Photo: Sydney Graham
In St.Paul's Churchyard is a family headstone which reads:
Agnes beloved wife of
Walter Robertson
Died 25th Feb. 1940 aged 77 years
The above
Walter Robertson
Died 23rd June 1955 aged 92 years
Also their grandson
Tpr. Edward Y. Adamson
1st S.A.S. Regt. Killed in action in France
7th July 1944 aged 22 years.
Sydney Graham has supplied the following:
In the churchyard of St Paul's Choppington is the small and inconspicuous headstone of Agnes and Walter Robertson, a local couple, and on it is remembered their grandson, Trooper Edward Young Adamson of 1/SAS whose inscription simply says "Killed in action, 7.7.44". Behind this simple inscription lies a tragic story.
Adamson was one of a party of SAS soldiers taking part in Operation Bullbasket who parachuted into occupied France. Their objective was to block railway lines and prevent German reinforcements reaching Normandy and, in this, they were initially successful, locating a German petrol train and calling in the RAF to destroy it.
The SAS soldiers were camped in woods near Verrieres and were in contact with the French resistance. Unfortunately, on 3rd July, they were betrayed and ambushed by German troops. Thirty four SAS soldiers and seven French were captured and, on 7th July, they were taken into the woods and, against all the rules of the Geneva Convention, they were executed. The Germans buried the British soldiers in a crude forest grave but word of the massacre got back to England and the RAF sent 12 Mustang aircraft to completely destroy the Germans barracks, killing up to 200 of the enemy.
In December, 1944, after the area was liberated, the bodies of the British soldiers were disinterred from their forest grave and re-buried, with full honours, in the civilian cemetery in the village of Rom (Deux-Sevres). Their graves are beautifully tended by the local people.
A brave young Northumbrian.
Edward Young Adamson is remembered in Choppington on C36.01, C36.02 and C36.04
