Major George Frederick Evelyn STORY (1918)

Royal Engineers, attached to 8th Battalion, King's Own Royal Regiment (Lancaster)
Born 25 February 1900 in Kilskeery, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland
Died of wounds, 25 July 1941, aged 41
Commemorated on the Brookwood Memorial, Pirbright, Surrey; and on the war memorial at Gresham's School

Frederick Story was the elder son of Evelyn James Story JP and Hilda Grenside, née Hooper, of Wrington, Somerset.

He was educated at Gresham’s School, Holt, Norfolk, where he was a member of the Officer Training Corps, and after leaving school in 1918 he served as a cadet in the Household Brigade of the Officer Cadet battalion. He was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Welsh Guards (Special Reserve of Officers) on 10 March 1919, but relinquished his commission on 1 April 1920, though retaining his rank.

He came up to Merton with a Postmastership in Hilary Term 1919, was awarded a Goldsmith’s Exhibition for Chemistry in 1921, and took a second class degree in Chemistry in 1922. He was a member of the College Hockey XI.

On leaving university Story worked as a chemist for the Guinness Brewery in Dublin, where in 1932 he married Nancy Agnes Kingscote, née Lumsden.

Story was commissioned as a Lieutenant in the 36th (Middlesex) Anti-Aircraft Battalion, Royal Engineers in the Territorial Army on 30 April 1938 and was promoted to Captain on 20 July 1939.

On 11 July 1941, the 8th Battalion, King's Own Royal Regiment, to which Story was attached, set sail from Glasgow bound for Malta via Gibraltar, where they arrived on 20 July. The following day they embarked in two groups on board the light cruisers HMS Manchester and HMS Arethusa for the second leg of their journey. At 9:45am on the morning of 23 July 1941, the fleet came under attack from nine Italian Savoia-Marchetti SM.79 Sparviero bombers. One aircraft dropped a torpedo which hit HMS Manchester in the engine room; Story was wounded during this attack and died from his wounds on board the ship two days later. He was buried at sea.