Scottish Borders Council has restored a memorial to a young Australian airman buried in one of the most remote war graves in Scotland.

Flight Sergeant Tony La Gruta died in August 1941, when his Bolton Paul Defiant aircraft crashed in the Lammermuir Hills on a homing test. The Ministry of Defence decided he should remain buried at the spot and a memorial was raised at the crash site.

"In the 68 years since then the memorial has been buffeted by the unrelenting weather and was crumbling badly," said Scottish Borders Council Convener Alasdair Hutton. "Our property services staff went the several miles off the nearest road and up into the hills to restore the memorial.

"This was truly going far more than the extra mile and I am very proud of what our staff have achieved to show that we have not forgotten this young Australian airman who lost his life in our hills," added Councillor Hutton.


David Romanis, SBC Property Manager, explained that the concrete base to the memorial was degrading quite badly, and after considerable thought we decided to clad the exterior face of the plinth with a granite block.

"This new face will protect the original base for many years to come and is a fitting material for such a structure. The memorial stone itself was simply cleaned as we have a policy of 'minimum intervention' when maintaining critical monuments such as this," he said.

The Council's staff had been greatly helped by the Colin Adamson, the Estate Manager of Northumberland Estates, which owns the ground on which the memorial stands.

Flight Sergeant La Gruta came from St Kilda, which, in spite of its Scottish name, is an inner suburb of the city of Melbourne in Victoria. He was serving at East Fortune, a support airfield for RAF Drem in East Lothian.

"We will never know why he lost control of the aircraft, but it may have been whilst he was flying in cloud. Whatever the reason, the aircraft struck the ground at high speed in a very steep dive and most of it ended up buried in the hillside," Councillor Hutton said. "So this is more than a memorial, it is the headstone to a war grave and for that reason I am very glad that we have been able to restore it so that it will stand as a reminder of Flight Sergeant La Gruta for many years to come."

At the site, Councillor Hutton read some lines by the Border poet Will Ogilvie, who wrote about both the Borders and Australia, before a silence was observed and a wreath was laid at the memorial.

(GK/JM)