MY UNCLE WAS FINALLY LAID TO REST The Day

BY NICK FREEMAN

At t he end of the line was my cousin, Richard Graine, and what he had to say utterly shocked me.

‘ Nick,’ he began slowly. ‘They’ve finally found where Frank went down.’

F or a moment it felt like the world had become as still and silent as the watery depths which had claimed the life of 20 yearold sub lieutenant Frank Freeman: my father’s older brother and the man after whom I had been named.

D ecades after his boat sank following the D Day landings, I felt myself go rigid with shock: how had the ocean finally given up the secret of Frank’s final resting place?

Trembling with emotion I listened in amazement as Richard explained how divers from the SouthSea Sub Aqua Club had stumbled upon the wreck of Frank’s ship. But it was hard to process what I was being told.

A fter all, this was Frank, a man adored by his family whose untimely death had splintered my grandparents’ hearts into a thousand pieces.It seemed incredible.

I already knew the broad facts surrounding Frank’s death. As a curious child, I’d wanted to know why I bore Frank as a middle name. So I would listen in wonder when my late father, Keith, seven years Frank’s junior, spoke of his charismatic older brother and what seemed to be a tale of derring-do, excitement and boyish adventure.

A strong swimmer and keen athlete, Frank was only 16 when, in 1939, he hoodwinked the Navy into believing he was old enough to sign up.

A nd, as befitting his character, he would go on to prove his courage and resilience. Yet in the end Frank’s death was as horrifically premature as it was tragically avoidable.

I t happened in the early hours of June 7th, 1944. Frank had been on board landing craft LCT 427, where he was believed to be second in command of the 12 man crew. The ship was returning to Portsmouth having successfully delivered a cargo of Sherman duplex drive (DD) tanks to Gold Beach on D-Day as a part of the British lead assault under Operation Neptune

B ut just four miles from the harbour, disaster struck. The craft collided with HMS Rodney, a 34,000-ton battleship, which sliced the boat in half. Within seconds

LCT427 had plunged to the bottom of the Solent. The crew never stood a chance.

W hat made this all so horribly ironic was that the crew had done ‘the hard bit’: crossing to France, surviving enemy fire and successfully delivering the cargo of tanks - only to be dispatched to their death by their allies and countrymen.

O n the day of Frank’s death, countless ships had been cross-crossing the waters between England and France. Due to the scale and magnitude of the Normandy invasion, the incident went unreported for two months and during this time the landing craft was reported as “missing”.

I ndeed one reason my grandfather, Emmanuel ‘Manny’ Freeman, never got over the death of his son, was that he didn’t know of Frank’s final resting place. Like many other relatives , he believed Frank’s ship had been lost in Normandy under enemy fire.

( Manny was also a notable war hero - on his 101st birthday he was awarded the Legion d’Honneur, France’s highest decoration, in recognition of his service during the First World War.)

O ne consolation - the only consolation - was that grandpa never knew that the death of his much loved son was entirely avoidable.

S pool forward to 2011 and the twisted wreck of Frank’s ship was discovered one August day as the Southsea Sub-Aqua Club’s carried out a diving survey and historical research in the Solent area.

T he area is normally out of bounds for diving, but the club had been given special permission by Portsmouth Harbour Master.

A s the divers picked their way through the murky waters they found the ship cut in two pieces, both lying upright and several hundred metres apart.

A stonishingly the anti-aircraft guns and ammunition boxes were all there There was also a large capstan at the stern and, at the bow section, the landing craft door was open.

A fter the divers made their discovery they approached the Media to see if the family of the crew and their comrades could be located. My cousin Richard heard the story on local radio in Nottingham and on learning that one of the crew was a Sub Lt Frank Freeman told the rest of the family.

F ollowing the discovery of the wreck, it seemed fitting to hold a memorial at sea for those lost souls.

N ow, I may share Frank’s name, but ironically, unlike this brave seaman I am an appalling traveller. I’m crippled with motion sickness and won’t go anywhere unless I drive myself. That rules out travelling on trains, planes and boats. Although I desperately wanted to be as close as I could to where Frank had died, I didn’t want to disturb the beauty of the wreath laying with the voluble sound of vomiting.

I had travelled to Portsmouth with my mum, two brothers and Harry Kornhauser, a refugee of the kindertransport, whom my grandparents had taken in and who knew Frank well. But I had to content myself with watching from dry land as others including crew family members, D-Day veterans and divers from

Southsea Sub-Aqua Club journeyed to the site of the wreck to lay wreaths for the crew who had been consumed by those unforgiving waters. As I watched the boat cut a foamy path across the waves I recited the Hebrew prayer El Maleh Rachamim (God, full of compassion) on the quayside.

F rank’s death was an incalculable loss to the Freeman family. Like so many of the young men who lost their lives during the war, he showed bravery, fortitude and an astonishing sense of duty.

W hen Frank died my grandfather’s mourning was fathomless. Repeatedly he’d say that he’d lost his ‘best friend’ and my father felt the profound responsibility of trying to compensate for his brother’s loss (there were no other children).

M y own dad died in 2004 after being diagnosed with a brain tumour and it’s a source of great regret that he never knew that Frank’s resting place had been located. He would have perhaps felt some sense of closure, or even been able to join the memorial boat ride and lay a wreath on the waters above the wreck.

B oth Frank’s medals and those belonging to my grandfather’s medals endure as emblems of pride and sorrow. I feel the weight of grief and history as I pin them on my lapel when I get the opportunity to join the annual remembrance parade in Nottingham.

M eanwhile, Frank’s picture is displayed on a cabinet in my Cheshire home. I look at it often. Staring back is a young face, whose broad grin belies the knowledge of a short and tragic future.

Yet when I look at that photograph, it also reminds me how honoured I feel to bear Frank’s name and of the precarious and precious nature of human life.

M ay his dear soul rest in peace.