The beginning

 In October 1917 the first squadron of bomber aircraft moved to an airfield at Ochey, near Nancy, to the south of the main British Expeditionary Force, a squadron tasked to bomb strategic targets in the German industrial heartland. This force grew gently and with the formation of the Royal Air Force in April 1918 became the Independent Force - an Air Force independent of either Army or Naval command.

Ground communications for the force - which was planned to grow to 100 squadrons was provided by a Company of Royal Engineer Signals with Lt Col Waley Cohen as Assistant Director of Signals at Air HQ. These were our first Air Formation Signallers.

Colonel Waley Cohen was an astonishing man. A City Gent. Member of the London Stock Exchange, Liveryman of the Drapers' Company, Member of the Institute of Electrical Engineers, Life Member of the Royal Agricultural Society of England and of the Royal Horticultural Society. A keen astronomer to travelled to Sumatra (1926), Siam (1929) and Canada (1932) as a member of official 'Eclipse Expeditions'. Fluent in the French language. The list of his interests and activities goes on but a constant thread was his love of Army life and, from the time of the Boer War, in telecommunications.

He was commissioned in the Queen's Westminster Rifle Volunteers in 1893. He served as Brigade Signalling Officer in the Boer War. At the start of the First World War he went to France as 2i/c QWR but by 1915 had again become Brigade Signalling Officer.

Waley Cohen continued to serve as a Territorial Army Officer becoming Honorary Colonel of the Line-of-Communication Signals, SR. With the outbreak of the Second World War, at the age of 65, he became Welfare Officer for Eastern Command thus becoming one of the few to wear both the Queen's South African medal and the WW2 Defence Medal.