A WIDOW’S long wait for her former husband’s name to be added to a county war memorial could soon be over . . . more than 70 years after he was killed as she was about to give birth to their child.

Army Captain George William Ryland Griffin – known as Bill – died during active service in France on August 10, 1944, aged just 25.

Now, Dunbar Community Council is planning to restore the town’s war memorial and is looking to add the name of Captain Griffin.

His widow, Amore, who lived at Stafford House on the town’s Bayswell Park, just yards from the memorial, was hoping to see her late husband’s name there soon.

She said: “I think he should be recognised – he died for his country. He is not going to have a memorial where he came from in Birmingham: his mother died when we were engaged and he only had an auntie there.

“I think these boys should be remembered. He lived here and Dunbar was his address.”

More than 200 names are on the town’s war memorial.For the last year, the town’s community council has been exploring the idea of not only restoring the weather-battered war memorial but adding any names which were not recorded when it was first built.

Herbert Coutts, from the town’s community council, has led calls for the work to be done and is hopeful the monument could be restored for next year’s Armistice Day. Amore, now 93, and Bill met in 1942 in Dunbar.

He was based in the town’s former Bellevue Hotel with the Wiltshire Regiment during Second World War training.

Amore, whose dad Louis Allen ran a household and china shop on Dunbar’s High Street, said it was “love at first sight” and they were married in the town’s St Anne’s Church in June 1943.

However, tragedy struck in 1944 when Amore, who was heavily pregnant, learnt Bill had been killed after being struck in the back by shrapnel. He was buried in Tilly-Sur-Seulles War Cemetery.

She said: “A telegram was delivered to the house. I got up to get it but my mum, Annie, got up at the same time.

“She said she would get it and went down to the shop and phoned the gynaecologist because they were worried something would happen to the baby.

“She said to come in and suggested they did not tell me that he had been killed and to try to bring the baby on ahead of time.

“In the end, they performed a caesarean and Anthony was born 12 days after his dad died. I know a lot about how Bill was killed – people wrote to me and told me.

“I got a letter again when I was in hospital but my mum kept it all from me until Anthony was three days old. I remember my dad zig-zagging and it was seldom he came to the hospital without my mum and I immediately knew something was wrong.”

Anthony has since followed in his father’s footsteps, going to Sandhurst and onto the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (REME).

Amore, who remarried and now lives near Dunglass, added: “I think the fact that Bill’s name would be on it would be lovely for my son.

“He never knew his father and it is rather nice.

“When he comes to visit me he can go and have a look at that, just like he goes to St Anne’s Church and feels that little bit closer to his dad when he is there.”