MY WAR DEAD
CALDER, Edmund Robert Morton - died 3rd August 1944.
Edmund Robert Morton Calder was born in Westminster on 14th November 1913 and baptised at St Matthew's church Great Peter Street on 5th December. He was the eldest child of Horace Calder, a police officer, and his wife who was born Charlotte Rose Aiton. Edmund was joined by 4 siblings over the next dozen years. The family had moved to Chelsea by 1918, where they remained until 1931; they then moved on to Grove Road, Hounslow.
Nothing is currently known of Edmund's life before war broke out in 1939 when it seems that he joined the Royal Navy as a seaman. He did find time to marry Edna Moreen Savery in late 1940, she having been working previously at St Mary Abbott's Hospital in Kensington. They married in Brentford and had 2 sons, Ian and Douglas in quick succession. Edmund, nonetheless, continued serving with the Navy.
Details of Edmund's service are lacking but he was an ordinary seaman on the destroyer 'HMS Quorn' on 3rd August 1944. The ship was providing beach head defence near Le Havre when it was ordered to move closer to that port but, around midnight, was hit amidships by a torpedo; it broke in two and sank within a few minutes. Many of those on board went down with the ship and only a few of the rest survived after spending many hours in the water. The exact nature of Edmund's fate is not known but he was subsequently listed as one of those whose life was lost in the incident. He is commemmorated on the Portsmouth Naval Memorial along with another 15,000 sailors who died in the second war and whose bodies were never recovered.
Edmund left an estate valued at £265, administration of which was awarded to his widow, Edna Moreen Calder, in September 1944; the family address was then recorded as 21 Carmichael Court, Barnes, London.
Edmund Robert Morton Calder, who was aged 30 at the time of his death, was my 4th cousin, twice removed; he was also the 1st cousin of James Henry William Calder who died a few days earlier.