Another grouping of British WWII graves is at Creeds, Va.

We know about the British sailors who died off the North Carolina coast in 1942 during World War II and were buried in cemeteries at Morehead City in Carteret County, at Ocracoke in Hyde County and at Buxton in Dare County.

Yet, the body of one more British seaman was found at Swan Quarter in Hyde County. He was identified as Seaman Alfred Dryden, 32, of Berwick-on-Tweed, Northumberland, England, who served aboard the Bedfordshire, an armed British trawler.

The vessel was torpedoed by Germany’s U-558 off Cape Lookout on May 11, 1942. All 37 hands aboard the Bedfordshire perished. Four bodies from the ship washed ashore at Ocracoke Island and another was found along the beach near Buxton on Hatteras Island.

However, Dryden’s body washed up on the other side of the Pamlico Sound at Swan Quarter, the Hyde county seat, about 28 miles west of Ocracoke. He was buried (temporarily) in a public cemetery at Swan Quarter.

 

Paul Branch, retired Fort Macon State Park Ranger and a military historian, said authorities suggested having Dryden’s remains moved over to the small British Cemetery at Ocracoke.

Instead, for “undisclosed reasons,” Dryden’s body was reinterred on Feb. 2, 1943, at Oak Grove Baptist Church Cemetery at Creeds, Va., a rural community in Princess Anne County. (The entire county is now officially “extinct,” having been merged into the independent City of Virginia Beach in 1963.)

 

You will find Creeds almost at the bottom of this old map showing Princess Anne County at far right.

Dryden is buried alongside three British sailors who also died in World War II. They were crew members aboard the British trawler named the Kingston Ceylonite: Seaman John Ernest Farrall, 21, of Manchester, Lancashire, England; Ordnance Seaman Joseph Davidson Stubbs, 32, of Lemington-on-Tyne, Northumberland, England; and Seaman Harold George Turner, 30, of Bedhampton, Hampshire, England.

 

Their vessel sunk June 15, 1942, after striking a minefield that was laid by Germany’s U-701 off Virginia Beach near the mouth of Chesapeake Bay. Eighteen men from the Kingston Ceylonite died, while 14 were rescued. 

Founded in 1762, Oak Grove Baptist Church is the oldest Baptist Church in Virginia. Those attending services back then would tie their horses to the red and white oak trees in the grove surrounding the church. 

Creeds is about 17 miles south of Naval Air Station Oceana at Virginia Beach. During World War II, the Navy operated an auxiliary landing field at Creeds.

 

One of the young Navy pilots who trained at Creeds in 1945 was Lt. George Herbert Walker Bush. The future 41st U.S. President flew 58 combat missions in the Pacific in World War II. At 19, he was believed to be America’s youngest combat aviator, earning the Distinguished Flying Cross.

 

The airfield at Creeds was decommissioned by the Navy on Oct. 15, 1945, and left abandoned until 1962 when it was repurposed as a drag strip. Hot rod racing continued until 1985. 

Today, the site is home to the Virginia Beach Police Department’s 225-acre Creeds Law Enforcement Training Facility, a state-of-the-art center used by civilian and military police alike.

 

Creeds is almost in North Carolina, just seven miles north of the border with Virginia. Creeds is in the section of Virginia that hangs down between the North Landing River and the Currituck Sound. 

Creeds was an important stop on the Munden Point Railroad, which was built in 1898 to connect Norfolk and Virginia Beach to Munden Point on the Currituck Sound. 

The train line became known as the “Sportsman’s Special,” carrying duck hunters to the scores of private hunting lodges that sprung up on and around Knotts Island, N.C.