Part 2 (Obituaries) - King's College - University of Cambridge

The young couple need not have feared the family’s reaction as it was positive;
they were married in September 1939.
However, only a few people turned up to Franklin and Isabel’s wedding
reception because war had broken out and everybody expected German
bombs to start raining down. Franklin tried to join the army straight after
finishing at King’s, but was turned down for having attended Quaker schools.
The newlyweds moved into a flat on Westbourne Crescent in London, and
Franklin began working at the family stockbroking firm, Forster and
Braithwaite. In October 1940, Franklin was finally called up, but to the Royal
Army Service Corps (RASC) rather than the regiment for which he had hoped.
Commissioned as a Second Lieutenant, Franklin was eventually posted to 473
Division Troops Company where he would remain throughout the war.
In January 1943, Franklin was sent overseas for the first time. He arrived in
North Africa as a Captain with his division, and personally took the surrender
from a German Colonel at Tunis. In 1944 Franklin and his men were moved
from North Africa to Italy where he took part in the battle of Monte Cassino,
carrying supplies to the front line. Isabel had during this time given birth to
two children,Virginia and Peter, and the family had moved out to the village
of Seer Green in Buckinghamshire to escape the bombs that eventually did fall
over London. In May 1945 Isabel developed tuberculosis and Franklin was
posted back to the UK on compassionate grounds soon after.
After being demobilised in June 1946 Franklin joined another family
business, the Baker Perkins engineering firm in Peterborough, working as a
sales representative. In 1949 he was made Sales Manager of the Biscuit
Machinery Department and soon afterwards he was appointed to the Board of
Management. The company prospered, and Franklin moved quickly up the
ranks, becoming main Board Director,Vice-Chairman and then Chairman, the
position from which he retired when he eventually left the company in 1984.
Franklin himself used to explain his successful career after the war as down to
nepotism, the ease of selling when buyers were desperate for equipment and
the fact that so many in that generation of managers had perished in the war.
Although these explanations held some truth, it was also the case that
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OBITUARIES