Masters | Kenneth Charles
Biography
Kenneth Charles Masters died of wounds on 30 May 1945. He was a Captain in the Royal Army Service Corps (Service No. 201559). He was initially buried in the Allied Cemetery at Eisenach, near Kassel in Germany and subsequently temporarily re-interred at Margraten Cemetery which was to be dedicated to American forces. He was therefore again re-interred on 1 May 1947 in Grave IV. A. 3. at the CWGC Cemetery in Overloon. His grave is inscribed “Until the day break and the shadows flee away. Never absent from our thoughts”.
Kenneth Charles Masters was the son of Group Captain Charles Herbert Masters, R.A.F., and Florence Daisy Stainer who married in 1919 in Richmond, Surrey.
Charles Herbert Masters’ Birth Family
Charles Herbert Masters was the son of Herbert Wood Masters and Alice Jane Mitchell who had married in Fyfield, Hampshire in 1890. Herbert was born on 22/5/1867 and Alice on 24/11/1867, both in Richmond, Surrey. In 1891 they were living at 11, Ashley Road, Richmond. Herbert was working as a carpenter and joiner and was also an organist. They seem to have been lodging in the household of a widow called Harriet Eames, her daughter and granddaughter. They went on to have three children as follows in Richmond: Charles Herbert 2/8/1891, Dorothy Alice 14/3/1893 and Winifred Jessie 29/5/1899. At the time of Charles’ birth they were living at 2 Rayleigh Road, Richmond. Herbert’s role as an organist stemmed from his father, Charles Hunt Masters, who was blinded in an accident at the age of 7. He was found to have a talent for music, playing the organ at Westminster Abbey three times while still at school and later finding employment as a professional organist. The tradition of playing the organ, albeit not professionally, was carried on by both his son Herbert and grandson Charles, but not by Kenneth Masters.
In 1901 they were living at 32, Townsend Terrace, Richmond with their three children and also Alice’s widowed mother, 65 year old Maria Jane Mitchell, who had been born in Cubert, Cornwall and was a retired housekeeper. Herbert was working as a Builder’s Foreman. By 1911, they were living at 37A Sydney Road, Richmond, just with their three children. Herbert was now working as a Builder and Decorator. He had taken over the business of his former employer, Mr F. Hampton, who had passed away. His speciality was in sanitary repairs and plumbing. Charles was working as a Laboratory Assistant, Dorothy as a Grocer’s Clerk and Winifred was at school. Herbert and Alice were still at 37, Sydney Road in 1921 and Herbert was still a Builder and Decorator. Only Dorothy and Winifred were at home and both were working as clerks for British American Tobacco Co. Alice’s mother was again living with them. By this time Charles had married Daisy Stainer.
Winifred Jessie Masters married Edward Clemow on 2/9/1922 in Richmond. Edward (known as Ted) was a Clerk born on 22/5/1897. He was the son of a farmer, Richard Henry Clemow. Their daughter, Ann Clemow, was born in 1930 in Richmond.
Dorothy Alice Masters married Frederick Panchen in 1924 in Richmond. Frederick (known as Fred) was born on 19/5/1895. They had no children.
Herbert Wood Masters died in 1933 in Richmond.
In September 1939 Alice J Masters was living in a household of six other people at 50 Egremont Place, Brighton and Hove. She was shown as a widow with private means. Also present was her daughter, Winifred Clemow and an undisclosed child who was probably Ann Clemow. Winifred’s husband, Ted Clemow, wasn’t present. He seems to have been living at 14 Clarendon Avenue, Andover, Hampshire. He was working as a Publisher’s Manager and was living with Thomas C Scott and Hilda M Scott and their child. Thomas was a Compositor.
Alice Jane Masters died in 1960 in Worthing, Sussex, aged 93 so will have been aware of her grandson’s death in 1945.
Florence Daisy Stainer’s Birth Family
Florence Daisy Stainer (who was known as Daisy) was the daughter of Charles John Stainer and Florence Louisa Smith who had married in 1886 in Richmond. Charles had been born in Damerham, Wiltshire on 15/10/1861 and Florence on 18/4/1858 in Leamington in Warwickshire. They had children in Richmond as follows: Albert Charles 16/3/1887, Ellen Elizabeth 12/3/1889, Florence Daisy 11/12/1891 and Arthur Frank Mayo 21/10/1895. However, Arthur died in 1896 aged just 3 months.
In 1891 Charles and Florence were living at Claremont Villa, Lower Road, Richmond with their first two children. Charles was working as a Railway Signalman. In 1901 they were living at 6, Crown Terrace, Richmond with their three surviving children. Charles was in the same occupation. With them also were two nephews, Herbert J Waterman aged 24 and Edward E Waterman aged 17. Both were born in Rockbourne, Hampshire. Herbert was working as a Gentleman’s Gardener and Edward as a Railway Porter. In 1911 they were at the same address with just their own three children. Charles was still a Railway Signalman. Albert was working as a Gas Company Clerk and Ellen and Daisy were shown as “Lady Clerks”.
Albert Charles Stainer married Millicent Ada Loan on 5/9/1914 in Richmond. Albert was working as a clerk. Millicent, born on 25/2/1889 in Richmond, was the daughter of Thomas Henry Loan, a Despatch Clerk. Their child, Douglas Albert Stainer, was born on 26/9/1917 in Richmond.
Ellen Elizabeth Stainer married Austin Hardy Morton on 21/3/1917 in Richmond. He was born on 1/3/1890 in Lye, Worcestershire and was the son of William Charles Morton who was retired. Austin was described as a Soldier for War. It is thought that he was a Gunner in the Royal Field Artillery in WW1. They had two children as follows in Thanet, Kent: Joyce Muriel 20/11/1922 and Gordon Charles 14/6/1925.
By 1919, Daisy Stainer had married Charles Masters.
In 1921, therefore, Charles and Florence were living on their own at 6, Crown Terrace, Richmond. Charles was still a Railway Signalman for the London and Southern Railway. They were at the same address in September 1939, but Charles had now retired.
Florence Louisa Stainer died in 1942 aged 84 in Richmond, Surrey and Charles John Stainer of 6 Crown Terrace, Richmond died aged 85 on 9/7/1947 at 2 Grove Road Richmond. Charles will therefore have lived to be aware of his grandson’s death.
Charles Masters’ Military Career and Marriage to Daisy Stainer
Charles Masters signed up in the Territorial Army just as he turned 17 in August 1908 with the 6th Battalion of the East Surrey Regiment where he served for 1 year and 10 months. He then resigned and instead signed up for four years in the Territorial Army as a Sapper with the London Division of the Electrical Engineers on 14 June 1910 when he was 18 years and 10 months old. He was working as a Laboratory Assistant at the National Physical Laboratory at the time. He was promoted to Lance Corporal on 1/6/1911 and 2nd Corporal on 1/6/1912. He was discharged at the end of the four years on 13/6/1914. However, he joined up again on 1/10/1914 as WW1 broke out. He was still working for the National Physical Laboratory and was now aged 23 yrs and 2 months.
He seems to have spent some time as a Lieutenant with the 8th Battalion of the Staffordshire Regiment in 1914 and 1915. He transferred to the Royal Flying Corps on 30/9/1917 and was graded as Equipment Officer 3rd Class. He was then promoted to 2nd Lieutenant (honorary Lieutenant) Technical, Royal Air Force, on 1/4/1918, and promoted again, to Staff Officer 3rd Class at the Air Ministry, on 1/5/1919. He graduated as a Flying Officer on 16/9/1919.
He was awarded the Victory Medal and 1915 Star for service at Arras in France. The Air Ministry seems to have applied for these medals for him on 14/10/1920. His address was given as 9 Sydney Road, Richmond, the same street as his parents.
He had married Daisy Stainer on 25/6/1919 in Richmond and in June 1921 Charles and Daisy were shown as living at that same address. Charles was described as a Commissioned Flying Officer in the Royal Air Force.
Kenneth Charles Masters was born in Richmond on 20/11/1921.
Air Force lists show that his father, Charles, was a Flying Officer working at No. 4 Stores Depot of the RAF at Ruislip in Middlesex in 1921. Charles served in India from 19/1/1922 to 25/3/1923. It is thought that Daisy and young Kenneth went to India with him. In 1922 Charles was working as a Stores Officer with the rank of Flying Officer for No. 28 Squadron, India-1 Indian Wing.
In 1924 to 1927 Charles and Daisy were living at Wells Head in the Parish of Harwell near Abingdon, which is now in Oxfordshire. Charles and Daisy had a second child, Valerie Brenda Masters in 1927 in Harwell. In 1928 and 1929 they were living in the Officers’ Quarters at the RAF Stores in Steventon near Abingdon.
Charles then served in Iraq from 3/1/1930 to 25/11/1931. This was at the time of the RAF Iraq Command. The RAF were put in command of British forces in Iraq in the 1920s following an insurgency which broke out in May 1920. This role continued into the early 1930s during the period of the British Mandate in Mesopotamia.
It is understood that the family were living in Edgware after his return from Iraq in the early 1930s and then in Redbrook, near Whitchurch in Shropshire. Charles may have been based at RAF Tern Hill, near Market Drayton. They later moved to Grantham in Lincolnshire which is close to several RAF bases.
Charles was promoted to Squadron Leader on 1/6/1934 and then to Wing Commander on 1/11/1938. In both 1934 and 1938 he was working in the Equipment Branch of the RAF. He then served in Aden from 25/8/1939 which is probably why the family do not appear in the September 1939 Register. By December 1941, Charles had achieved the rank of Group Captain. It isn’t known how long his period of service in Aden lasted, but for at least part of the war he was living at 95 Hangleton Road, Hove.
Kenneth Charles Masters
Kenneth started at The King’s School, Grantham in 1934. A school report dated 9/5/40 states that he passed the General School Certificate of the University of London with credits in English and History and passes in French, German, Mathematics and Biology.
It isn’t known when he joined the Royal Army Service Corps (RASC), though given his birth date, it is likely to have been around 1940. He was in the Army Cadets at school, so this may have influenced his decision to join the Army rather than follow his father into the RAF. However, the role of the RASC had some similarity with the Stores and Equipment roles which his father had held in the RAF. It was a Corps of the British Army responsible for land, coastal and lake transport, air despatch, barracks administration, the Army Fire Service, staffing headquarters’ units, supply of food, water, fuel and domestic materials such as clothing, furniture and stationery and the supply of technical and military equipment. They trained at Aldershot.
They had the additional responsibility of transporting supplies as far as the front line, where individual units took over responsibility. The corps were also responsible for the administration and maintenance of barracks and quarters. They did not issue or maintain weapons, military equipment or ammunition, as this was the responsibility of the Royal Army Ordnance Corps. However, they did transport ammunition from Base Ordnance Depots to Forward Ammunition Points. It was also their task to transport and distribute Petrol, Oil and Lubricants. The Corps was highly mechanized by the beginning of the Second World War. It lost a large number of vehicles with the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force and it took a couple of years to make good the losses.
He was initially stationed in North Africa, where the RASC were supporting the First Army. A photo of him was taken on 12 April, 1944 near Naples. The Allies had invaded Sicily in July 1943 which resulted in the fall of Mussolini, followed by the invasion of Italy itself in September 1943. However, German forces soon invaded northern and central Italy and created a series of defensive lines across Italy, south of Rome and north of Naples. Two lines, the Volturno and the Barbara, were used to delay the Allied advance so as to buy time to prepare the most formidable defensive positions, which formed the Winter Line. The Winter Line proved a major obstacle to the Allies at the end of 1943, halting the advance on the western side of Italy. It took four major offensives between January and May 1944 before the line was eventually broken. Given the date of the photo near Naples, it is likely that Kenneth was involved in these offensives.
It isn’t clear at what point he entered Germany. Given his role, he will have played a key part in ensuring the troops were supplied in any theatre of war in which he was engaged.
Sadly, he died of wounds on 30/5/1945, having stood on a mine whilst returning to his vehicle after straying from the “safe path” that has been established by his convoy. One relative remembers being told that the initial incident took place on 7 May 1945, the day before VE day – so he may have lingered for a time before he died. It is believed that he died in the 56th American Field Hospital. It isn’t known where this was located at the time, but he was initially buried in the Allied Cemetery at Eisenach, near Kassel in Germany, so this is likely to have been near where he died. He was later re-interred at Margraten and finally Overloon.
His probate record gave his address as 95 Hangleton Road, Hove, Sussex which is where his father was living when he heard of his son’s death.
In November 1949 his parents put the following notice in a newspaper:
“Masters – In ever loving memory of Captain Kenneth C Masters RASC on his birthday Nov 20, died of wounds May 30 1945, beloved son of Group Captain and Mrs C H Masters and brother of Valerie.”
He is commemorated on the WW2 Memorial at the King’s School in Grantham.
Aftermath
According to the report of his death that appeared in ‘The Granthamian’ (the King’s School old boys’ magazine), Kenneth was engaged to Miss Pamela Wingham. It is thought this was actually Daphne Muriel Pamela Wingham. She was the daughter of Edwin George Robert Wingham and his wife Edith Eleanor Cobden who had married in 1919. They had children as follows: Peter 1920, Michael A 1921, Daphne M 1923, Philip J 1923 and Hilary A 1930. Edwin was a school teacher but also served in both WW1 and WW2. In WW1 he served as a 2nd Lieutenant in the 10 King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry and as a Captain in the Machine Gun Corps at Belton Park where he was mentioned in Despatches. In WW2 he was an Educational Officer with the rank of Wing Commander. His three sons all went to the King’s School in Grantham. By January 1945, Peter Wingham was a Major in the Indian Army. Michael Anthony Wingham was a Flying Officer in the RAF and was awarded the DFC. Philip John Wingham was in the experimental aeronautical department at the National Physical Laboratory. At the time of Kenneth’s death, it is understood that Pamela was on the nursing staff of the Royal Berkshire Hospital in Reading. She went on to marry William Gillespie in 1947 in Hendon, Middlesex. However, it was then reported in the Bucks Advertiser & Aylesbury News of 5/8/1949 that Mrs Daphne Muriel Pamela Gillespie had married Dr William John Lyness in Ellesborough in Buckinghamshire. It is possible that her first husband had died or the marriage had broken down. She had no children with her first husband and three with her second husband.
Kenneth’s sister, Valerie Brenda Masters, attended Kesteven and Grantham Girls’ School (where one of the prefects was Margaret Roberts, later UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher) and then Hove County School for Girls. In April 1945, when she was not quite 18, she joined the ATS and was posted to Warrington in Cheshire. She learnt of her brother’s death when she came home on leave the following month. She remembers her father waiting for her at the front door and breaking the news.
She continued to serve in the ATS until 1947. At that point her father, Charles Masters, was posted to Cairo with the RAF. He initially went out on his own. When his wife was preparing to join him, they insisted that Valerie come with her, and they arranged for her to be released from the ATS on compassionate grounds. Valerie says she rather resented this, as she was enjoying her first taste of independent living but had to do as she was told.
However, when she arrived in Cairo, she met a young RAF officer who was living in the same hotel – Roy Turner. They married at the British Consulate in Cairo on 10/4/1948, followed by a church wedding at All Saints Cathedral, Cairo on 17/4/1948.
Roy had been born in Lincoln on 27/10/1920 to Arthur and Gertrude Turner and was an Architect’s Clerk before the war. He joined the RAF on 22/4/1940 (Service No. 106114). On 6/2/1942, Pilot Officer Roy Turner arrived at 148 Squadron HQ, based at Landing Ground 106 at El Dabaa (just west of Alexandria in Egypt) at the end of an attachment to RAF Shallufa.
On 22 February, he flew his first bombing mission, as the rear gunner on a Wellington II, No. Z8360, piloted by Sgt R. Hamilton. The other crew members were Sgt R.W. Girdham, Sgt J.M. Hudson, Sgt B.J.L. Lilly and Sgt B.W. Spence (of the RNZAF). This was one of 11 that took off from LG 106, part of a large-scale operation targeting a major Axis convoy travelling between Sicily and Tripoli. One sighting reported eight merchant ships, two battleships, five cruisers and 15 destroyers, escorted by Messerschmidt Bf 109 fighters. It wasn’t a successful operation; a number of the Allied planes suffered engine problems, while others failed to locate the convoy. Only two planes out of a total of 81 actually managed to bomb the convoy, and no damage was recorded. The ships reached their destination unscathed. The squadron’s other 10 bombers all returned safely from the operation, but Sgt Hamilton’s did not. The squadron’s diary recorded that it was Sgt Hamilton’s 43rd trip and he was due to be rested, while the wireless operator/air gunner, Sgt Girdham, was also due for resting after completing 50 operations. In fact, the port engine had seized so the aircraft force landed in enemy territory near Mechili between Benghazi and Derna in Libya. A whole month passed before the news arrived that Turner and Hamilton had survived and were now prisoners of war. It has since been discovered that all of the crew were captured, taken prisoner and all survived the war.
Roy passed through Rome where he was interrogated and then arrived at Dulag Luft (a transit camp) at Frankfurt on 2/3/1942. He remained there until 6/4/1942 when he was transferred to Stalag Luft III at Sagan. He spent most of the rest of the war there until 28/1/1945. While there, he was one of the airmen who contributed to the famous ‘Wooden Horse’ escape in 1943. He told his son that he was concealed in the wooden horse and then dug the tunnel while his comrades held fake exercise sessions above ground. He described scraping away at the earth with a spoon in horribly cramped, airless conditions.
By 4/2/1945 he was evacuated from there to Marlag-Milag Nord, located at Tarmstedt (or more specifically Westerimke) near Bremen. This was a gruelling march in extremely cold conditions followed by a train journey in railway goods waggons where there was not enough room for everyone to lie down and the sanitary arrangements were non-existent. In the first week of April 1945, the prisoners were again marched to Trenthorst near Lubeck where he remained until liberated on 2 May, 1945. He was promoted to Flight Lieutenant on 1/9/1945.
Despite having spent half the war as a PoW, he chose to continue in the RAF after the war. One of his first roles after being liberated was as part of a group that travelled round central Europe looking for documents that the Nazis had hidden in caves and other secret locations.
In January 1946 he was posted to RAF HQ Mediterranean Middle East, in Cairo where he met and married Valerie Masters.
On 1/8/1950, RAF Squadron Leader Roy Turner of the Air Ministry travelled with Valerie on the Queen Elizabeth from Southampton to New York for a posting there. Roy was aged 29 and Valerie 23. For Roy, this was an exchange in which a USAF officer made the journey in the other direction to work in the UK.
Roy and Valerie Turner had two boys: Timothy in 1962 in Oslo and Christopher in 1967 at RAF Hilton near Aylesbury.
On 1/1/1971, Wing Commander Roy Turner (Service No. 106114) was awarded the OBE. He retired from the RAF in 1975, having attained the rank of Group Captain (just as his father-in-law Charles did). He died at home in Bushey Heath, Hertfordshire on 29/5/99.
Kenneth’s mother, Florence Daisy Masters, died on 18/2/1971 while living at 32 Overhill, Southwick, Sussex. His father, Charles H Masters, died on 12/1/1974 and was living at the same address. They are both buried in Southwick Cemetery, just a few hundred yards from their home.
