Wed then widowed

Press, 11 June 1982, Page 1

Wed then widowed

NZPA London A soldier’s bride who had to say goodbye to her husband only eight hours after their wedding has learned of his death in a helicopter crash in the Falkland Islands. Lance-Corporal Simon Cockton, aged 22, and his wife, Lindsay, aged 18, were married on May 8 at St Peter’s Church in Frimley, Surrey. He had to leave when the wedding reception ended, to join his colleagues of 656 Squadron, Army Air Corps, who were sailing for the Falklands the next day.

Lance-Corporal Cockton was the observer in a Gazelle helicopter that crashed in East Falkland, killing him, a corps pilot/ Major Christopher Griffin, aged 32, and a staff-sergeant of the Fifth Brigade headquarters Signals Squadron. Mrs Cockton, who met her husband when he was stationed at Farnborough, in Hampshire, about three years ago, said at her mother’s home in Frimley: “I knew before the wedding he was going, but I thought we would have had a little more time together. “I have had 11 letters from

Simon since he left for the Falklands and I expect a few more are on the way. The last one I got was written as he was passing Ascension Island. “When he left at the end of the wedding recpeption we were both very upset. I never dreamed anything like this was going to happen. You don’t think it is going to happen to you,” she said. “I feel very strongly, and so does his mother, that Simon’s body should be brought home. I want him to be buried here at the church where we were married," she said.