The funeral took place on Friday at St John’s Church, in Keswick, of Normandy veteran Arthur William Ibbotson, who died aged 99 on June 6 – 79 years to the day of the D-Day landings.
Speaking to the Reminder three years ago, he recalled sleeping rough in tanks on the frontline.
“We never expected the war to finish. I heard it on the tank radio. It came through that it was peace and that war was over. We threw our hats in the air.”
Originally from Pateley Bridge in Yorkshire, Arthur moved to Cumberland in the late 1950s and worked initially as a salesman for a milking machine company.
He had always been interested in farming and used to recall how, coming over Hartside Pass and seeing fields full of cattle below, he thought he’d found the land of golden opportunity, and he never looked back.
A couple of years later he met May Tyson who was running Easedale Guest House on Borrowdale Road and they were married in 1960. Shortly after their wedding they bought The Blencathra Hotel in Southey Street, changed the name to the Easedale Hotel, and ran it very successfully until their retirement in 1983.
They made many firm friends among their guests, some of whom continued to visit them after retirement.
During those years Arthur also served as chairman of the local hoteliers’ association, and worked as a special constable in the town.
Arthur was devoted to May, caring for her during her later years of poor health, and her death in the year 2000 was a huge loss.
At the age of 18, Arthur had been called up to serve in the Second World War and was in Normandy for D-Day and served with the Grenadier Guards as a gunner and radio operator in tanks.
In a BBC interview in 2005, commemorating the 60th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, Arthur was reported as a member of the Normandy Veterans Association, who took part in the landings and landed at Sword Beach. His unit was described as part of the first wave of reinforcements.
He celebrated his 21st birthday in newly-liberated Brussels. He served in Germany at the end of the war, working in communications at Schloss Birlinghoven helping to facilitate the rebuilding of Germany.
Arthur was extremely practical – he taught himself to play the keyboard and guitar, was a keen stick carver and had been a follower of the local hounds and would regularly burst into rousing renditions of hunting songs.
He was inspired by the wonder of nature and loved to grow vegetables and flowers in his sizeable garden.
Arthur also enjoyed dancing, and it was at a dance in Keswick that he met Pearl Wilson. At a time of life when many would consider slowing down, they tripped the light fantastic and were together for almost 17 very happy years until she died in 2017.
Arthur was fiercely independent and remained very alert and interested in many different things right up to the end of his life.
He greatly enjoyed his weekly visits from his friend Eddie who he had met initially through Age UK’s befriending scheme, now Two’s Company Keswick, and with whom he had lengthy and detailed conversations on topics far and wide. His faith was always very important to him and while he was able, he attended services regularly at St John’s Church and latterly at the Methodist Church.
Arthur had a remarkable and long life and managed to stay living in his own home, even cooking his own meals, until February this year when he was first admitted to hospital following a fall. From there he spent a few brief weeks at the Millfield Care Home in Keswick before once more being taken into hospital where he passed away peacefully on June 6 – fittingly the anniversary of D-Day.
