Bernard GRAY (2)

Certificate Lancashire Aeroplane Club 1930 for -

BERNARD GRAY. Born 14 May 1906 at Donington on Bain, Louth, Lincolnshire. to Robert and Edith Ann Gray. 1911 residing with his parents and siblings at Donington on Bain, Lincolnshire. On the 4 March 1929 at the Cathedral and Parish Church of St Mary, St Denys and St George, Manchester, he married Dorothy Bentley. His occupation was a journalist and his residence at the time of marriage was the Victoria Hotel, Manchester. He qualified as a pilot on an Avian 80h.p. Cirrus Mk II at Lancashire Aeroplane Club on the 16 May 1930. His profession, journalist. his residence was given as 6 Woodland Drive, Hazel Grove, Stockport. 1939 his wife was a schoolteacher, residing at the home of the Edwards family at Gipsy Hill, Altrincham, Cheshire. At the time of his death he was reporter, War Correspondent and passenger on H.M. Submarine Urge (N17). Commemorated on the Plymouth Naval memorial, Devon


Small extract from Times of Malta -

Working for The Sunday Pictorial, a now defunct Mirror Group newspaper, he lived up to his reputation as a "richly piratical" reporter by using well-placed friends to wangle his way on board HMS Urge. Mr Gray covered the British retreat from Dunkirk, which was commanded by Lord John Gort who later became governor of Malta. Museum archivist George Malcolmson said it was possible that the journalist's contact with the governor secured his fatal place on HMS Urge.

He was eager to cover the Egyptian desert campaign, the war's biggest story at that time.