Bill Strang was a farmer from Stacies Farm and took over as Patrol Sergeant when Ernest Spencer had to spend more time on his own farm. Bill died relatively young, when the Auxiliary Units were still secret, and his four daughters had been told nothing of his involvement.
| Unit or location | Role | Posted from | until |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mistley Patrol | Patrol Leader | 1940 | 03 Dec 1944 |
Farmer
Bill's daughter Liz remembers in the early 1940s that her father had a tin chest at the back of one of the cupboards in the farmhouse. The girls got things out to play with, and only realised years later they had been playing around with live ammunition. There was also a pair of very strong magnets which they would play with, and found hard to part when they had been joined.
After Bill died, Liz and her husband Lindsay Lennox bought Stacies Farm (of which Bill had been a tenant farmer.) Being very keen on sport, they put in a tennis court next to the house, and the machinery uncovered some sort of explosives. The army took these into the fields and detonated them, and a photograph of this exists which we are trying to locate.
This ties in with a tale from Martin Frostick, who as a boy was told by his father Charles Frostick, as they drove past Stacies farm, "That was where we hid our explosives during the war." We don't know if this event was before or after they had been accidentally uncovered.
Note - Stacies Farm is and has been spelled variously, including Staceys, Stacey's and Stacey Farm.
TNA ref WO199/3389
Hancock data held at B.R.A
1939 Register
Interview with Liz Lennox, daughter of Bill, by Hugh Frostick.