The grave of South African Stanley Becker from HMS Carnavon Castle in Evergreen Memorial Park

All but two of the 29 Britons, Canadians, New Zealanders and South Africans buried in cemeteries around Norfolk, Virginia, died serving in Royal Navy warships and escort vessels on Atlantic convoys, or succumbed to injuries, illness and accidents while Stateside. The remaining two graves honour a British Army vet and Royal Canadian Air Force aviator.

In the years since they were buried, it’s fallen to British personnel serving in and around Norfolk to honour their memories and also report on the condition of the graves/headstones on behalf of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, something which continued until 2018.

UK personnel serving at TUSC LANT – Theater Undersea Surveillance Command Atlantic – realised that the graves had not been visited in six years, and resolved to put that right.

Petty Officer Jonathon Holding and Corporal Louis Crimmons got in touch with the War Graves Commission. Visited all five graveyards within a radius of about 20 miles of the naval base, recorded the state of the graves and headstones, before organising memorial services for the men.

The first commemoration was conducted at Portsmouth Evergreen Cemetery, where 21 sailors lie at rest. Grave markers were laid for each man, an excerpt from ‘For the Fallen’ read, and silence observed.

Services were then held at four further cemeteries around the area – Hampton National, Newport News Green Lawn, Cedar Grove and Norfolk St Mary’s – where a solitary Commonwealth serviceman is buried in each.

The acts of remembrance concluded at Oak Grove Cemetery in Creeds, where four sailors – all members of the RN Patrol Service, crewing trawlers pressed into service as makeshift convoy escorts – were buried after their ships (His Majesty’s Trawlers Bedfordshire and Kingston Ceylonite) were lost to U-boat and mines respectively in the spring of 1942.