pressed uniforms and the unyielding expectations of the cadet structure shaped him early for a life of service. Many of his classmates, like their forefathers of the colonial era, would remain in India for years. From there, when he was just fourteen, Ray stepped into the ranks of F Boys' Company at the Signal Training Centre. When he reached military age, he joined the 5th Divisional Signals at Scarborough.
His first operational posting was to North Africa to watch over Italy’s ambitions as tensions flared in Abyssinia. Alexandria greeted him with suffocating heat and salt-heavy air from the nearby Mediterranean. The narrow streets were alive with activity—dockworkers unloading endless shipments of supplies, soldiers moving through the bustling waterfront cafés, and the distant drone of aircraft patrolling the skies. Further west, the desolation of Mersa Matruh stretched before him, a stark contrast to the organized chaos of the city. The sand, scorched by an unrelenting sun, seemed endless. His task with the Composite Air Defence Signal detachment was to maintain vital lines of communication between scattered air defense posts, a small but critical role in Britain’s effort to safeguard imperial interests against Mussolini’s encroachments.
Britain’s position in Egypt had to be secured, and signal lines between air defense posts became an essential component of that strategy. Wires unfurled across the sands, snaking between isolated outposts where men scanned the bleak horizon for enemy movement. Radio sets crackled with coded transmissions, their messages relaying patrol sightings, aircraft movement, and logistical updates.
His desert days stretched on endlessly. Equipment struggled against the fine grit of the Sahara, forcing constant maintenance—cables cleaned, connections tested, vacuum tubes replaced when the heat rendered them useless. Evenings brought brief relief, when the sun’s retreat painted the dunes in deep crimson and the signalmen gathered around dim lantern light. Amid the monotony, there was camaraderie—shared rations of hard biscuit and bully beef and quiet conversation and laughter beneath the clear night sky.
By the time Dunlop touched English soil again in August 1936, the dust of the Middle East clung to him like a second skin. His return to the Central Telegraph Office in London was brief—just enough time to sharpen his technical expertise—before duty called him back to the Indian subcontinent and the volatile, unpredictable North-West Frontier.
NORTHWEST FRONTIER
Among the hard terrain of mountains and ravines of Waziristan, down on the Wana plain, the Wana Brigade Signal Section maintained fragile lines of communication for British operations. The region had been contested since the end of the First World War, and conflict flared again throughout 1937 as tribal resistance to British rule reignited. The garrison at Wana was one of four brigades reinforced at the height of the campaign, a precarious outpost amidst shifting allegiances and an ever-present threat of ambush. When Corporal Dunlop joined the Brigade Signal Section in the spring of 1938, British and Indian forces had largely withdrawn to fortified garrisons, leaving an estimated 4,000 well-armed tribesmen to control the surrounding hills. Patrols pushed through the narrow mountain passes, wary of ambushes from unseen adversaries who knew the terrain far better than they did.
For the signallers, their battle was not fought with rifles but through the tenuous lifelines of wire and radio that connected each isolated post. Dust storms, relentless, all-consuming, and not unlike those of North Africa, clogged equipment and threatened the very function of their operations. Improvisation became popular practice. Worn rags wrapped around delicate instruments served as makeshift dust covers, while salvaged wire and scavenged parts kept essential systems running, and batteries were a precious commodity.
Meals consisted largely of tinned bully beef spooned onto charred chapatis accompanied by endless cups of over-brewed tea strong enough to strip paint. Ray savored each meal knowing that the next resupply was never certain. The Wana garrison, though fortified, was a lonely, wind-swept station, its soldiers peering beyond the perimeter wire at a landscape that seemed to swallow all who ventured too far from safety.
By mid-1939, as tensions escalated in Europe and war loomed on the horizon, Dunlop was reassigned to the Orderly Room at Razmak Headquarters, a major British garrison that served as a nerve center for operations across Waziristan. With the empire’s resources increasingly funneled toward the growing conflict in Europe, such frontier garrisons were left with fewer supplies and even fewer reinforcements. Convoy protection became a grim necessity as the road between Razmak and Wana grew notorious for ambushes. A dust-choked column of vehicles rolling through the hills could be quickly attacked by ambitious tribesmen. In response, the men adapted, reinforcing soft-skinned lorries with makeshift armor and rigging early-warning tripwires in vulnerable stretches.
Despite the precarious existence, life at Razmak carried a strange normalcy, removed from the war that was unfolding elsewhere. Athletic competitions became a morale booster. During brigade sports days, men competed in football matches and mule races. The Wana Brigade Signal Section, known for their rugged endurance, fielded a football side that took pride in their victories over better-equipped teams. In those fleeting moments of sport, they could momentarily forget the uncertainty that surrounded them.
In August 1940, Dunlop transferred to the Signal Training Centre in Jubbulpore, India, transitioning from the raw frontier to the structured garrison life of training new recruits. Training and parade grounds took the place of dusty tent camps and rocky hills. Recruits drilled relentlessly under the suffocating heat of India’s late-summer sun, sweat soaking through khaki as they practiced telegraphy, coding, and the operation of new signal equipment. The war was no longer just a distant storm on the horizon as men focused on training to deploy to the far reaches of the Empire. His tenure at Jubbulpore extended through September 1941, by which time the training center had become a crucial hub, dispatching soldiers to postings from Africa to Burma. The urgency of the war effort was evident in the rapid turnover of trainees, each class passing through with growing efficiency, bound for the battlefront.
PERSIA
The wind over Persia’s deserts carried a whisper of ancient empires and the hint of impending war. For men like Sergeant Dunlop, fresh from the clamor and humidity of India, the open sands and endless skies stretched over a parched earth that had witnessed the rise and fall of kings, from Cyrus to Darius, and now watched over the movements of the 31st Indian Armoured Division.
Persia’s beauty stood in stark contrast to India’s—where cool rivers tumbled through unoccupied stony mountains, the ancient sands were home to the weathered remnants of civilizations that had ruled for millennia. Cities like Kermanshah were full of energy and teeming bazaars filled with locals, tourists and soldiers alike. The men of the 31st Indian Armoured Division Signals occupied ancient caravanserais, their stones polished by centuries of traders and pilgrims, now housed radio sets humming with encoded transmissions, their cryptic chatter echoing off walls that had once sheltered Silk Road merchants.
By mid-1942, the signallers found themselves occupying a land far from the fighting front but of great tactical significance. Persia was not merely a waypoint—it was the lifeline of the Allies' oil supply and a corridor to the Soviet front. Every deployment and maneuver served not just the immediate necessities of war but also the broader objectives of global strategy. On June 19th, the main party left Zubair by road, covering rough terrain in seventy-four vehicles over heat-cracked roads through unrelenting dust that crept into every seam of their uniforms. Occasional detachments posted out to strategic lines departed with minimal supplies—ten rounds of ammunition per man—a stark reminder that while their mission was seemingly far removed from the main conflict, personal safety was anything but assured. The simplicity of the allocation was not lost on Dunlop, who, having experience of the Frontier, knew that in harsh terrain, survival often hinged on discipline rather than firepower.
By September, the unit faced mounting logistical challenges. Telephone lines were cut repeatedly, whether by shifting sands, extreme temperature fluctuations that weakened cables, or the sheer difficulty of maintaining infrastructure across such an unforgiving landscape. Each repair became a battle against the elements as well as unseen adversaries, possibly resistance groups or Axis sympathizers seeking to disrupt Allied communications. The relentless work of the signallers kept the arteries of the war effort open, ensuring orders and intelligence flowed across the vast distances of the Persian theatre.
INDIA
After a course in Baghdad that filled much of his final months in Persia, Dunlop returned to India in March 1944 to join the Central Telegraph Office in New Delhi. It was the nerve center of the Indian Telecommunications Development Scheme, an ambitious wartime initiative to modernize and reinforce communication lines across a region vital to the Allied war effort.
The scheme itself had been conceived in early 1942 when India’s outdated telecommunications infrastructure was recognized as a critical vulnerability. With the Japanese advancing in the east and the need for seamless coordination with the Middle East, the Defence Services Line Communications Board was formed to oversee a vast restructuring of India’s telecommunication capabilities. By January 1943, the plan had taken shape on a staggering scale. Over 273,000 miles of wire and 648,000 posts were scheduled for installation, along with 402 telephone circuits, 354 telegraph circuits, and major expansions to auto exchange plants capable of handling 18,000 lines. These improvements were more than just statistics; they were the lifelines through which war directives, intelligence, and strategy transferred across the continent.
Dunlop’s role was both deeply technical and strategically vital. Overseeing the installation and upkeep of these critical systems required expertise and resilience. The landscape posed its own challenges—broad rivers demanded elaborate bridge crossings, and monsoon rains turned construction sites into fields of thick, impassable mud. Every delay risked bottlenecks in the war effort and every malfunction had the potential to sever crucial communication channels.
As the telecommunication network expanded, so did its military significance. The Defence Telecommunications Network, operated largely by the Royal Signals, became the backbone for transmitting battlefield orders and high-priority intelligence. Dunlop, alongside other experienced officers and signallers, trained waves of new personnel, ensuring they could operate and maintain this sophisticated infrastructure under the harshest conditions. By early 1944, India’s telecommunications framework had become a central piece of the Allied strategy, linking Southeast Asia’s conflict zones to the command centers of the Middle East.
Ray finished the war in New Delhi with the wartime rank of Regimental Sergeant Major. He was still years away from returning to the United Kingdom and decades from retirement after committing for 21-years’ service. As the embers of war cooled, the atmosphere in the capital was thick with change. Demonstrations, political speeches, and the ceaseless pulse of an independence movement surged through the streets. The long-awaited end of British rule came in 1947, with independence and the partition of Pakistan marking the final chapter of the dominion that had shaped the very frontiers Dunlop had once served to secure.
WEST AFRICA
Back at home, Ray was appointed Chief Clerk to the Royal Signals Wing at the School of Signals until June 1951, when he embarked for West Africa. At Headquarters, West Africa Command, he was posted as Chief Clerk to the Chief Signals Officer. The heat was heavier, the air thicker with the scent of damp earth and briny ocean winds, and the seasonal harmattan winds carried fine Saharan dust that settled over everything in a thin, golden haze. The days were sweltering and humid, while the evenings brought brief relief, punctuated by the distant rhythm of talking drums and the hum of night markets in the streets below.
West Africa in the early 1950s was a land of transition, where colonial authority still held sway, but the murmur of change was unmistakable. Lagos, a city straddling its colonial past and its independent future, was alive with overflowing markets of textiles, groundnuts, and spices. The calls of traders blended with the honking of lorries navigating crowded streets. Accra, too, pulsed with activity, its gold-lined coast and bustling port reflecting the economic ambitions of the region. In the military barracks, officers balanced their duties with an awareness that their presence, once unchallenged, was now met with growing nationalist sentiments.
Dunlop’s responsibilities remained constant, but the environment demanded adaptation. The infrastructure of West Africa Command depended on efficiency in military communications. The geography—dense forests, vast plains, and humid coastal cities—presented a challenge unlike anything encountered in Europe or India. Wireless stations had to be carefully placed to avoid interference from the thick jungle canopy, while telegraph lines stretched across vast distances, often requiring constant maintenance. Dunlop worked closely with the Nigerian Signal Squadron to oversee operations that ensured critical links remained functional.
Despite its challenges, life in West Africa had its moments of vibrancy. Football pitches once again were arenas for morale-building; competitions between the Nigerian Signal Squadron and local regiments reflected not just sporting spirit but the unity and rivalry of a sprawling empire’s far reaches. Evenings at the sergeants’ mess were accompanied by the scent of roasting plantains and grilled fish and the sounds of highlife music drifted from local bars. The colonial administration's rigor blended with the spontaneous energy of local traditions, where British formality met the warm, easy cadence of West African life. Street hawkers balanced trays of bread and kola nuts atop their heads, calling out in rhythmic tones, while fishermen pushed their carved wooden boats into the surf at dawn.
In November 1954, Dunlop returned to the UK, rising to Regimental Sergeant Major again with the 2nd/20th Army Signal Regiment (T.A.), later transforming into the 1st (Essex) Signal Regiment (T.A.) by January 1958. By the next year, commissioned as an officer, he went overseas for the last time, but for his first posting in Europe with the British Army of the Rhine. He spent his final years with the Territorial Army before retiring on March 10, 1972, closing over four decades of steadfast service. While much of his career had been in quiet but critical postings, particularly within his clerical field, he had seen some of the most hazardous and demanding environments in the British Empire from a time when it still stretched over the globe.