Family & Other Stories
Wilfred T Fry (1890-1967) - Jonathan Causer
My great-uncle Wilfred T Fry (known as Pete) attended Marlborough, where he was middleweight boxing champion three years running, 1906-08.
In 1907 there were 17 contestants in 5 weight categories. A few minutes research shows that two of these were killed in action during the Great War (TW Pollard and WN Shipster), two were awarded the Military Cross (HB Secretan and IH Lloyd-Williams) and another (KM Mylne) was brother of an MC. In 1908, FE Belchier won the light weight competition: he was killed in 1915
Pete served in the First World War. A memoir which he wrote survives, sadly only in part. He describes a lot of marching and makes light of slipping away to cafés for coffee and buns and vin ordinaire. He describes phlegmatically a day spent on sentry-go under fire from a German sniper, hidden in a haystack 100 yards away:
He must have had 50 to 60 shots at me in the course of the day and we never had the chance to signal him a hit. His shots pinged a few inches either side of my head and shoulders in the parapet in front of me, there being practically no back cover, but never once on the bull.
Pete was promoted to Lance Corporal, and suffered recurrent bouts of gastritis. He arrived in Boulogne, and was unexpectedly transferred to a convalescent hospital at Wimereux ('a most vile place, particularly for sick men, more like a convict prison, & indeed we were put on to carting stones about'). Then he was shifted to another camp near Rouen, where 'On Dec. 15th in the morning Sydney [Pete's younger brother] most unexpectedly turned up & took me out to lunch tea and dinner', before returning to UK on the morning boat next day.
He never mentions that he was wounded in the neck
Soon afterwards, the memoir breaks off tantalisingly, when Pete has arrived at Rouen, with 'The next morning see the doctor to put a slight irritation right & he sends me ....'.
He was invalided out.
Eric John Crisp - John Crisp
My father, believe it or not, was born in 1895! (I was born in 1943 when he was 48 and I am now 80 years old.)
My father was educated at Oakham School where he was head boy and captain of cricket and rugby, but I should add that Oakham was then a much smaller school than it is today. After Oakham he won a place at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge to read medicine.
Due to the onset of war in 1914 his three year pre-clinical course was reduced from three years to two and after that he had to join the armed forces. He trained as a pilot in Norfolk with the Royal Naval Air Service.
The RNAS was a large organisation with dozens of airfields up and down the East coast of England. The aim was to look out for and intercept Zeppelins on bombing raids, and German naval vessels which, if allowed to come close enough, could shell coastal towns.
In fact, my father's squadron was sent to Greece where they flew sea planes in order, I believe, to keep an eye on the shipping passing through that area.
After the war he completed his medical training at Guy's Hospital, London. So he was not exposed to the dangers of the Western Front but flying those early aeroplanes was in itself a pretty hazardous occupation!
The RNAS and the RFC were amalgamated at the end of the war to create the RAF. The Fleet Air Arm was formed in 1937 by which time flying from aircraft carriers had become possible.
