Twins’ life-long quest to find war hero father
THE fate of a British soldier who was killed in action in Italy during the Second World War has finally been discovered by his twin sons, who were born just 22 days before his death and never knew their father.
It has taken Edward and Sydney Graham 74 years to find out what happened to their father, also called Edward, who lost his life during the Allied invasion of Sicily in 1943.
Edward Graham was serving with the 1st Battalion Royal Irish Fusiliers when he was killed in a German ambush near the village of Maletto, on the slopes of Mount Etna, on Aug 13 1943.
As British troops advanced against ferocious German resistance, his body was buried in a field grave. When it was later exhumed, his identity was either lost or never ascertained, and he was buried, like many others, beneath a headstone that read “A Soldier of the Second World War” in the Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery in Catania in eastern Sicily.
Years of detective work by his son, Edward Graham, established that five soldiers from the Royal Irish Fusiliers died during the battle that day. By checking regimental war diaries and other documents, and working with the Ministry of Defence, Mr Graham found that four of the five were buried in various other locations.
By a process of elimination, they concluded that the anonymous grave in Catania contains the remains of Fusilier Graham.
“I have wondered all my life where my father was laid to rest,” Mr Graham, 74, told The Daily Telegraph from his home in Prudhoe, Northumberland. “My father was on active service when my brother and I were born and he probably never knew that
‘It was a very slow process ... because none of the records were computerised’
he had twin sons.
“He was killed 22 days after we were born. I started carrying out serious research about 30 years ago, when my mother died. It was a very slow process at first because none of the records were computerised.” The existing headstone will next week be replaced with a new one bearing his name, age, rank and regiment at a rededication ceremony in the cemetery. It will be attended by his sons, MOD representatives and serving members of the Royal Irish Regiment, the successor to the Fusiliers.