FRED BANBURY

Chorister  - 2006

In spite of standing next to Fred in the top tenors section for around eight years I didn’t really crack into Fred’s true character until I’d travelled abroad with him.  Yes, Fred could indeed be “tricky”, but you knew exactly where you were with him – he told you immediately something didn’t suit him!

Take our Norway trip, when Fred & I were singletons roomed next to each other on the hotel top floor.  Fred’s habit was to ask me when I would be going down to the dining room and to give him a knock so that we could take the lift and be seated together for the ensuing meal.  One evening before dinner, I knocked at Fred’s door and said I’d been delayed getting ready and would he like to make his own way down, reserve a couple of places for us and I’d join him in 5 minutes.  Without a care, I quickly proceeded to dress and ran down to the by now crowded dining room to find a single place at table just in time to see our meal served – but no sign of Fred!  Another few minutes elapsed before a red-faced Fred thundered into the dining room, found me ensconced on a full table, and proceeded to give me a fair old rocket for leaving him behind! “You didn’t give me a knock – you left me behind” , he wailed!

I felt mortified and humbled: how could I have been so thoughtless in not realising that Fred’s natural modesty and shyness in mixed company had overcome his appetite and left him marooned in his room until I knocked?

After that salutary little incident I made sure I gave Fred his desired knock every further meal time and we soon settled back into our previous easy camaraderie together!

Like the rest of us, I shall sorely miss Fred: he was a truly unique Somerset man with an innate modesty that belied his considerable lifetime achievements.

Alan Blythe

Fred was generally acknowledged to have been a “private” person who we all knew but few got really close to. By pure chance, I got to know him a bit better.

In 2000, we were invited to augment Chepstow Male Voice Choir who had accepted an invitation to attend the anniversary of the liberation of the Dutch town of Hertogenbosch by the 51^st (Welsh) Division in 1945. 

When we arrived at our hotel, we found to our surprise that we singletons were sharing rooms and they seem to have put the youngest with the eldest, and I found that Fred and I were room – mates for the duration. Thus I got to talk with him and got to know him a bit better.

The Dutch made a great fuss of Fred as one of the “Liberators” as was a Chepstow chap called Edrys, like Fred ex-RAF aircrew.  At our first concert, Edrys, who was a diabetic and blind, collapsed on stage with a heart problem, and the first man there was Fred, down on one knee, supporting his head on his shoulder, talking very quietly to him.  He got him calm and stayed at his side until the medics arrived.  In retrospect, I wonder if he’d done that before?  Sadly, Edrys died 2 weeks later.

The final concert was in a huge church with hundreds of people, and our Fred was called out front and centre as one of the “liberators” and was publicly thanked by the grateful Dutch to tumultuous applause! Fred was very embarrassed but also very proud; afterwards he said “there were no need for all that fuss, but its nice to know they haven’t forgotten”

At Arnhem, we sang at Oosterbeck cemetery; it was a grey drizzly day, and I remember this grey haired elderly gentleman standing in front of one of the identical white gravestones decorated with fresh flowers by local schoolchildren. The inscription said “Flight Engineer, Royal Air Force, aged 19 years”. “Could have been me” said Fred, quietly. He joined at 18, and was flying operationally in Bomber Command before he was 20.

Perhaps his wartime experiences were part of the reason he kept his feelings to himself, we shall never know.

And so Fred has passed into history and rejoined his crew, and we will miss him.

Ian Knowles