The church of St Martin, Overstrand is home to three separate forms of memorial to the fallen of WW1 and WW2. Outside in the churchyard is the War Memorial, while inside the names are carved on a wooden panel. Beneath the panel there are two bound books, one for each conflict. Each name remembered here receives a small potted biography which I take no shame in reproducing here.
Alec Peter Gray
Born on 4th August 1919 at Suffield Park. Son of Mrs Ethel Utting.
Educated at Cromer School.
Joined RAF in Jan.1940 and served as L A C
Wireless Operator, Ground Staff.
Married Vera Yates on 18th Feb. 1941
Killed in bombing attack on Castelrosso by enemy aircraft in 28th Oct. 1943.
Buried at Castelrosso, a small island East of Rhodes in the Mediterranean.
GRAY, ALEX PETER
Rank:………………………Leading Aircraftman
Service No:………………..95732
Date of Death:……………..28/10/1943
Service:……………………Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve
Grave Reference…………..4. B. 8.
Cemetery
RHODES WAR CEMETERY
CWGC www.cwgc.org/find-war-dead/casualty/937378/GRAY,%20ALEX%2...
Remembered on the War Memorial in the churchyard as:-
Alec P Gray RAF
The birth of an Alec P Gray was recorded in the Erpingham District, which covers Cromer and the neighbouring coast, in the July to September quarter 1919. His mothers maiden name was Gray.
The marriage of Alec P Gray to Vera M Yates was recorded in the North Walsham District of Norfolk in the January to March 1941 quarter.
It may be a co-incidence, but the birth of a Geoffrey P Gray, mothers maiden name Yates, was recorded in the North Walsham District in the October to December 1942 quarter.
The activities of the RAF Detachment at Castelrosso for October-November 1943 are held at the National Archive under reference AIR 29/20, At time of writing, (January 2014), they are not available to download online.
discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/SearchUI/Details/AssetM...
Castelrosso
Italian-owned island which lies off the southern Turkish coast 130 km. (80 mi.) east of Rhodes and 240km. (150mi.) west of Cyprus. It was briefly occupied in February 1941 by the British No. 50 Middle East Commando, which withdrew after the Royal Navy failed to prevent an Italian counter-attack. When the Italians surrendered in September 1943 the British occupied the island. They remained there after the Dodecanese campaign of October–November 1943 and used it as a base for raiding operations into the Aegean. In 1947 it was ceded to Greece and is now usually recognized as being part of the Dodecanese Islands.
: www.answers.com/topic/castelrosso#ixzz2pHrvMoNh
From “The Royal Air Force 1939 - 1945, Volume II. The Fight Avails” by Denis Richards & Hilary St. G. Saunders.
Though success was achieved after hard fighting at Salerno, failure attended the efforts of the Allies to mount another, if minor, invasion farther east. While the position in Italy was being secured, preparations were under way in the Middle East to gain a foothold in the Aegean. To seize Rhodes was of special importance, for its capture would prepare the way for the ultimate invasion of Greece. The island would provide the fighter airfields indispensable for such an operation, but its capture required strong air forces. They were not forthcoming, for, though the strength of the Allies in the air was very considerable, it lay rather in bombers and short-range fighters than in long-range fighters. These, however, were indispensable for the success of such an enterprise because of the distance, some 310 miles, separating Rhodes from the nearest Allied air bases in Cyprus and Cyrenaica.
Any hopes that the island would fall into our hands without fighting were still-born; for the Germans, never blind to the importance of Rhodes, had increased their garrisons and, though still far outnumbered, took immediate steps to overcome their erstwhile allies, the Italians. In three days they were in full control. The Allied commanders had, therefore, either to abandon their design altogether or to be content to turn aside, avoid Rhodes, and lay hands instead on Kos, Leros and Samos. This was the course they chose. The position of Kos, with its airfield at Antimachia, made it the pass-key of which the possession would unlock the Aegean. Seize it, and Rhodes would fall, and with Rhodes the other islands of the Archipelago, garrisoned as they were for the most part by Italians, who would certainly surrender at the first approach of invading forces.
By the end of August, No. 680 Squadron had photographed the whole area to be attacked and operations began nine days later. The island of Castelrosso fell into our hands immediately, but since the Germans held Rhodes, its three airfields, Marizza in the north, Calato in the middle and Cattavia in the south, had to be put out of action. This was accomplished for a time by the attack of thirty-eight Liberators detached for this purpose from the Northwest African Strategic Air Force. Their bombs prevented the Luftwaffe from operating on 13th September, the day on which a British force set foot on Kos and occupied the port and the airfield at Antimachia, which was found to be serviceable. At dawn on the following day, two Beaufighters landed and their crews set up a point-to-point W.T. station. They were followed soon afterwards by Spitfires of No. 7 Squadron, South African Air Force, and that night 120 parachute troops were dropped by the Dakotas of No. 216 Squadron on Kos, in order to strengthen the Italian garrison, which was showing signs of a lack of moral fibre. That day, too, Leros was occupied without opposition and on the 16th, Samos.
At first light on the 15th, a standing patrol of two Spitfires was maintained over Kos to give cover to the transport aircraft and ships bringing stores and reinforcements. Among these were the first units of the Royal Air Force Regiment. With nine Hispano anti-aircraft guns, they flew from Palestine, and were followed two days later by a second detachment, which brought up to strength one of the first of the Regiment's squadrons to be transported to the battlefield by air with all its weapons. Their position on Kos, never enviable, soon became serious and, presently, desperate, for the Italian anti-aircraft defence was negligible and their own resources meagre. To add to their troubles, the area round the airfield they had to protect was too rocky to permit digging in, and there was no time to build blast walls before the enemy was upon them. The Germans began their counter-attack by an air bombardment which opened on 17th September and proved to be severe.
During the next two days, bombing and cannon-fire attacks continued to harass the garrison, who, in order to increase the area in which fighters could land, made great efforts to build an alternative strip near Lambia, at a spot where, on the 18th, seeing that
Antimachia was under attack, the pilot of a Dakota had landed rather than return to Cyprus with his load. It was completed on the 21 si and then ensued a lull which lasted a week. The Luftwaffe was building up, and by the end of the month had transferred over 100 aircraft to the Aegean area to bring its strength to over 350, which included ninety Ju.88's and He.111's, fifty Me.109's and sixty-five Ju.87's. These forces had had to be withdrawn from other theatres of operations, and at this time there were only a little over 400 aircraft left in Italy, Corsica and the south of France.
In an attempt to interfere with the enemy's plans, which were daily becoming more obvious, Liberators, Halifaxes, Wellingtons and Hudsons, of No. 240 Wing and No. 201 Group, attacked airfields near Athens on four nights between the 20th and 25th September. Those on Crete and Rhodes also received attention. The attacks do not appear to have had much effect, for on the 26th the enemy was able to resume his air offensive and soon made conditions in Kos very difficult. By the end of that day only four of the Spitfires of No. 7 Squadron were still able to fly, and antiaircraft gunners of the Royal Air Force Regiment, though reinforced by Bofors manned by the army, were not strong enough to beat off the German bombers. Reinforcements in the form of nine Spitfires of No. 74 Squadron arrived, but were too few to prevent or drive away an enemy smarting under recent reverses and determined to use to the full the local air superiority he had created by moving squadrons so swiftly from bases as far distant as the south of France.
At dawn on the 3rd the Germans landed by sea and air, and by midday 1,500 men, well-armed with light artillery and armoured cars, were ashore and in action. Dive-bombing by Ju.87's added to the difficulties of the defence, and in the afternoon Antimachia was overrun. Lambia fell at 0600 hours on the following morning, and what was left of the garrison signalled laconically: 'Kos town untenable. Intend continuing to fight elsewhere. Destroying wireless set'. Kos had been in Allied hands for a bare three weeks.
The next island to be regained by the enemy was Leros,and the same tactics were used. A superior force of the Luftwaffe based on airfields in Rhodes, Crete and Greece, all most conveniently close at hand, bombed the island almost at their pleasure. No fighter cover could be given to its small garrison, for the nearest Allied airfields were some 390 miles away. The invasion began on 12th October and by the 16th all was over.
Mediterranean Air Command had not remained indifferent to the situation in the Middle Eastern theatre. Between 14th October and 16th November, United States Mitchells were sent to attack Greek airfields, and in so doing flew 317 sorties, and the heavier Liberators made a single attack on the airfield at Eleusis. Arrangements were also made for a Mitchell group, armed with 75-mm. cannon, to attack shipping in the area of Kos and Calino, and to do so it flew a total of eighty-six sorties between 16th October and 16th November. These assaults, by sinking a number of the invasion craft, delayed, but could not prevent, the enemy from accomplishing his purpose, and long before the middle of November the situation was lost beyond retrieving. Nevertheless, the bombers, both the Mitchells and the Liberators, continued to operate until 8th December, their targets for the last month being the airfields at Larissa, Eleusis and Kalamaki.
www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/UN/UK/UK-RAF-II/UK-RAF-II-15.html
Given the fate of the Allied garrisons on the other islands in the chain, Castelrosso was probably in receipt of regular attention from the Luftwaffe at this stage, but for reasons unknown, no landing followed.
