Edward Chester Gray was born on 17th December 1892 in the parish of St John’s in Woodbridge. By the time Edward was eighteen, he had left home and was working as a footman at Poynter’s Hall, Totteridge, in Hertfordshire. It is probable that he returned to Melton before the start of the war in August 1914.

Edward enlisted in the 8th Suffolk Regiment and was sent to Shorncliffe, Kent, in September 1914. One month later, Edward was sent to Colchester, followed by moves to Salisbury Plain and Codford, Wiltshire, for training. The battalion was then billeted to the Wylye Valley, an area whose largest village in 1914 had had a population of fifty. The valley was to become home to over 24,000 trainee soldiers after six miles of army camps were built there. Edward was selected to join the battalion’s signaller section and underwent special training for what was considered a particularly dangerous role, ensuring telephone lines from the front to the command posts were maintained and to carry messages between trenches during the fighting.

On 25th July 1915, the battalion entrained for Southampton where they embarked on the RMS Victoria for the voyage across the Channel to Boulogne. On arrival, the battalion walked the short distance to Ostrohove Rest Camp. Edward and the 8th Suffolks boarded a train to Bertangles two days later and then marched the ten kilometres to billets in Pierregot, near Amiens.

The 8th Suffolks remained in Pierregot undertaking further training in trench warfare until 22nd August when they went to the front line for the first time. That night the 8th Suffolks and the 6th Royal Berkshire Regiment relieved the King’s Own Scottish Borderers and the Duke of Wellington’s Regiment, taking over trenches at Bronay Farm, where they stayed until 14th September. The 8th Battalion suffered their first casualties of the war while stationed there when Drummer Ernest Patterson was killed and six others were wounded.

Edward remained with the 8th Suffolks despite being transferred to the Royal Engineers when the 18th Division’s signallers were reorganised and nominally put under their command. During 1916, Edward and the 8th Suffolks took part in the Battle of the Somme, including actions at Delville Wood, Thiepval, and in 1917, the Third Battle of Ypres, including Passchendaele. In January 1918, the battalion was disbanded and the men distributed between the 2nd, 4th and 7th Suffolk Regiments. Edward was finally demobilised from the Royal Engineers on 25th May 1919. For his war service, Edward received the 1914-15 Star and the British War and Victory medals.

In 1922, Edward married Dorothy Olive Goldsmith from Bromley, Kent. They had three children: Doreen, Edward Leslie and Robert. In 1939, Edward was a police constable with the Metropolitan Police and living in Chelsea, London. Edward died in 1965 in Bromley, Kent.