Search for family of Bexhill airman in war grave

Haddington History Society is staging a major exhibition of individual photographs and personal history of each of the airmen buried in East Lothian, to be held at St. Mary's Church, Haddington, in May of next year.

A service of remembrance and a fly-past in memory of The Fallen are also planned.

The Society is appealing to readers of the Bexhill Observer for help in contacting any surviving family of Lieutenant (Acting) Gerald Walter Sweeting, a member of the Fleet Air Arm, whose parents lived in Bexhill from the 1940s.

Lieutenant Sweeting, who was a member of 784 Squadron, died in a flying accident, aged 26, on 16 August 1944.

His aircraft, A Fairey Fulmar Mk II, crashed on approach during training, half a mile short of the duty runway east of Drem aerodrome, where the Squadron were stationed while in East Lothian.Haddington History Society discovered some information about Gerald Sweeting's family in the immediate post war years, through Internet searches, and help from staff at Bexhill Library and the Fleet Air Arm Museum.

The Society has now come up against a brick wall in attempts to trace family members through to more recent times. They are appealing to readers of the Observer, in the hope that someone remembers the family, who lived at 34 Glenleigh Avenue, Bexhill, and may know what became of Gerald Sweeting's widow, or his sister.

Gerald's father, Henry Ravenhill Sweeting, died in 1964. His obituary in the Bexhill Observer records that he was a former Schools Inspector and teacher, who had taught at Marlborough College, and was a sidesman at St. Stephen's Bexhill right up until his death. His wife, Louise Eleanor, predeceased him. The couple had an elder son, John Ravenhill Sweeting, a Captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps, who, in a double tragedy for the family, was killed in action in Burma in 1945, less than six months after his brother Gerald's death, and is buried in Taukkyan War Cemetery, near what used to be Rangoon. All that the Society knows about Gerald's sister is that she married a Squadron Leader Gaffney. They have similarly few facts about Gerald's widow, Phyllis Lilian Rose Sweeting, other than that she lived in Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire, and remarried there in1952, becoming Mrs. Graw.

The Society's aim in contacting relatives is to let them know that the exhibition is happening, and to ask if they have photographs and family reminiscences they would be happy to have included. The Society would also be delighted to hear from any of Lieutenant Sweeting's former friends and fellow airmen, although there is obviously less hope of this, as any still living would be in their 80s and 90s.

Gerald Sweeting is buried in a war grave in Dirleton Cemetery, which occupies a peaceful spot in the East Lothian countryside just outside the village of that name. He will be remembered in the exhibition along with pilots from the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force, and from Australian, Canadian, New Zealand and Free French forces, who gave their lives during the Second World War and are buried in East Lothian's war graves.

Anyone with information can contact David Elder, Secretary of Haddington History Society, on [email protected] or write to him at 20 Kennedy Court, Haddington, East Lothian.