Frank Chester, recognised by the Royal British Legion as Britain’s oldest surviving Second World War veteran, has died at a nursing home in Worcestershire at the age of 109, just nine days after marking his birthday.
Chester, who was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for his wartime service in the Royal Navy, was born in Ludlow, Shropshire, and worked for HM Customs and Excise before the war changed the course of his life. He trained as a Royal Naval Officer and rose to the rank of First Lieutenant on HMS Honeysuckle, serving in some of the most dangerous waters of the conflict.
In an interview two years ago, he recalled one particularly harrowing encounter off the coast of Norway, when German aircraft attacked his vessel while it was escorting two submarines. “I knew they were going to bomb us,” he said. “I could hear a knocking sound but quickly realised it was my knees knocking together.” The candour and quiet humour of that recollection was, by all accounts, entirely typical of the man.
His daughter, Ruth Pole, described her father as “very modest,” adding that she had “never heard him lose his temper once, which is truly remarkable.” The great-grandfather had lived in Walsall following the war, where he married his actress fiancée, Lily — a union he spoke of with unwavering warmth until the end of his life. “Six weeks later we decided we were going to spend the rest of our lives together,” he once recalled. “Lily was the best thing that happened to me.”
Chester had been the oldest man in Worcestershire and the third oldest across the entire United Kingdom at the time of his death. He had held the title of Britain’s oldest known living World War Two veteran since 26 March this year, following the death of 109-year-old Harry Waddingham.
Waddingham’s own story had been equally remarkable. He joined the Navy as a boy sailor at just 16 and served during the Spanish Civil War before being posted to HMS Wakeful. He was aboard the destroyer on the beaches of Dunkirk in the early hours of 29 May 1940 when a German E-boat struck the vessel — only four troops and 25 crew members survived. He later served on HMS Juno, surviving a bombing by the Italian air force off the Cretan coast, and went on to serve aboard the Hunt-class destroyer HMS Mendip until the war’s end.
Speaking about his extraordinarily long life two years before his death, Chester said simply: “The Lord has been very kind to me. Every day I say my prayers and thank him that he has given me another day.”
