Samuel Granville Roberts was the first Blackwell Parish soldier to lose his life overseas in WW2. He was a private serving with the 2nd Btn. West Yorks Reg. (Prince of Wales's Own), part of the British Expeditionary Force in France, and was killed on 3rd June 1940 during the evacuation of Dunkirk.
Samuel is remembered at the Dunkirk Town Cemetery.
Samuel was a son of Samuel Roberts and Annie Eizabeth nee Jones. He had a sister Jessie M who married John Sharpe. In 1939 the family were at 126 Primrose Hill, Blackwell.
Other siblings born before 1911 were Elsie, Lillian, John, Olive , and Eric.
The Dunkirk evacuation, code-named Operation Dynamo, also known as the Miracle of Dunkirk, was the evacuation of Allied soldiers during World War II from the beaches and harbour of Dunkirk, in the north of France, between 26 May and 4 June 1940. The operation commenced after large numbers of Belgian, British, and French troops were cut off and surrounded by German troops during the six-week long Battle of France. In a speech to the House of Commons, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill called this "a colossal military disaster", saying "the whole root and core and brain of the British Army" had been stranded at Dunkirk and seemed about to perish or be captured. In his "we shall fight on the beaches" speech on 4 June, he hailed their rescue as a "miracle of deliverance".
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