Dave was one of the early members of the club and regularly attended until distance from the venues and ill health intervened. In the early days he lived in Kidderminster but perhaps 30 years ago he moved to near Ledbury in Herefordshire. Obviously this limited his attendance and in recent years this had been restricted even more by his growing ill health. In the years before Covid he continued to attend the club but only when his health and transport difficulties allowed.
Dave loved innovative games but always they were sociable and inspired by history. I am sure I am not the only one in the group that benefitted from his approach to games and his influence on the nature of the club is great, both in the games he ran and also in the cheerful way he always played and joined in all the games. Even when he personally had a gaming disaster it never dented his enthusiasm.
He was involved in many memorable games but there is one that I remember most fondly and so will others. Even if they did not play them with Dave, they might remember them when they were run by others or in games inspired by Dave's idea. These were the Vietnam games that Dave ran at his house and at the club. In these all the players were Americans and he ran the Vietnamese. It was not 'competitive' and was more of an 'experience'. It did give you what felt like a great feeling of what it must have been like to fight in this war. The players' figures were on the table but usually not the Vietnamese. Often you could go the whole game and not see a single Vietnamese soldier, even the dead and wounded would be taken away by the survivors so we could not use them for a good 'body count'. Neither did you have any idea of 'what was out there'. It could be just a single sniper or indeed no one. Equally it could be a major assault formation with lots of support. You genuinely got very nervous playing the game. This was not helped by the rule that you could only talk to the other players in the game, about the game, if your personal figure was next to the other guys figure. Otherwise you recorded messages on a mini tape recorder, usually accompanied by Dave going bonkers doing 'sound effects', to the other players. It was total chaos, felt very realistic and was loads of fun.
I hope you have happy memories of Dave. If you do not then just take it from me that he was a large influence on the way the club is and he will be greatly missed.