Roll of Honour 2023

P AGE 180

W ORLD W AR II

S T . E DWARD ’ S S CHOOL , O XFORD R OLL OF H ONOUR

Name STANLEY DAVID JAMES GRIMSDALE (Lt)

Lef SES 1938

Roll Number 3005 Died 02:02:1945

Set / House G

Arrive SES 1935

Where ATHENS, GREECE Serving with 2/7TH, MIDDLESEX REGIMENT

Age 24

Buried Phaleron War Cemetery, Athens, Greece Remembered The Special Forces Roll of Honour, and The St. Edward’s School WW2 Memorial

Born Headington, Oxon 1921. A member of the Choir and in the Upper Remove when he left. ‘He left early and thus did not come into prominence in the larger life of the School. But his Dayroom friends will remember many political arguments and his unflinching championship of the oppressed and suffering’ (Chronicle). He was articled to a solicitor in 1938 then joined The Royal Artillery as a Gunner in 1941, before being commissioned in the Middlesex Regiment in 1943 and posted to Italy. There he was taken prisoner, escaped (being wounded in the process) in 1944. In 1945 he was promoted to Lieutenant in the 2/7th Middle Regiment, attached to the Special Forces. He was killed in action fighting the E.L.A.S. a Greek Resistance Communist sponsored movement, which had originally been pro-British but had now changed sides. By then, he was serving with ‘The Raiding Support Regiment’.