Owen William Graves

Owen was the brother of Group Commander of Captain Jack Graves and Charles Graves

Owen Graves was a Special Constable checking the fields around Crundale for unexploded bombs after a particularly heavy bombing raid the day before (31 July 1940).

Owen Graves: “I wanted a souvenir so I went up into the fields and tried to get the detonator off the clock face of one of the bombs. While I was doing that I was approached by three Army blokes and we started chatting. One of them was Peter Fleming and the other was a Captain Johnson. They helped me to load an unexploded bomb into the back of a coal lorry ready for it to be detonated by the bomb disposal unit. One lunch time later I came home and my wife told me three Army officers had called to see him. They were up the Man of Kent pub and asked if I would join them there.

They asked me to help organise a group of guerilla fighters with orders to let the enemy pass if an invasion took place and then to cause as much disruption as possible to supply lines and communications. Fleming asked if I could get four or five more blokes. My brother Jack came in and we had several other chaps at different times in our group.”