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April 2010
Two extraordinary wartime heroes still going strong
D-Day veteran commits memories to paper as landings anniversary approaches, while former naval stalwart still has daily swim at 99.
It may look like a regular retirement development, but Peverel Retirement-managed St Mary’s Mead in the sleepy Oxfordshire town of Witney is home to two extraordinary men. And they are both called Bob.
Bob France was just 18 years old when he took part in one of the greatest operations of the Second World War: the D-Day landings.
Sixty-six years on from D-Day, Bob has just finished writing his personal account of the battles he fought in his half decade of army service as a memento for his family.
Despite his young age, Bob hit the Normandy beaches in June 1944 with the 51st Highlanders – a battle-hardened unit which had already served as part of the Eighth Army in Italy and North Africa. He spent the next five years in the army, travelling to far-flung places such as Palestine and Egypt, and was also part of a force set to invade Japan had the atomic bombings of the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki failed to bring about a Japanese surrender.
After leaving the army Bob got a job that paid £4 a week, but ended up having a successful business career that culminated in him running his own management consultancy for 17 years. He retired at 65 and moved into St Mary’s Mead when it opened 20 years ago.
“It’s taken me a year to write my story,” says Bob, 85, “but my main objective was to get my memories down on paper rather than get it published.”
Bob France isn’t the only St Mary’s Mead Resident with a fantastic life story to tell.
His neighbour Bob Hunt has also lived in the development since it opened 20 years ago. Bob joined the Royal Navy at the age of 15 as a shipwright’s apprentice and stayed until he was 50 years old.
The Navy took him over the world and while serving as shipwright officer on HMS Liverpool in the 1940s he got to know Lord Louis Mountbatten, the former First Sea Lord and Viceroy of India who was assassinated by the IRA in 1979. At the time Mountbatten was commanding a squadron in the Mediterranean Fleet and based in Malta.
Says Bob: “I was shipwright officer, so he would call on me when he wanted anything done. He was a very meticulous man. Once he sent for me because something was quarter of an inch wider than it should have been!”
Mountbatten arranged a deal with the Americans to get films delivered and shown every Sunday night and, as one of the other officers also based at Malta was the husband of the then Princess Elizabeth, Bob met the future Queen of England several times.
Even at the age of 99, Bob still goes for a swim in the development pool every day at noon.
Peverel Retirement House Manager Penny Edwards says: “Bob’s swim is so important to him that I’d worry if I didn’t see him out there at lunchtime.”
Says Bob: “We’ve got an indoor pool here at St Mary’s Mead, so I go every day I’m here. Then I’ll go home and have a whiskey and two bags of crisps for lunch.
“St Mary’s is a lovely place to retire to,” he adds, “and Penny is a great manager who always pops in to say hello.”
Says Penny: “Both Bob Hunt and Bob France have lived such interesting lives and the fact they are both so active at the ages of 85 and 99 is an inspiration to us all.”
Peverel Retirement Managing Director Keith Edgar says: “There aren’t many people around today who stormed the Normandy beaches at the age of 18 and there are fewer still who can claim to have met the Queen in a cinema. These two gentlemen have enough life experience between them to fill several Hollywood blockbusters.”
