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Thame residents Adrian and Ann Dite recently flew into the kingdom to honour their home town fallen hero who was laid to rest at the Old Christian Cemetery in Manama.
Warrant Officer Joseph Arthur Castle, who received the British Empire Medal for his exemplary service during the Docks Strike of 1951, was buried in Bahrain six years later in row 30, grave 15. It is believed that the British serviceman died at the age of 33 of a heart attack.
According to Adrian, visiting his grave in Bahrain is something near and dear to him and his family, especially as the Warrant Officer was once-upon-a-time friends with his mother Joyce.
The 65-year-old former Xerox national service manager, who now spends his days serving his community, said: “I’ve got long connections with Thame. My mother was brought up there and I am on the council.
“When I was talking to my mother, who is still alive at 92, she recognised Joseph’s name. He was one of the people she grew up with in Thame. He would have been 91 now. His cousin is still alive in her 90’s and she is only four or five doors away from us.
“With all these things to take into account, I figured I had to come to Bahrain and do this on behalf of the community, on behalf of our family and all the people we know.”
While speaking exclusively to GulfWeekly last month, Adrian had said that he and his wife would be placing a cross on the Warrant Officer’s grave this month during a visit to their son Chris and his family in Doha for Christmas.
It was an emotional day for both of them when they shared a few heartfelt words about his life in front of members of the British Royal Navy, the Very Reverend Christopher Butt, Dean of St Christopher’ Cathedral, and his wife.
After Adrian’s address, a member of the British Royal Navy read a moving passage which said: “They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old. Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them.”
The group then responded: “We will remember them”. This was followed by a minute of silence, before reading on: “When we go home we will tell them of you and say for our tomorrow you gave your today.”
Adrian then knelt before the grave and placed the cross. He said: “It’s quite humbling to find out all about Joseph, to actually come and mark his grave and to be supported so much by the local community. It’s great to come to Bahrain and to see that he is being looked after and not forgotten.
“It’s also lovely to see that people here are still looking after the cemetery and taking in proper memorial services. We are just so grateful to Bahrain for keeping the cemetery so nice for us. I’d also like to thank the Very Reverend Christopher for all his help as he has been absolutely fantastic.”
This isn’t Adrian’s first time honouring the fallen as he and a party of 40 also went to World War One (WW1) sites in France to place crosses and wreaths over the graves in the trenches as part of the Thame Remembers initiative.
This project, which was the brainchild of former Thame mayor David Bretherton, was created to honour the centenary of WW1 by researching all the names on Thame War Memorials, for all conflicts, to discover more about their lives, to identify the location of their grave or memorial, and to place a Thame Remembers cross on each resting place; wherever in the world that may be.
Many of the graves are in France, Belgium and the UK but the remainder are spread far and wide, including Greece, Italy, Egypt, India, Iraq, Singapore and Tanzania, plus ocean graves where the crew went down with their ships.
