The Hilderstone Miscellany

Last updated 23/2/2001

FRANK SPENCER

Frank was brought up in the village, living with his parents and his brother and sister at the village bakery on Sandon Rd. He was educated at Stone Grammar School and, prior to volunteering for service in the Royal Air Force, was employed as a trainee engineer with the Post Office.

In the R.A.F. Frank trained as Air Crew and qualified as a Bomb Aimer. In early 1944 he was a Flight Sergeant serving on 514 Squadron at RAF Station Waterbeach, Cambridgeshire. Formed in September 1943, No 514 Sqn. Was a Heavy Blind-Bombing Sqn, equipped with Lancaster aircraft in No 3 Group RAF.

On the night of June 15^th/16^th 1944 aircraft from No 514 Sqn were tasked to attack the railway yard at the town of VALENCIENNES in north-east France.

Frank’s aircraft, a Lancaster Mk2 No.LL690 with a crew of seven, Pilot, Navigator, Bomb Aimer, Flight Engineer, Wireless Operator, Nose and Tail Gunners was carrying eighteen 500lb bombs. During the raid the aircraft was attacked by a German night fighter and crashed between the villages of IWUY and RIEUX-EN-CAMBRESIS, five miles north of the city of CAMBRAI in Northern France. All the crew members were killed.

Frank Spencer was 19 years old. He rests with his comrades in RIEUX COMMUNAL CEMETERY in France and is also commemorated on his parent’s grave in Christ Church Cemetery.  Frank’s wife Mrs. Kathleen Mary Spencer lived at Blackley, Manchester.

The Spencer family ran the Bakery in Hilderstone until its closure.

“They shall not grow old as we that are left grow old.

Age will not weary them,

Nor the years condemn,

At the going down of the sun

And in the morning,

We will remember them.”

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