Document Request: Frank Risbridger - Kentish Gazette 10/07/2008
Document Description: Frank Risbridger, 85, is chairman of the Canterbury branch of the Normandy Veterans Association. In the run-up to this year’s War and Peace Show he told Peter Cook about his part in the campaign.
Transcription URL: https://risbridger.surnametree.com/library/vdocs/D_135#135
Document Transcription:Frank Risbridger, 85, is chairman of the Canterbury branch of the Normandy Veterans Association. In the run-up to this year’s War and Peace Show he told Peter Cook about his part in the campaign.
When they backed their 45-ton Churchill tanks on to the landing craft at Gosport, the men of the 9th Royal Tank Regiment had no idea where they were going.
Frank Risbridger remembers four days stormbound offshore, leaving men utterly seasick. Nothing in their months of training at Eastwell Park, on the Caterbury to Ashford Road, had prepared them for this. As they drove off the ship into six feet of water, using periscopes to find their way on to Sword beach, the tankies were relieved to find little opposition. All that changed on June 26, 1944, when they came to the tiny Normandy village of Cheux, into the fury of Operation Epsom. “We went in with 1,000 Gordon Highlanders to flush the Germans out” said Frank. “When we came out of the village there were only 125 of them left. “My tank was hit by an 88mm shell. The crew jumped out into a cornfield but the lanyard of my holster snagged on the compass and I couldn’t free it. “Petrol in the tank was alight and had set fire to my trouser leg. It was pretty desperate. Eventually I managed to pull myself free and jumped to safety. Six seconds later the tank blew up. I was six seconds that made the difference between war grave and survival.” Two of Frank’s best pals were not so lucky. Shells had ripped into their tanks and taken off their legs. Despite the best efforts of the medics, they died. Today David Gotobed and Roy Painter are buried in the war cemetary at Bayeux. For Frank the war went on and he within 24 hours he was found a new tank. Soon he was to be involved in another historic Normandy event, Operation Jupiter, the battle for Hill 112. “You look at that hill today and wonder what the fuss was all about”, he said, “But on one day during the battle, the Germans and the British between them had 400 tanks knocked out. Hill 112 was strategically vital. Rommel had said: ‘Whoever holds Hill 112 commands Normandy’. “It took us 30 days and a lot of lives to win the battle. Our tanks were up and down that hill 29 times.” Fortunately Frank escaped serious injury as the 9th RTR progressed on through France and into Belgium, Holland and eventually Germany itself. Every year, about this time, Frank, of Rectory Lane, Barham, travels back to Normandy, to place a flower and a British Legion Cross on his friends’ graves. And a beautiful friendship has grown up as a result of this. A ocal man, Jean Marc Lesueur, took his details from a label on the cross, and made contact. Now he takes care of the graves and makes sure there are always flowers there. He has good reason. His mother, Suzanne Lesueur, had been in the midst of the destruction of Caen by allied bombers just after D-Day. To this day Mm Lesueur tends the graves of five infantrymen who lost their lives in the liberation of Caen. Now Frank is mounting a campaign to raise £10,000 to take 25 Normandy veterans back to France next year for the 65th anniversary of D-Day. For many it could be their last chance to see the battlefields where their comrades died.
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