F S Gray and T P Walsh

There are two Commonwealth War Graves Commission headstones in St. Peter’s churchyard marking the last resting place of soldiers who died on the Home Front in the Second World War (there is a third, for a First World War casualty).  These men are not named on the war memorial cross on the green.  Here are their stories.

1540558 Gunner F S Gray

Frederick Samuel Gray was born on 25th November 1917 in Hendon, Middlesex, the youngest child of Samuel and Margaret Gray.  Frederick had a brother and five sisters.  

In 1938, Frederick, a butcher in civilian life,  attested for service as a Territorial in the Royal Artillery.  

On 25th November 1942, in a ‘services wedding’ at St. Peter’s he married Enid Mary Luxford, a private in the Auxiliary Territorial Service whose home was Highfield Hedge in Newpound.  The reception was held in the Bat and Ball and Highfield Hedge became their home.  A son was born in 1944.
Above: The wedding party of F S Gray & E M Luxford

Frederick was serving in 45 battery, 24 light anti-aircraft regiment, when he was admitted to The Emergency Hospital in Braintree, Essex where he died of a liver disease on 28th January 1945.  He was buried at St. Peter’s five days later in a plot on the north side of the church.  His wife re-married in 1952.

1190573 Flight Lieutenant T P Walsh

At the other side of the churchyard, close by the gate across the path from Glebe Way, is the grave of Thomas Patrick Walsh marked by a new Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) headstone.

Thomas Patrick Walsh was born on 6th May 1920, the second son of Colonel Charles Herbert Walsh DSO, MC of the Connaught Rangers, and Miriam Penfold Wyatt.  Thomas’s grandfather was Arthur Penfold Wyatt who built Harsfold Manor and whose family gave their name to Wyatt Close and Wyatt House in the village.

The Walsh family eventually made their home at The Old Rectory, Mere, in Wiltshire.  Thomas was educated at Stowe School and was studying to become a civil engineer when in 1940, he enlisted in the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve.  He married Constance Mairi “Molly” Macleod in 1944.
Left: The new CWGC headstone for T P Walsh

Flt. Lt. Walsh was stationed at No 2 Flying Instructors School, RAF Stracathro, Angus, Scotland when, on 29th April 1945 his Airspeed Oxford training aircraft crashed and he and his pupil Flying Officer Bull were both killed, nine days before the end of the war in Europe.

Thomas Walsh’s body was brought to Wisborough Green for burial on 3rd May 1945, next to the Wyatt family’s plot.  Sadly, he didn’t live to see his son who was born nine weeks later on 2ndJuly.

His mother Miriam died at Mere in December 1947 and she too was brought to Wisborough Green for burial.  Molly Walsh never re-married and when she died in 2008 her ashes were interred with her husband.  The CWGC replaced the headstone this year and unusually, Molly’s name is also inscribed on it.  Thomas is remembered on the war memorial cross in Mere where the tablet containing the names of the WW2 dead was unveiled by his father in 1947.

Andrew Strudwick