One of the survivors of a notorious massacre of a British unit by the Nazis in the Second World War has died aged 100.
Private Bob Brown was among 100 troops from 2nd Battalion, the Royal Norfolk Regiment, who were forced to surrender during an effort to stop German forces advancing at Dunkirk.
Most of the soldiers gave themselves up to an SS unit in the village of Le Paradis in May 1940. After being searched, 97 of them were mown down with machine guns beside a barn.
Pte Brown and two other soldiers dodged execution because they slipped out of a burning farmhouse and hid in a ditch. They gave themselves up to a different German unit and spent the rest of the conflict as prisoners of war.
Two others, William O’Callaghan and Albert Pooley, survived the massacre by feigning death. They later gave evidence against SS commander Hauptsturmfuhrer Fritz Knochlein, who ordered the massacre. He was hanged in 1949.
Bob lived for nearly 80 years after his wartime brush with death. He became a sergeant after the war and later worked for the Milk Marketing Board, as a gas repair man and as a storeman.
He married Doris and had three children, seven grandchildren and six great grandchildren.
Doris, who lived with him in sheltered accommodation in Norwich, died aged 87 in 2009.
Bob regularly returned to Le Paradis on the anniversary of the massacre, making his last visit when he was 90.
He turned 100 last July. He died in hospital from old age after suffering a fall.
His daughter Viv Roberts, 73, said: “Dad had the usual age-related health problems, but his mind stayed as sharp as ever. Regarding his war memories, he had the ability to transport himself back so he saw events as if they were happening.”
