Frederick Frank TURNER

Image from the Oxford Mail, 14 May 1945.

Frederick Frank Turner (known as Frank) is not named on the war memorial in St John the Evangelist Church, but perhaps he should be. His wife Ivy and her family lived at 26 Gordon Street, New Hinksey, and that was given as Frank’s address on his grant of probate in 1945.

Frank Turner was born on 13 April 1920, three months after the marriage of his parents Frank Turner and Edith Wiggins at Holy Trinity Church, St Ebbe’s. Frank Turner senior was from Blackfriars Road, St Ebbe’s, and was a Leading Stoker in the Royal Navy. He had probably served in the First World War; two of his older brothers had died in the conflict. Edith was from Shepherd’s Row, St Aldate’s, the daughter of a tailor.

It is likely that Frank senior was still in the Navy at the time of the 1921 census. Frank junior, aged one, and his mother Edith were living at Frank senior’s childhood home, 61 Blackfriars Road, with Frank’s widowed grandmother, Elizabeth Turner. Frank junior’s younger siblings, George and Iris, were born in November 1921 and December 1922.

By the time of the 1939 register, taken on 29 September, four weeks after the outbreak of the Second World War, the Turner family was living at 108 Friars Street, St Ebbe’s. Frank’s father had retired from the Navy and was working as a boilerman, and his mother was a cleaner. Frank, now aged nineteen, was a shoe repairer; his brother George (seventeen) was a baker’s roundsman; and his sister Iris (fifteen) was a laundress. Frank’s uncle Frederick Wiggins (Edith’s older brother) was living with them, having separated from his wife, and was working as a carriage cleaner for the Great Western Railway.

At some point between late 1939 and early 1942, Frank joined the Army and became a Private with the 2nd Battalion of the Lincolnshire Regiment. In May 1942 – whilst home on leave – he married Ivy Aldridge at St Matthew’s Church in Grandpont in Oxford. Ivy’s family lived at 26 Gordon Street, New Hinksey, next door to Edward Boswell (another of our 42 Men of South Oxford). Ivy was born in 1920, and in 1921, aged one, she was living at 26 Gordon Street with her mother, her paternal grandparents, their adopted daughter, and an uncle and two aunts. In the 1939 register, Ivy (now aged nineteen) was living there with her sister Edna and their paternal grandmother. Ivy was working as a clothier’s machinist, almost certainly at one of the two big clothing factories in Oxford: Hyde's on Shoe Lane, or Lucas's on George Street. Her parents and her five younger siblings were living at 45 Canning Crescent, Cold Harbour. It seems that Ivy remained living at 26 Gordon Street throughout the war, whilst Frank was away fighting.

Frank’s battalion (the 2nd Battalion of the Lincolnshire Regiment) landed in Normandy on D-Day, 6 June 1944. On 5 October 1944 he was reported by the Oxford Mail to be in hospital in England, having been wounded in Holland as the battalion moved towards the River Meuse. He recovered and returned to active service, by which time his battalion was involved in the push into Germany. Frank was killed on 20 April 1945, just outside Bremen, northern Germany, a week after his 25th birthday and less than three weeks before the war in Europe ended. Five of his comrades from the same battalion died on the same day.

Frank’s death was reported in the Oxford Mail on 14 May 1945. He was buried at Becklingen War Cemetery, northern Germany. The inscription on his grave reads ‘Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life’. He is also commemorated on the Oxford City Second World War Roll of Honour which is in the church of St Michael at the Northgate on Cornmarket.

Ivy remarried in 1948. Her husband was Leslie Shepherd of Lake Street, who had also served in the Second World War. They had a daughter, Linda, in 1950. Ivy later lived at 8 Oswestry Road in New Hinksey, and died in 2008.

Research by Siobhan Lancaster, with thanks to Lesley Dewhurst.

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