Obits Jun 95 - Issue 84

WO2 R Basted on 13 Apr 1995. Bob enlisted in the Norfolk Regiment 4 March 1924. He soon proved to be a good sportsman and excelled in football and shooting. He served in the 1st and 2nd Battalions and in the Regimental Depot.
At the outbreak of war, he served in France, and was involved in the retreat from Dunkirk, a man with a great sense of humour which helped to keep morale high in a desperate situation.
I became very friendly with Bob when we re-formed the 2nd Battalion Royal Norfolk Regiment in 1940 and were training in Yorkshire.
We tried to make life as pleasant as possible and he was always the life and soul of the party especially when singing his song "Macnamara's Band" and crashing tin tray cymbals.
Shortly afterwards we moved out to the Far East and served together in India and Burma.
Bob was de-mobbed at the end of the war and we met up again in Norwich and spent many happy hours together talking over old times whilst walking around Mousehold Heath.
He was a very popular man and in all the years I knew him, I never heard anyone say an unkind or wrong word about him.
He leaves his wife Helen, one son Bob and daughter Sheila and knowing how important his family was to him, to them we send our sympathy in their sad loss. Winky Fitt

WO2 John 'Jack' Forrest on 19 Apr 1995. Jack enlisted into the Royal Norfolk Regiment on 8 May 1934, did his training at Britannia Barracks, Norwich.
He was then posted to the 2nd Bn in South Raglan Barracks, Devonport.
In Oct 1936 he left for India to become a member of the 1st Bn, stationed in Jhansi. After a few weeks the Bn was called upon to serve on the North West Frontier. Jack went also, his first posting on active service. He was by now a soldier of great experience and had started to gain promotion.
He returned to the UK in Dec 1939 and became a Permanent Staff Instructor to a Territorial Battalion.
In 1942 he was posted to Malaya and was taken prisoner by the Japanese on 14 Feb of that year. He remained a prisoner until the end of the war.
The next 6 years was spent in the UK, eventually joining the Regt in Hong Kong where he served from Sep 1952 to Oct 1954, then back to the UK for a year before going to Cyprus. Jack left Cyprus in Nov 1956 and served the remainder of his service in the UK.
After his discharge from the Army, Jack took up a post as an instructor at the Duke of York School at Dover where he remained until reaching retirement age. He then passed his time on various committees for the Regimental Association and FEPOW. He was a founder member of the Norwich and District Branch of the Regimental Association.
Jack leaves his wife Nora, two sons and a daughter. To them we sent our sympathy in their sad loss. Winkie Fitt

Sgt Ted Boxall 5773165 on 9 Nov 1994. Ted joined The Royal Norfolk Regiment in September 1938. After training at The Depot, he was posted to the 2nd Battalion at Bordon where he was subsequently posted to the 4th Battalion. He became a Prisoner of War in the Far East and was one of the unfortunates who had to help build the infamous railway. After returning home, he left the Army but being unable to settle in civilian life, he rejoined the Regiment and served with the 1st Battalion in Germany, Hong Kong and Cyprus. He retired from the Services in 1963. He leaves a widow and two daughters.

Lt Col St Hilary Wilfred Tamar Lewis ex 7th Bn on Christmas Eve 1994. Col Lewis had a long career in the Army, followed by 25 years as a Land Agent in Penrith. He was born in 1911 at Oxhey, Herts and educated at Marlborough and Trinity College, Cambridge. Soon after leaving Cambridge he was commissioned in 1932 into the Royal Norfolk Regiment with which he spent all his army career. He served in the peace-time Army in India, then was recalled home on the outbreak of war in 1939. He returned to India and Burma to take part in the Far East campaigns. After the war he was a member of the occupying force in Germany.
Col Lewis married Diana Bury in 1946. She died in 1948. He retired from the Army in 1949 and in 1951 married Miss Anne Dillingham Blackett-Ord. In 1953 they moved to Newton-Reigny and he became a Land Agent. He loved the work, particularly aspects dealing with the forestry. A man of the trees, knowledgeable, practical and happy to help with the physical work of planting them, he was also a keen shot, content to walk miles with a gun under his arm and he thoroughly enjoying a day's shooting.
He and his wife devoted a great deal of time to many voluntary works and he will be particularly missed by the Calvert Trust, as he was their treasurer for ten years. Col Lewis will be missed by a wide circle of friends particularly in his parish where he was a friend to all.
He leaves his wife Anne and two children, Caroline and Michael.

Maj Benham Savory at a nursing home in Blakeney, where he had been for a few years, having lost the use of his legs, on 24 Nov 1994, aged 83. Born in London in 1911, after school at Marlborough he was articled in the City and at that time joined the HAC (Honourable Artillery Coy). He was called up for war service and commissioned into the Royal Norfolk Regt and posted to the 5th Bn. There he remained and in due course moved out with the rest of 18 Division to Singapore, of which much has been written. When surrender was ordered, each Bn was instructed to detail small escape parties who might stand a chance of getting away. Benham was one of these and he managed to make his escape in a dinghy from the harbour, got across to a small island and thence to Java, which he crossed and embarked on a River Hoogli river boat which set sail in the direction of Colombo in Ceylon. After a while they were intercepted and torpedoed by a Japanese submarine but the Japanese being superstitious people were probably frightened when one of their torpedoes went straight underneath the flat bottomed river boat without going off, and they fled. After reaching Colombo, Benham and a friend were posted to the 1st Bn, the Queen's Royal Regiment, in Northern India, but Benham had heard that the 2nd Bn, The Royal Norfolk Regiment, was in India so he got himself posted to them.
In due course the 2nd Bn, part of the 2nd Division, was rushed to Northern Assam to halt the Japanese invasion of India at Kohima in Nagaland. He was wounded in the neck at that long drawn out battle and evacuated, but eventually rejoined the Bn in time for the fall of Mandalay.
After the War he joined the solicitors firm of Butcher Andrews and Savory in North Norfolk and remained with them for the rest of his life, living in Walsingham. He is survived by two elder sisters and two daughters.

Kenneth Saunders BEM in March 1995 aged 64. He was awarded his BEM after continuing to serve in the TA despite losing a leg and fighting cancer. Ken joined F Company HSF (Home Service Force), 6 Royal Anglian, in Norwich soon after its inception in 1982 and became a Sergeant. A keen motorcyclist, he carried on his work as company clerk from his hospital bed after a road accident in 1988. Even amputation of his right leg in 1989 failed to keep him from his work and in recognition of his services he was awarded the BEM in 1992.
He was in Egypt on National Service in 1952 with the Royal Air Force Colour Squadron when HM The Queen flew home from Kenya on the death of HM King George VI and he formed part of the Guard of Honour when the aeroplane landed to refuel. He told me that years later a salesman tried to sell him an encyclopaedia. Though not really interested, he nevertheless turned the pages and found a photograph of that Guard of Honour. I would like to know in which encyclopaedia it appeared.
A towering ebullient man, Ken Saunders was a Barnardo's child in 1932 and rose above his peers to achieve every schoolboy's dream of becoming a steam locomotive driver at the age of 24. In his time he drove the Mallard, the Flying Scotsman and the Silver Link. He made regular non-stop runs to Edinburgh and once held an unofficial post-war record for travelling the 29.1 miles from Peterborough to Grantham in 21 minutes. His greatest regret was leaving the trains for administrative work but in retirement in Great Plumstead was an active member of the Steam Railway Preservation Society.
A member of the Austrian Alpine mountaineering club, Ken Saunders once described Ben Nevis as "a nice leisurely walk". He was also a keen gardener, an award-winning amateur writer, a broadcaster on Radio Norfolk and an international motorcycling race timekeeper.
At 62, with one leg, he qualified as an advanced sub-aqua diver. This year he was to learn how to water-ski and canoe.
Ken was a man it is a privilege to have known.
He died after bravely fighting cancer for 13 years and leaves no family.
Reproduced by courtesy of the EDP, with some personal additions. JLR