The Airmen's Stories - Sgt. E A Graves

Edward Arthur Graves was born in the third quarter of 1919 in Eastbourne, the son of Edward Richard Frederick Graves and Elizabeth Harriet Christian, they had married in early 1919.

It would seem that his father died or left and his mother remarried as the CWGC records his next of kin as 'John H Pope and Elizabeth Graves Pope'.

EA Graves was educated at St. Saviours Church School there and after leaving school he was employed for some time by Beales department store in the town.

Graves' siganture appears on the back of this photo from a training school, by comparing this with a blurred image in an Eastbourne newspaper, he may be standing third from left.

He joined the RAF about February 1939 as an Aircrafthand.

He later remustered as an Air Gunner and in May 1940 was serving with 22 Squadron, a torpedo-bomber unit.

On 23rd August 1940 Graves was attached to 235 Squadron. On the 30th, on a non-operational flight with P/O JS Priestley, both men were killed when their Blenheim IVf, L9262, went into a sustained spin and crashed at Barwick Farm near Bircham Newton.

Graves was 21 and is buried in Langney Cemetery, Eastbourne.