Private Edward George Lane
7th Battalion, the Devonshire Regiment 5619142
Died at sea
Date of Birth: 1919
Date of Death: 2nd of July 1940, aged 21
Buried: Grave 1, Ballycastle New Cemetery, Ballycastle, Co. Mayo, Republic of Ireland
Awarded the 1939-1945 Star and the War Medal 1939-1945
Son of John Henry and Lilian Maud Lane, of Kingsteignton, Devon.
SS Arandora Star
On the 1st of July 1940, the SS Arandora Star set sail from Liverpool. Canada had reluctantly agreed to take Italian internees and German prisoners of war from Britain.
Around 1678 men were piled onboard a ship designed for 500. Of these, around 734 were Italian internees, many of whom had come from Warth Mills. The ship wasn’t displaying the International Red Cross symbol to signify civilians were on board, and access to lifeboats was obstructed by heavy wire mesh.
It was also sailing without an escort. At 7 am on the 2nd of July 1940, the SS Arandora Star was torpedoed by a German U-boat off the coast of Ireland.
Private Edward George Lane was a military escort aboard the SS Arandora Star.
SS Arandora Star - pre-war photo
After the War
The following day there was a similar ceremony in the small town of Ballycastle in North Mayo, when the grave of Private Edward George Lane, of the Devonshire Regiment, was rededicated. Private Lane was a military escort on the ship the SS Arandora Star, which was torpedoed and sunk by a German U-boat off the coast of Donegal in 1940.
The ship was loaded with German and Italian descendants who were being shipped to internment camps in Canada for the duration of the war. These were people who had earlier settled in Great Britain. Many of them would have served with the British forces, but Sir Winston Churchill was having none of it, and issued the order to “Collar the Lot.”
It was ironic that a German U-boat killed so many German and Italian passengers.
Private Edward George Lane commemorative certificate
The captain of the U-boat was the famous Captain Günter Prien, the same man who had embarrassed the British Navy some months earlier when he sailed into the estuary named Scapa Flow, through to a heavily fortified naval base, and sank the ship Royal Oak at anchor. When he returned to Germany, Prien was personally decorated by Adolf Hitler.
Private Lane’s body was washed ashore near Ballycastle in 1940, and he was buried in the nearby cemetery. More than 69 years had passed since then, and the grave was in bad condition – just a marker stuck in the hollow ground. John, Michael, and Ernie decided to give the young WW2 soldier the dignity of a proper grave. So they dug around it, put in a proper raised stone and concrete base, and installed a lovely set of granite kerbings.
Councillor Len Holland, the former mayor of Kingsteignton, Devon, England, the soldier’s home town, attended the ceremony with his wife, Elizabeth Lane. He was joined by Davey Hards and Andrew Cooke, of the Devon & Dorset’s Regimental Association, carrying their Regimental Banners and Colors.
