Frederick Colechin

This story is shared by the Trust with kind permission from John Colechin, Frederick's son

I am Frederick Colechin's youngest son, John, and I would like to relate to you some of the events in his life leading up to D-Day.

He was born in 1903 in Silvertown, North Woolwich. His father and some of his 5 brothers were Thames Watermen. His younger life was spent in Silvertown and he worked for the then London Borough Council on the Woolwich Free Ferry.

Wedding of John and Alice, 1926

 

In 1926 he married local girl Alice St John and they had 4 children, Fred, Cliff and twins, Joan and John and in 1935 this happy young family moved south of the Thames to live in a much bigger house in Plumstead.

Family of John Colechin, 1937

 

With the outbreak of war in 1939 our father moved us out of London to a small village in Kent called Wilmington. This became our home and we all loved living there. One of my few childhood memories of him is that he was a very good natural piano player. I have only one or two actual memories of him playing but I know from my mother he did not play in a group but socially at home with friends. It was a very popular pastime in the 1920’s as most houses had a piano at home.

In 1943 our father was called up into the Royal Navy and he did his military training in the Portsmouth area and became part of Operation PLUTO. Some of this training was in the Isle of Wight. He would send us postcards of the beaches there telling us he would take us there after the war.

 

During the D-Day operations his Landing Barge was hit and he was severely injured and brought back to England but died in a Sheffield hospital on the 26 June 1944. Our mother, like most war widows, faced up to her now very different life style and brought up her 4 young children to face the new challenges and to be proud of their father for the sacrifice that he made. She lived to be 93. Our father is buried in Wilmington Parish Church and I still visit his grave. The words that my mother chose for his headstone still stand out as clear now as they did 80 years ago. ‘Greater love hath no man than this, that a man laid down his life for his friends’.

John Colechin June 2026 age 89.