Gainsborough: Can you help find out more about WW2 pilot to restore his headstone

Flight Lieutenant George Arthur Marrows was born in Gainsborough in 1915 and lived in Dickenson Terrace.

He married Greta Stonehouse in late 1939.

Flight Lt. Marrows was the pilot of a Halifax bomber which took off from RAF Breighton on 7th June 1944 to bomb rail communications.

It crashed near Bretigny-sur-Orge killing all seven crew.

All are buried in Bretigny-sur-Orge Communal Cemetery.

The Friends would like to repair the headstone that remembers the World War Two airman.

He is remembered on the headstone of his parents and the inscription reads, ‘Missing from air operations Sur-Ogre Bretigny, June 8th 1944.’

The headstone is broken and the inscription is very difficult to read.

The Friends would like to contact Flight Lt. Marrows relations so they can find out more about him.

Anyone with information please visit www.friendsofthegeneralcemetery.com.

Peter Bradshaw of the Friends group said: “Our restoration work in the cemetery of the WW1 headstones is going really well.”

“The importance of the project was highlighted to me when I went to take a photograph of a headstone remembering Private Staniland who died on the Somme.”

“The headstone was standing a few years ago and I have got a photograph but when I went to take another photo last week I found that it had fallen face down and had broken into two pieces.”

“We had intended just to clean it but now it will have to be pinned back together.”

Earlier this year the Friends were awarded £10,000 from Heritage Lottery Fund’s ‘First World War: Then and Now’ programme to restore 20 headstones which were most in danger of being lost forever.

The Friends of Gainsborough Cemeteries and Chapel is a group of local volunteers whose aims are to promote local knowledge about the stories behind the people buried in the two cemeteries.