Loughborough Roll of Honour

Sergeant 1575713 John Bernard Eastman
Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve Died on 1st October 1943, Aged 22. Buried Birmingham (Handsworth) Cemetery, 20B 13663.
John Eastman was the son of Frank Eastman and Charlotte (née Styles) and was born in Quorn on 19th February 1921. He had an older sister, Gertrude. By 1939 Charlotte had been widowed and John, now a bank clerk, liived with her at 31 Loughborough Road, Quorn. (The family had previously lived at no 44). John enlisted in the RAF and at the time of his death was in 1660 HCU (Heavy Conversion Unit) at RAF Swinderby, a training station. He died during a training exercise as a navigator on a Halifax bomber. It went into a violent spin and crashed near Bardney airfield, Lincolnshire.

Warrant Officer 1425499 Joseph Edmund Edwards

525 Sqdn., Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve

Died on 30th January 1946, Aged 23.

Buried Le Grand-Luce War Cemetery, France, Row C. Grave 7.

Born on 14th November 1922, Joseph’s parents were Joseph and Gertrude Edwards. In 1939 young Joseph was living with them in Granby Street Loughborough and was a clerk.

Serving in the RAF in Transport Command, he was killed when his Dakota IV lost control in cloudy conditions during a training flight and crashed near Le Mans, France. Joseph had been based at Membury, Berkshire, and was a wireless operator / air gunner. At the time of his death he was living at 57 Frederick Street Loughborough.

Pilot Officer 133051 Reginald Staynes Elsom D.F.M.
Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve Died on 13th October 1942, Aged 32. Buried Loughborough Cemetery, 379/7
Reginald Elsom was born on 21st August 1910 to grocer’s manager Thomas Elsom and Mabel (née Staynes). Reg had a younger sister, Gertrude. The family seem to have been fairly well-off. They had a general servant and in 1926 moved to Springthorpe, 125 Ashby Road, a quite substantial semi-detached property. Thomas Elsom was by now a company director of Simpkin & James. Reginald attended Loughborough Grammar School, where he joined the Air Cadet Corps, which must have whetted his appetite for flying. He left school in 1926, and was a member of Loughborough Boat Club. Reginal spent some time in London, and in 1935 he married Marion Stevens at St James Piccadilly, a church which suffered serious damage in the 1940 Blitz. The couple returned to Loughborough and went to live at 37 Fairmount Drive, with Reginald working in the family grocery business. He also joined the Civil Air Guard, established in 1938 to support the RAF. The Elsom’s first child, John, was born in 1939, followed in 1942 by twins Margaret and Peter. Reginald Elsom enlisted in the RAF in 1940. His posthumous citation for the Distinguished Flying Medal for gallantry read as follows. “Sergeant Elsom was a most tenacious and level headed pilot. In July 1942, his aircraft was caught in a cone of searchlight and subjected to heavy fire from ground defences. Despite extensive damage caused to the bomber’s tail plane he flew it safely back. In August, 1942, he was detailed for mine laying operations, and although he ran into a magnetic storm, he successfully laid his mines. Again in September 1942, his aircraft was hit and seriously damaged while over the French coast. Completely unruffled, Sergeant Elsom proceeded to his objective, and successfully evading strong ground defences on his return journey, flew his battered aircraft home. On all occasions this airman displayed remarkable courage and determination.” It seems therefore, ironic and unfair that after this cool-headed bravery, he should be killed on home soil during a training exercise, when his Wellington bomber crashed on take-off from Stratford upon Avon. Two other crew members died too. His widow went to Buckingham Palace to receive the DFM medal from the King. She would also have learned that since his death, two promotions had come through: to Flight Sergeant, on 1st September, and his commission as Pilot Officer backdated to 3rd September His funeral, at Loughborough Parish Church, took place with full military honours. There was a large attendance at the service and crowds of townspeople watched the cortege, with which marched a party of officers and non-commissioned officers of the RAF, and six RAF sergeants acting as bearers

Private 14355504 Sidney H. Elyard
2nd Kings Own Scottish Borderers Killed 23 February 1945, Aged 35. Buried Taukkyan War Cemetery, Myanmar (Burma).
His family came from Norfolk. Sydney was born in Snettisham on 5th August 1910, the youngest of two sons of Thomas and Kate Elyard. In 1911 Thomas Elyard was an innkeeper, and his unmarried sister Mabel lived with the family. Thomas Elyard had served in WW1. By 1921 the Elyards had moved to Oakham and Thomas was working as a bootmaker. By 1939 they had relocated to Melton Mowbray and Sydney was living at home and working as a bricklayer. A year later he married Olive May Bursnell. He was killed in action in Burma (Myanmar) on 23 February 1945.

Private 5380725 Arthur Laban Evans

1st, Bn., Oxford and Bucks Light Infantry

Died on 21st May 1940, Aged 29.

Buried Bruyelle War Cemetery Belgium II, A. 10

Arthur Evans’s young life was marked by deaths. He was born on 25th January 1911 to Ernest Vincent and Ada Evans (née Tarry), in Leicester. Both parents worked in the shoe industry.

He had an older sister, Evelyn, who died at just two. In July 1912 a brother, Ernest, was born, only surviving for five months. The baby outlived his mother, Ada, who died in August 1912.

In April 1914 the widowed Ernest Evans, father to three-year-old Arthur, married Lily Swann. Their son Cyril was born in 1914. Ernest Evans served in WW1 and was killed in Flanders in July 1916, three months before the birth of his second son with Lily, Eric.

So, by the age of five, Arthur Laban Evans had lost his birth mother, sister, brother and father, but gained two half-brothers. .

The 1921 Census shows that Arthur was living at 16 Rowan Street, Leicester, in the household of John Wootton, his wife and their 11-year-old son Frank. John Wootton’s wife Beatrice was Lily’s sister. Lily also lived with them, along with Arthur’s half-brothers Cyril and Eric, and Lily’s father William Swann. It must have been a crowded home and it seems that Lily, on ‘home duties’ looked after them all. .

Arthur joined the regular Army in 1931 (he would have been 20), served in India and left in 1938, to be recalled when WW2 broke out. We know from his probate record that he had married, to a woman called Elizabeth Ann, but records of this are lacking. He was killed on Army service in Belgium in May 1940. At the time of his death he lived at 18 Beeches Road, Loughborough.

Private 5380725 George Graham Fail

Royal Artillery 344th Moonlight Battery

Died on 20th November 1940, Aged 18.

Buried Loughborough Cemetery

George Graham Fail was born in Gateshead in 1922, to parents George and Catherine Fail.

Serving in the Royal Artillery, George Fail’s battery was based at Woodhouse Eaves near Loughborough, responsible for anti-aircraft defence in East Midlands. There were heavy raids on Leicester and Nottingham on 19th/20th and 20th/21st November 1940. On the second raid, an enemy aircraft dive-bombed and machine gunned the battery. One man was killed, one mortally wounded; George Fail must have been one of them. He is buried in Loughborough Cemetery.

Private 14037185 Leslie Flowers
Royal Army Ordnance Corps, 21 Vehicle Repair Depot. Died on 14th September 1947, Aged 23. Commemorated Bradford Crematorium, Panel 1.
Leslie Flowers was born in Ferryhill, Co Durham, in the second quarter of 1924. His mother’s name is also listed as Flowers, indicating that she was not married to Leslie’s father. Her first name was Selina and she later married a man called Slater. His connection with Loughborough is that in 1946 he married Norma Violet Merrick, a shop assistant, in the town. She and her mother Ethel had arrived in the UK from Australia in 1932, giving a Loughborough address on the ship’s passenger list (7 Granville Street). Norma’s father had died in Australia in 1930. Leslie Flowers served in the Royal Army Ordnance Corps, and is listed on their Roll of Honour, confirming the names of his mother and wife. He died in Bradford, two years after the end of the war. His memorial stone in the crematorium lists the correct date of death and says he “scored his final goal.” Was he a keen amateur footballer or even a professional one?

E.R.A.3rd Class C/MX51214 Charles Henry Foster M.I.D.
H.M. Submarine Umpire, Royal Navy Died on 20th July 1941, Aged 28. Buried Loughborough Cemetery, 346/4.
Charles Henry Foster, known as 'Charlie', was born in Markfield, Leicestershire, in 1913. His father, also called Charles Henry Foster, was a stone quarry worker, and his mother was Ada (née Hill). A second son, John W. Foster, was born in 1917. Charlie joined the Royal Navy in 1934, aged 21, and became an Engine Room Artificer. In May 1937 he was stationed at Wei-Hai-Wei, N. E. China, on HMS Medway, a purpose-built submarine depot ship which served on the China Station before the Second World War. H.M.S. Medway In a letter from China to his fiancé Yvonne Van de Velde, a 21 year-old hosiery machinist of Loughborough, he wrote "In the event of my being 'unlucky'…no amount of scheming will deflect God's Will , my cherie, for He knows best". On 28th May 1938 Charlie and Yvonne were married at St. Mary's Catholic Church, Loughborough. While her husband was away with the Navy Yvonne lived with her father, a basket worker, at 100 Station Street, Loughborough. In 1940 Charlie had a lucky escape from HMS Unity which sank off Scotland on 29th April, having been in collision with the Norwegian ship Atle Jarl in thick fog. In 18th July 1941 Charlie was on the brand-new H.M.Submarine Umpire which had only been commissioned nine days previously. The submarine was en route from Chatham to join the 3rd Submarine Flotilla at Dunoon, under the command of Lieutenant M. Wingfield. From Dunoon she was to carry out a single working-up patrol in the North Sea before heading to the Mediterranean. She had stopped overnight at Sheerness before joining a convoy heading north. H.M.S. Umpire The submarine unfortunately suffered engine failure with one of the two diesel engines and as a result fell behind the convoy. The convoy passed a southbound convoy around midnight while about 12 nautical miles (22 km) off Blakeney, Norfolk, with the two convoys passing starboard to starboard; this was unusual since ships and convoys should pass port to port. No ships showed any lights because of the risk from German E-boats. In the early hours of 20th July 1941 an armed escort trawler, Peter Hendriks in the southbound convoy accidentally struck Umpire sinking her in 18 metres of water, with the loss of 22 men. Charlie and three other men escaped by the conning tower, but the rescue boats did not find him. Charlie's body washed up on the beach at Sea Palling, Norfolk, on 2nd August 1941. His funeral took place from the home of his parents 29 Valley Road, Loughborough, and a special service was conducted at Emmanuel Church by the Rev. Harold Marley, who was assisted by the Rev. H. B. Holderness, Vicar of Holy Trinity Church. According to a press report "At the funeral there was a guard of honour from the 5th Leicestershire Regiment, a contingent of local Sea Cadets under the command of Lt. Morley, and Loughborough Association of ex-Naval Men. The coffin was draped with the Union Jack. Six sergeants of the 5th Leicesters…acted as bearers and a firing party was under the command of Lt. L. A. Smith". Charlie was buried at Loughborough Cemetery. He had been twice Mentioned in Despatches, once posthumously. Two years later Charlie's young widow was remarried in Loughborough to James R. Saunders, and the couple went on to have two sons, Richard and James.

Corporal C7047746 Sydney Herbert George Francis
1st Bn., Royal Irish Fusiliers Died on 25th May 1944, Aged 22. Buried Cassino War Cemetery, Italy, VIII. A. 13.
Sydney Francis was born in Leicestershire on 29th October 1921; his father Arthur was from Burton on Trent. In 1939 Sydney and his widowed mother Rosamund were living at 9 Orchard Street, Loughborough; he was employed as a timekeeper in the pay office of the Brush works and was engaged to Lorna Boot, of 99, Park Road Coalville He died of wounds in Italy on May 25th 1944.

Gunner 1558174 Richard John Fry
Royal Artillery Died on 24th December 1942, Aged 27. Buried Loughborough Cemetery, 381/42.
The information that can be gleaned about Richard Fry shows that he was born in Bermondsey, London, on 25th January 1915, to Richard and Esther Fry. They had a younger daughter, Ivy. The family lived in various addresses in south London, and in 1939 Richard was living with his parents at 49 Camden Grove, Camberwell, and was employed as a laundry hand (heavy worker). He had married Marion Phoebe Hardy in the summer of 1935 and the couple had four children. Derek was born in 1936, Jean in 1937, Anthony in 1939. All were born in London except for the fourth, Raymond, who was born in Loughborough in 1942, suggesting that the family had moved there during the war (perhaps to escape air raids?). There’s no easily discoverable record of Richard Fry’s service in the Royal Artillery. As he died in the UK and was buried in Loughborough, it’s possible he was part of an anti-aircraft or searchlight battery and was killed on duty by enemy attack.