
Obituary for Captain FN Matthews
Frank Neville Matthews died on 8 December 2010. He was 86 years old. Frank was born, bred and educated in Cambridge at St John’s College Choir School and the County Grammar School. He served in the Home Guard from 1940 until he left school and joined the army in 1942. He was commissioned into The Suffolk Regiment in 1943 and on 6 June 1944, five days before his 20th birthday, landed on SWORD Beach as a platoon commander in B Company, 1 SUFFOLK. He took part in the capture of MORRIS and from there supported A Company’s attack on HILLMAN. From 7-20 June he took part in the savage fighting to hold and enlarge the Normandy Bridgehead.
On the night of 19/20 June he led a recce patrol towards LA BIJUDE and the Chateau De La Londe and, while making the final assessment of the enemy position, he was badly wounded by two grenades thrown by a suspicious sentry. Able only to crawl, Frank and the patrol reached the Battalion position at 0405 hours. The information obtained by the patrol was considered of great value and the War Diary records ‘congratulations being extended for a very fine effort’.
Frank was evacuated and his wounds meant he never rejoined the Battalion. His last war service was as an escort officer to politicians and VIPs visiting BAOR – as he said, his first experience of battlefield tours.
After early release to help in his family business – Premier Travel, then a small local bus company – Frank had little contact with the Regiment until in 1974, General Dick Goodwin, his D Day CO, asked him to organize the accommodation and travel for the first official Normandy Pilgrimage. He did this again for the 40th Anniversary in 1984 and then in 1989 for the dedication of the HILLMAN Memorial and every year thereafter until 2005 when the visits were gradually taken over by The Royal Anglian Regiment. He was loved by the French whose village he had helped to liberate and was an Honorary Life Member of Les Amis du Suffolk Regiment who look after the Hillman Memorial. They sent the following message for his funeral:
‘We all, Les Amis du Suffolk Regiment, we are deeply saddened about the death of our great and old friend Frank. He was since more twenty years a close comrade, faithful amongst the faithful (the most faithful) and was able with his kindness, his cheerfulness and his spontaneity, to be loved by all of us. His journeys in Normandy was for him the best way to find his past, his youth and his disappeared companions, but it was also the possibility that he had to express his great attachment to the French of Colleville, of Beuville, and to Les Amis of course. He was grateful to the people of Normandy, in their willpower to preserve and to transmit the memory of the British fighters and of The Suffolk Regiment, who gave their life to the liberation of France and Europe.
The welcome given by French people to the old comrades of the Regiment and to himself, was very moving to him, as he felt deeply all the expression of love and friendship which was lavished to him. During the dinners that we had together each 6 of June, it was not rare that he sang an old British aria and that he finished the song by ‘Vive l’Entente cordiale’ or ‘Viva la France’, some words very moving for us.
I knew Frank since 1990, he was my friend and now I have a big sadness and a big space (vide) in the heart, like all Les Amis who had a great affection for him. He shall miss, he who had France and Normandy as second homelands.
We don’t forget him.’
George Dudignac
Premier Travel was the hub of Frank’s business life and much of his social life. He became a director in 1948 and Managing Director in 1976. He built the company into what eventually became The Premier Travel Group of which he was Chairman. With a great sense of timing and in his own words recognizing he was ‘too technologically illiterate for a changing world’, he sold the company well in 1988 and became a ‘consultant’. However he continued to claim our trips to Normandy and Holland were ‘Creamier by Premier’.
Outside business Frank was a member and eventually captain of the GogMagog Golf Club. His golf clubs went with him to most places including the annual recce for the Normandy visit. He was an active Freemason, Master of his Lodge in 1964 and later the founder of The Cantabrigian Lodge at his old school.
Frank was a character whom many will miss, especially being asked to join him in a ‘petit canon’ or to ‘take the 6 o’clock medicine’.
WCD