Bill & Nora’s War: Frome Care Home Shares WWII Story Preserved

For more than eight decades, VE Day has meant something deeply personal to Nora LeStrange, not just a national anniversary, but a thread running through her whole life. She was six years old when the telegram arrived. Eight years old when the country celebrated, and her mother said quietly, "we've got nothing to celebrate." But she has never, not once, let her father be forgotten. Now in her late eighties and a much-loved resident of Catherine House Care Home in Frome (fondly referred to as a family member), Nora will this VE Day wear the medals awarded in her father's name, the culmination of a story that spans eight decades, two continents, and one extraordinary act of remembrance by her daughter Sally Robertson, who travelled to Sicily to retrace her grandfather's final steps, locate his field grave, and lay flowers there. This is that story. An ordinary Frome man Nora's father was William George Lee, Bill to everyone who knew him, and a Frome man through and through, from a family that had lived in Nunney since the 1750s. A tiler and plasterer by trade, Bill helped build Oakfield School just before volunteering for the Army. Away from work he kept racing pigeons, bred chickens, and was a proud member of Frome Amateur Boxing Club. It was through his trade that he met Nora's mother, Freda, doing building work at her family's farm in Cloford, and on 30 May 1936 they married at Cloford Church. On 19 December 1940, Bill enlisted in the Territorial Army, joining the Royal Armoured Corps, the branch of the British Army responsible for tank warfare. Nora was three years old. A childhood in wartime For Nora, the war was never something that happened elsewhere. In her own words: "I remember the sitting room at Alice Street Farm was dark because the big window was covered in sandbags, because German planes used to ditch their bombs returning from raids on Bristol. Many bombs were dropped nearby, one in the field behind Cloford Church. One day a plane came down in Postlebury Woods. My grandfather took me to see it. The pilot was dead on the ground, covered in a tarpaulin." She was a small child picking strawberries, collecting eggs, learning the piano, growing up in the middle of a war, waiting for a father who would not come home. The last time In April 1942, Bill was posted to his embarkation point. Nora, then five, remembers the journey to Dorchester Station as if it were yesterday. "My uncle had a car but petrol was rationed, but Edgar Read from Whatley used to drive to Dorchester Market, so he took mum and me in his car. I hadn't been on a long journey before and I was worried I might be sick. Of course, that was the last time we saw him." Bill sailed from Avonmouth via Sierra Leone and Cape Town to Port Suez, eventually joining the 3rd County of London Yeomanry (Sharpshooters), a celebrated British tank regiment, part of the Eighth Army that fought across North Africa and into Sicily. He trained as a driver-mechanic, passing his exams with 85%. His diary, carefully preserved by Nora, captures a soldier's life far from home: letters to Freda, a Christmas carol service in the desert, and in January 1943, a touchingly optimistic application for a transfer to the regimental pigeon loft. That same month, a fellow Frome Boxing Club member serving nearby wrote home: "I met Bill Lee out here the other day. He is looking very well and is the first Frome lad I have met." Two men from the same small Somerset town, briefly crossing paths in the desert. On 30 May 1943, his and Freda's seventh wedding anniversary, Bill made his last diary entry. He had been to church and sent Freda a parcel of stockings. Three weeks later he was on a landing craft, heading for Sicily. Sicily, 13 July 1943 Operation Husky, the Allied invasion of Sicily, began on the night of 9th–10th July 1943, the largest amphibious assault of the Second World War, involving thousands of troops landing simultaneously along the Sicilian coastline. Bill landed on the evening of 10 July with A Squadron at a beach the Allies had codenamed "HOW Beach," one of several landing points near Syracuse chosen for the invasion. Three days later, everything changed. Supporting the 15th Infantry Brigade's assault near Tenutella, Bill's half-squadron was ambushed, anti-tank and mortar fire from both flanks, the terrain of small stone walls and thick shrubs slowing the tanks, leaving them exposed. Six out of seven were knocked out. Four brewed up. Bill was among seven men from 1 Troop killed that day. He was 32 years old. He was buried in a temporary field grave alongside his closest friend in the regiment, Bill Henderson from Prestwick, Ayrshire, two men who had met at training in Bovington, been posted to the same regiment, introduced their wives, and were in the same tank when they were killed. On 24 December 1943 both men were reinterred at Syracuse War Cemetery, Sicily, where they lie side by side to this day. Plot 8, Row F, Grave 14. Their wives remained in contact until Freda's death in 1978. Together still. The telegram, the camels, and VE Day The telegram arrived on 16 August 1943, carried up the farm track on a 'Pop-pop' bike by Mr Beck from Nunney post office. Nobody usually came up the track. Everyone came out to see. "Granny and Mum were crying. No-one could believe it had happened." Weeks later, the parcel arrived, the wooden camels, the envelope of desert sand, the photo album Bill had sent from Cairo. Nora was not allowed to play with them. She had to keep them safe. She was six years old, and her father was gone, and these small objects were all that remained of the man who had sent them. On 8 May 1945, the wireless announced the war in Europe was over. The family had moved to Nunney Catch Farm, as Freda said quietly, "we've got nothing to celebrate," and packed Nora off to school. The school was locked. There was only one other child in the playground, a boy whose family had no radio and hadn't yet heard. Two children, on the day the world was celebrating, with nothing to celebrate at all.

Retracing his steps Nora carried her father's story for decades. But it was her daughter Sally Robertson who decided to follow it all the way to Sicily. Travelling with her husband, Sally retraced her grandfather Bill's final journey, the beaches, the roads, the terrain near Tenutella where the ambush happened. She couldn't find the tank itself, but through a collection of photographs held at the National Army Museum in London, she found something just as significant: a photograph of the exact tank Bill was driving when he was killed, and a photograph of his field grave. Using these, Sally was able to establish the location of the grave, and it was there, on Sicilian soil, that she laid flowers. Back home, together, Nora and Sally lovingly assembled everything they had gathered, the diary, the photographs, the service record, the letters from the desert, the letter from Buckingham Palace, and the memories that only Nora holds, into a handmade scrapbook. Not published, not archived. Held together by a family's love. Remembered at Catherine House More than eighty years have passed since that telegram came up the track. Nora LeStrange is now a resident at Catherine House Care Home in Frome (fondly referred to as a family member), and this VE Day she will wear her father's medals as the story she and Sally have spent years piecing together is finally shared in full. It is exactly the kind of care that Catherine House believes every resident deserves: to be seen not just as they are today, but as the whole, remarkable person they have always been. Freda, before she died in 1978, taught her grandchildren a song: "I see the moon, and the moon sees me, down through the leaves of the old oak tree. Please let the moon that shines on me, shine on the one I love." Now, says the family, Bill's, great, great grandchildren will learn it too. Nora and Sally have made sure of it. To learn more about Catherine House Care Home, please visit https://catherinehousecarehome.com/

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