大象传媒

My dad, Frank Pickett, was born in Axford, Wiltshire,in 1906 but moved to Trowbridge with his parents, Charles and Caroline, and his many brothers and sisters when he was very small.
During the 1920s, because he wasn't able to find work in spite of travelling all over England on foot, he joined the army and enlisted for 9 years I think. He travelled to Hong Kong, Egypt and India where he became a champion machine gunner. He was also quite athletic and won medals for his cross country running.
When he came out of the army, he worked for a local building firm called TJ Parsons and helped to build the open-air swimming pool in Trowbridge which was completed in 1939.
I'm not sure when he was called up, but I know he was in the army by 1942 because he had compassionate leave after my sister Barbara died of whooping cough. My mum always believed that because of this he was spared from going to Burma, but I'm not sure this was the case.
By 1944 dad was a radio operator in the Royal Signals and went over to France with his unit some weeks after D Day. He spoke very little about his experiences, but two things stick in my mind.
I know at some point he was captured by a small number of German soldiers and held prisoner in a farmhouse, but was released when a group of Canadian soldiers advanced on the area and the Germans fled. He in turn had to guard some German captives, and one in particular gave dad his army belt as a keepsake and later wrote to him, addressing him as "Frankie boy".
Although dad kept the letter, he never replied.
The other episode I remember dad mentioning once was the the fact that he was detailed to dig up the bodies of soldiers who had been killed and hastily buried where they fell. I presume they were then identified and moved to military cemeteries. I try not to imagine some of the sights he must have come across while he was doing this.
I also know that before being sent to France, he had helped dig bodies from the rubble after a bombing raid on Bath or Bristol and can only think that he must have been a very strong character underneath his quiet exterior to have survived such scenes without any lasting trauma.
Perhaps the fact that after the war he never contacted any of the men he served with is the only sign that he wanted to distance himself as much as possible from some of the things he'd seen.

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