Fred Sadler No's 9 & 11 Cdo - Eulogy by Mick Sadler

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 16/06/2009 07:20:32

Fred was born in Fulham, London, in 11 January 1922. We do not know what happened to his birth parents. We do know that at an early age, before starting school, Fred had been adopted by William and Rhoda Sadler, who brought him up in Poole, Dorset.
He was active as a child. He was a Sea Scout and he had a Saturday job delivering shoes by cycle in the Bournemouth and Poole area. He came to grief on one of those Saturdays when he got his bike wheel stuck in the tram track and came off, breaking his wrist.
This was the time of the great depression and there was not much money about, and so it was that at age 15 Fred signed up to be a boy soldier. He joined the Royal Artillery based at Woolwich, London. He learned to ride a horse and how to play a military trumpet and bugle. The army also taught him how to ride a motorcycle. When war broke out in 1939, Fred was too young at age 17 to serve overseas. He enjoyed life riding round the English countryside on his army motorcycle delivering messages. To qualify for this role he had to pass a riding test and also a roadside repair test, mending a puncture within a set time. He confessed to breaking at least one army motorcycle when he and his comrades set up a series of ramps to see how high they could get the bikes to jump.
This was followed by many moves with his unit around England and Wales until, in September 1940, Fred volunteered to join the newly formed commandos.
He spent the Autumn of 1940 on the Isle of Arran, learning the skills he would need in his new role. He enjoyed the lack of protocol, the emphasis on independence and initiative and, unsurprisingly, the fact of being paid more than regular soldiers. He learnt to be a signaller, using both wireless and lamp. He made friendships then that would last into the twenty-first century.
Having gone overseas in January 1941, Fred was in hospital in Cyprus recovering from heat stroke when his superior came to his hospital bed to invite him to leave it, as his Commando unit was about to engage in a mission. And so it was that on 9 June 1941 he leapt out of a landing craft just off the coast of Palestine on a mission to capture a bridge from the Vichy French. He was carrying a wireless set on his back which was rendered useless by one of his comrades following him off the landing craft and landing on him, immersing both Fred and the wireless. Fred dumped the wireless without more ado and carried on up the beach. The fighting was bloody, with 45 commandos killed and 84 wounded, but they did achieve their military objective ? and Fred survived to tell the tale.
At other times in the war Fred fought in North Africa in the famous hit-and-run Jock columns. There, he was declared killed in action; thankfully, this turned out to be an error. Later he transferred to Ceylon where he returned to the role of despatch rider. He described this as mostly enjoyable apart from the day he ran out of fuel in the middle of the jungle. He was feeling decidedly nervous on account of the troop of very large and very unfriendly monkeys that seemed to be deciding whether or not to attack him en masse, when a villager offered him some fuel. He gratefully accepted it, but spilled it when he was putting it in the bike, setting the bike on fire. He did eventually make it back to his base in Colombo.
After that he went to India. He learned to drive a car in India when he was told, ?Get in that brand-new truck and drive it in a convoy from Bombay to Rawalpindi.?
After many more adventurous and downright dangerous activities he returned to the UK where he volunteered to become a glider pilot. To be a glider pilot meant you flew a large troop-carrying glider to enemy-occupied territory on what was essentially a one-way trip. Fortunately for Fred the war ended before he was needed to put this skill into action.
In September 1951 Fred married Mavis and in 1952 he left the army. Patricia was born in 1953 and Michael in 1955. The family was living in Cardiff at this time, where Fred worked as a postman. There was a shortage of housing in that post-war period and Fred and Mavis moved house many times, trying to find somewhere decent and secure to live. Their quest ended in 1964 when they settled in Pewsey. They lived together in Pewsey, with Fred working for Kennet Council, while bringing up Patricia and Michael and seeing them start families of their own. After Mavis died in 1994, Fred continued to live independently in Pewsey, spending many years supporting and looking after Mavis? twin sister Dilys, until she too died. Fred was able to live independently right up until just four weeks before he died.
Throughout his life Fred was always willing to give, to go more than the extra mile. He was the honorary secretary of the local Royal Artillery Association, he was a field worker for SSAFA, he was a trustee of the Pewsey Club, for in addition to firing big and small guns and mending all sorts of machines, the army taught him how to type and how to keep accounts! Michael remembers the day he bought his first car, which turned out to be a disaster on wheels. He phoned Fred to say that the newly acquired vehicle would not move an inch; before he knew it, Fred and Mavis had driven from Pewsey to Manchester, where Michael was living at the time, to mend the car. This was typical of the practical generosity that characterised Fred throughout his life.
Fred died in the Prospect Hospice, Wroughton, on 18 April 2009, aged 87. He died as he lived ? bravely.