Hi Gary
Firstly, welcome to Armorama!
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I hope you find this place as great as me! :-)
The other guys are right - you should always try to apply decals to a gloss surface, or you will get air trapped underneath.
As for decals lifting off... this sounds pretty extreme. If you've applied them a couple of times there's probably not much of the original adhesive left. I'm surprised the dilute white-glue didn't help, because it's a "classic" fix.
The other thing I'd try is to apply the decals on to wet Future/Klear. When it's dry, an overcoat with matt varnish will even everything out.
Hope this helps
Rowan