#8052, Richard Charles GRAVES-SAWLE

Lieut Richard Charles Graves-Sawle left for the front a week after getting married on 6th August 1914 and was killed by a sniper's bullet at Ypres three months later. (This according to the daily Telegraph).

As an Armistice Centenary tribute to the fallen Danny Boyle (of 2012 London Olympics opening ceremony fame) designed 28 Heros' faces in the sand on beaches around the UK. The hero selected for Porthcurno, Cornwall was Lieut. Richard Charles Graves-Sawle.

We are told by Chris Sturley of the Friends of Menacuddle Well that a memorial service for Richard Charles Graves-Sawle was held around the beginning of November 2018.

Extracts from his diary from October 10th to 2nd November 1914 with the British Expeditionary Force in France were offered for sale by Turner Donovan in July 2023.  In daily entries he describes in some detail his journey to join the battalion, the several weeks in the line around Ypres: much hard work digging, while firing going on all around, & several actions.  He was KIA about 3 pm on the day he wrote his last diary entry, 2nd November 1914.  The last two leaves contain an appraisal from his CO & an obituary.  He was commissioned in 1908.  He was buried in Polygon Wood but his grave was lost so he is now commemorated on the Menin Gate.

His Coldstream Guards Obituary published November 2nd 1914 read:

Lieutenant Graves-Sawle went to France with his Regiment on August 12th 1914.  He went through the Retreat from Mons and the Battles of the Marne and the Aisne, and was killed in action at Ypres under the following circumstances:-

He had taken charge of a Company which had lost its Captain, and was pinned to an advanced trench distant about 80 yards from a wood full of German snipers.  A French attack had developed through our lines, but had been repulsed, with the reslt that the communication trenches were required to give shelter to the French.  In order to make his way from the officers' dug-out to his Company, Lieut Graves-Sawle had climbed on to the top of the communication trench when he was shot in the head by an explosive bullet from a sniper's rifle, and died about two hours later.

The following are tributes from all ranks:- " he was one of the best and most thorough officers in the Battalion, and I am much lost without his services" (Colonel).  "He was a very great loss to me: we had been together in the Company since coming out" (Brother-Officer).  " A very considerate and capable officer" (Lance-Sergeant).  "We did everything in our power to bring him back to life, as we loved him so much, and he was an example to us all of the most wonderful bravery and unselfishness" (Stretcher-bearer).