Memorial Day
Posted by Jac on 27th May 2024
Memorial Day 2024
If you look out the second floor of our studio, across the street you can see one of the oldest continually attended churches in Virginia – Oak Grove Baptist Church, founded in 1762.And if you look closely, behind the Church you can see the cemetery. And believe it or not, here in coastal Virginia there are British graves from WW II.
In Row 5, and five places in from the right aisle, you’ll find the markers where four British crewmen of HMT Bedfordshire and two of her sister ship HMT Kingston Ceylonite are interred after being recovered from combat. The two converted trawlers were assigned to guard convoy routes from the US to the UK, and as British anti-submarine trawler were lent to the U.S. Navy in March 1942 to help stop the U-Boat attacks on the east coast of the US.
In May of 1942 the British Trawler Kingston Ceylonite was participating in convoy duty when it hit a mine placed off the coast of Viriginia. The German U-Boat U-701 had laid a minefield adjacent to the entrance to the Chesapeake Bay, and HMT Kingston Ceylonite unfortunately hit one of those mines.Of the 33 men on the ship assigned to duty only 18 survived.Of the 15 lost, two are buried across the street from where I type this.
On May 11th of 1942 HMT Bedfordshire left port at Morehead City, NC to travel to Ocracoke Island looking for a possible German U-Boat. During a brief battle the U-558 dodged a depth-charge attack and fired two torpedoes, one of which struck the Bedfordshire at 5:40am, sinking her.The ship went down with a loss of all 37 crew members.Four of those crew now rest with two of their comrades of the HMT Kingston Ceylonite in the cemetery behind Oak Grove Church.The only one interred that was identified was Lt. Alfred Dryden a Seaman in the service of the British Royal Navy.
Six other British sailors, four of them identified, are buried at the British Cemetery at Ocracoke, Hyde County, North Carolina.
Memorial Day is traditionally the start of Summer but let’s not forget those that gave the last full measure in a time of peril. There are stories of sacrifice all around us and all should be remembered.