Lawrence Frankpitt Fearby Biography

Lawrence was born on June 23rd 1918, the son of Lawrence Fearby (b.1888) and Minnie (nee Frankpitt) (b.1888) . When Lawrence Frankpitt Fearby was 1 year, his paternal grandfather, a railway worker became Mayor of Castle Morpeth. Lawrence was a voracious reader and musician. He was especially keen on classical music and had been acquainted with Sir Thomas Beecham. Another major interest was Poetry and he was a great fan of Robert Burns especially. Lawrence Frankpitt Fearby married Ruth Eugenie Dryden (3 years his junior) on 16th August 1941 at St. Peter’s Church in Huddersfield. The couple had 5 sons between 1941 and 1954, the first of which became my grandfather. Using photographs in the war scrapbook of Lawrence and the dates given at the foot of his poems, I have been able to construct a timeline of his wartime career:

16-07-1942: Cairo (Signal Corps,8th Army)

7-10-1942: Cairo Hospital

23-10-1942: Mount of Olives

24-10-1942: Old Jerusalem

24-10-1942: Bethlehem

08-12-1942: Alexandria

20-12-1942: Port Said

02-01-1943: Nicosia (Cyprus) (Signals: 8th Hussars)

06-02-1943: Augusta (Cyprus) (Signals: 8th Hussars)

20-02-1943: Larnaca (Cyprus) (8th Hussars)

01-06-1943: Kyrenia (Cyprus)

01-09-1943: Nazareth

27-11-1943: Damascus

14-12-1943: Baalbeck (Lebanon) (Signal Corps,3rd Regt RA)

29-06-1944: Assisi

02-01-1945: Florence / Turin (3rd Medium Regt)

23-05-1945: Weiringen (Netherlands) (RHQ 3rd Medium Regt)

10-06-1945: Den Oever (Netherlands)

07-07-1945: Oldenburg (Germany)

Lawrence survived WWII and thankfully returned home with an amazing photograph album and many new books, the most impressive of which is a dictionary bound in Egyptian camel hair. Lawrence died in 1998 and his widow outlived him, dying in 2010.

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