A FORMER soldier and Stratford schoolboy is to honoured with a commemorative headstone on his grave – 72 years after his death.
Norman Parkes, a King Edward VI School old boy, joined the Royal Army Pay Corps in 1940 and was attached to the office of Commander Royal Engineers in St. John’s House in Warwick.
Promoted to Sergeant for exemplary service, he developed pulmonary tuberculosis and was moved to King Edward VII Sanatorium at Hatton, where he died in January 1945.
For seven years the school has attempted to find where he was buried, until research confirmed he lied in an unmarked grave in the churchyard of the Baptist Church in Henley.
Application for a Commonwealth War Graves Commission headstone was unsuccessful, and so with the help of the Old Edwardians’ Association, the Henley Branch of the British Legion, the sister of another old boy lost in the war, and other benefactors, the school bought a headstone.
It will mean Norman, like the other 51 KES boys lost during the Second World War, will finally have a memorial.
A dedication service will take place on Friday July 7 at 11am.
