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Dunwich Part 3

Ended up after a good days walking in the churchyard at Dunwich where three Commonwealth War Graves are to be found - one of an unknown merchant seaman, one of a marine (H Booth) on HMS Watchful and a gunner (WPG Evans) of 107th Medium Regt, R.A.
A quick search on Google revealed the following details on HMS Watchful. It was built in 1935 on the order of E.W Longfeld of Great Yarmouth as a pleasure steamer and originally named Britt. It was taken over by the Admiralty on Sept 16th 1939 for war duties and apparently sailed to Dunkirk and back on three occasions saving 900 lives on the evacuation. It spent the rest of the war on anti-submarine and mine sweeping duties, based at Great Yarmouth. It was returned to its owners on Dec 12th 1945.
Details on WPG Evans are a bit confusing - the gravestone gives his Regt as 107th Medium Regt (part of  9th Army Group, Royal Artillery (AGRA)) while the details on the Commonwealth War Graves Commission  website give it as 107th (The South Notts Hussars) Regt (part of 4th AGRA). There is also a slight discrepancy between the register and gravestone on date of death. Wish I had the time to look further into this.
I am doing this blog and website because I enjoy looking into the whole subject, but we should never forget the grim reality of this period in history, or forget the sacrifice made by the armed services during this war.

Dunwich Coast Battery now on the website.























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