RAWLINGS. - On June 25th, at St. Hugh's Hospital, Oxford, Stanley, 2nd Class N.A., Fleet Air Arm, dearly loved youngest son of Mrs. B. Rawlings and the late Brice Rawlings, 12, Berkeley Road, Newbury, age 21 years.

Grave of the Month Stanley Clifford Rawlings (1921-1945)
Stanley Rawlings was born on February 13th 1924, the youngest child of Brice and Mabel Rawlings. On July 21st 1943, Stanley was called up to do his bit for the war effort and joined the Royal Navy’s Fleet Air Arm. He spent his first few months at stations in Scotland and Lee-on-Solent.
In February 1944, the squadron embarked on HMS Begum, bound for the Far East. During his time on board, Stanley kept a journal of his travels and recorded details of their passage from Belfast, through the Mediterranean and the Suez Canal, to Madras (now Chennai) in India.
In it he noted all the things he saw, most of which were totally alien to a boy of just twenty years old, who had never left Newbury. He recorded seeing the local people dressed in bright clothes along the shores of the Suez
and of seeing camels and what happened when they were allowed shore leave.
HMS Begum made it to India, but his time there was short-lived. He was bitten by an insect and the bite became badly infected.
He was returned to England where he died of a cerebral abscess, on June 25th 1945, aged just 21 in Oxford Military Hospital and was buried in a commonwealth war grave