Private Arthur Benjamin Preston Royal Norfolks - Missing after Dunkirk

Eastern Daily Press 4th July 1940

 

REPORTED MISSING

 

PTE.A.B.PRESTON, of the Royal Norfolk Regiment, eldest son of Mr.and Mrs. Preston of 85, Mousehold Avenue, Norwich. He had had 21 years’ service and was colonial rifle champion in 1937

 

PRESTON, ARTHUR BENJAMIN

Rank:………………………….....Private

Service No:……………………5764130

Date of Death:

Between 27/05/1940 and 01/06/1940

Age:……………………………....38

Regiment:……………………...Royal Norfolk Regiment

……………………………….........2nd Bn.

Grave Reference:…………2. E. 11.

Cemetery:

LE PARADIS WAR CEMETERY, LESTREM

Additional Information:

Son of Benjamin and Alice Preston, of Norwich.

CWGC: www.cwgc.org/find-war-dead/casualty/2279637/PRESTON,%20AR...

 

The Army Roll of Honour 1939-1945 unfortunately records his surname as “Freston” .

Private 5764130 Arthur B Freston of the Royal Norfolk Regiment who died in June 1940 in the French and Belgium campaign, was recorded as born and resident Norwich.

 

There is no obvious Soldiers Will or Civil Probate for this man.

 

Birth and family

 

The birth of an Arthur Benjamin Preston was recorded in the July to September quarter, (Q3) of 1903 in the Norwich District.

 

On the 1911 census the 7 year old “Authur” Preston, born Norwich was recorded at 35 Fishergate, Norwich. This was the household of his parents, Benjamin, (aged 43 and a Carter from Norwich) and Alice, (aged 39 and from Norwich). The couple have been married 18 years and have had 10 children, of which 8 were still.

Alice Emily…….aged 18………..born Norwich

Nellie…………..aged 16…………born Norwich…Rewinder in a Silk Factory

Louisa………….aged 12…………born Norwich

Lilian………….aged 10………….born Norwich

Herbert………..aged 6……………born Norwich

Alfred…………aged 4……………born Norwich

Fredrick……….aged 2……………born Norwich.

They also have a 5 year old boarder staying with them.

 

The most likely marriage of his parents was that of a Benjamin Preston to an Alice Morris in the October to December quarter, (Q4), of 1892.

 

Post August 1911 it became compulsory when registering a birth in England and Wales to also record the mothers maiden name. A search of the General Registrars Office Index of Births for England and Wales 1911 – 2006 produces many matches for children registered with the surname Preston, mothers maiden name Morris, but three in particular stand out – all recorded in the Norwich District and so possibly siblings of Arthur.

Donald……..July to September 1911

Rose………..January to March 1913

Irene……….April to June 1916

 

Other family baptisms

 

At St Clement with St Edmund, Norwich.

 

Alice Emily Preston, born 24th February 1893, was baptised 2nd November 1895. Parents were Benjamin, a Labourer, and Anna. The family lived at Thompsons Yard.

freereg2.freereg.org.uk/search_records/5510a27ae93790ccb6...

 

Nellie Maud Preston, born 9th July 1895, baptised 2nd November 1895. Parents were Benjamin, a Labourer, and Anna. The family lived at Thompsons Yard.

freereg2.freereg.org.uk/search_records/5510a27ae93790ccb6...

 

Herbert Preston, no date of birth recorded, baptised 1st July 1897. Parents were Benjamin, a Labourer, and Anna. The family lived at Thompsons Yard.

freereg2.freereg.org.uk/search_records/5510a27be93790ccb6...

(I suspect this Herbert died and the family re-used the name as the age doesn’t tie up with the 1911 census details. The same census also notes that they have lost two of their children.)

 

Louisa Preston, no date of birth recorded, privately baptised 28th March 1899. Parents were Benjamin, a Labourer, and Anna. The family lived at 32 Fishergate.

freereg2.freereg.org.uk/search_records/5510a27ce93790ccb6...

 

Military Unit

 

The 2nd Norfolks were stationed in Gibraltar for 1936 – 1939 at the time that Arthur was “Colonial Rifle Champion”, while the 1st Battalion was in India for much of the 1930’s until 1940. He could have served with either Battalion.

 

With the outbreak of war the 2nd Battalion were already back in England and were immediately dispatched to France as part of the 2nd Division. They remained there through the winter of 1939 and spring of 1940 during the so-called “Phoney War”, although one of the Battalions Officers received a Military Cross as a result of a clash with a German patrol on the border in January. With the German attack on the 10th May 1940, the British initially moved forward to prepared positions, but soon found themselves in danger of being surrounded. Then began a series of retreats behind hurriedly prepared defensive lines, usually based on the canal and river network. While holding a line on the River Escaut, south of Tournai, on the 21st May 1940, Company Sergeant-Major Gristock won a Victoria Cross.

ww2today.com/21st-may-1940-the-british-counter-attack-at-...

 

On the 23rd they were pulled back to the canal line from Aire to La Bassee.

 

Selected extracts from “Dunkirk:Fight to the Last Man” by Hugh Sebag-Montefiore

 

When the Royal Norfolks arrived at Locon, the officers believed that they were going to have a rest during what was expected to be a period in reserve. However, while Major Lisle Ryder, their thirty-seven year old acting commanding officer, was reconnoitring, his car and the following vehicle were fired at on both sides of the canal. It was no surprise, therefore, when, in the course of the meeting convened at their temporary Locon headquarters during the night of 24-5 May, Ryder told the company commanders that they must abandon any thought of having a good sleep: instead they must prepare for action.

 

4 Brigade was to be the central unit within 2 Division’s sector on the canal line, with 6 Brigade on its right, and 5 Brigade on its left. The Royal Norfolks ended up in the centre of 4 Brigade’s position. The battalion’s companies were to move up to the canal line immediately, in the dark, flushing out any Germans they found in their path, and were to establish foxhole positions on the northern and eastern canal banks between Avelette and the Bois de Paqueaut. It would have been a difficult assignment for a full-strength well rested battalion, but it was immeasurably harder for an understrength unit whose men were suffering from varying degrees of sleep deprivation. At this point, the battalion consisted of just 450 officers and other ranks.

 

Ryder’s original plan required the battalion’s headquarters to be moved at the same time as the companies to a village enticingly named Le Paradis (Paradise). However, while moving in the dark, without lights, signposts or large-scale maps, Hastings, who had been given the task of selecting the site for the new HQ, lost his way, and ended up with the headquarters personnel near Le Cornet Malo. It was only during the next night, 25-6 May, that the fateful decision was made to move the headquarters again to Le Paradis. Little did the officers who made the decision realize that life there was going to be anything but paradise.

 

Although several attacks were put in on the Royal Norfolks’ section of the canal line on 25 May, and small bridgeheads were established on the north-east bank, officers at the battalion headquarters believed that the companies, after suffering their first casualties, were still holding their own. That was thought to be the case notwithstanding the fact that during the previous night two of the front-line companies, which had also got lost in the dark, ended up mistakenly digging in alongside a tributary of the canal rather than on the canal line itself. Like the battalion’s headquarters personnel, the “lost” companies reached their correct positions on the night of 25-6 May, and it was only the next morning that Ryder ordered that steps should be taken to form a true picture of his front line. One of these involved sending Hastings forwards to the crossroads at Le Cornet Malo to find out what had happened to A Company, on the Royal Norfolks’ right.

 

“At the cross roads I was surprised to see [2nd Lieutenant] Slater, who was now commanding A Company [after Captain Yallop’s death on 25 May], and a group of six or seven men standing helplessly around him,” wrote Hastings. “Slater told me his position up by the canal had been overrun by tanks, and the company had been ‘minced up’. All that remained, he said, were the few men standing about outside, and some others who were wounded, that he had got inside a building on the…corner of the cross roads. I went…and looked at the wounded.

 

Before I left, [Lieutenant] Edgeworth, commanding B Company [the company now holding the front on A Company’s left], came running up….His Company too was much reduced in numbers…He had only 19 men. He had a position along the line of a hedge 200 or 300 yards in front of the cross roads. There were no tanks about at the moment, but he thought there were Germans in a village just beyond his position.”

 

Hastings drove back to Le Paradis to tell Ryder what he had done, only to discover that

 

“he did not agree to Slater’s recall, and was angry that I had done it. ‘Go back,’ he said. ‘Put the two companies together, and command them yourself.’ The cross roads, he told me, were to be held at all costs – to the last man, and the last round. He concluded his orders by saying: ‘Keep them back with your own pistol if necessary.’

 

On the day

 

Because so few men from the front-line companies survived, it has been impossible to describe all the nail-biting incidents that doubtless took place as these men stood their ground against the much stronger enemy troops and armour. However, the account written by Captain Hallett, whom Hastings had left in charge of the men he had been directing, at least gives some idea of what they must all have to endure.

 

Unlike Hastings, Hallett appears to have been relatively fresh, which enabled him to take a much more proactive approach to his command. Shortly after Hastings had departed during the morning of 269 May, Hallett led a patrol forward to the southern side of Le Cornet Malo and fired at Germans he saw approaching from the direction of the canal. “It was a pity we had no mortars, or we could have bombed them beautifully”, he reported enthusiastically.

 

Nevertheless Hallet’s group’s rifle and Bren-gun fire must have stopped the Germans in their tracks. As his account records, when he ordered his men to advance again, they did so without opposition, and captured a wounded German soldier, who was in a ditch, plus some others who also surrendered without a fight. “After all the frightful things the troops had threatened, it was amusing to see how well they treated the [wounded] prisoner,” Hallett noted. “They gave him cigarettes and chocolate, and ….[when] I started to question him……..he was quite ready to talk. He said that there was about a division against us across the canal, as I’d expected, instead of the odd hundred or so that I’d been told.”

 

The Germans attacked again as it became dark, driving back Hallett’s forward posts. Then, according to Hallett, “they started digging hard just beyond the village where we could hear them all night, [and] just before midnight I heard unmistakable sounds of tanks”. This prompted Hallett to take the initiative once again, and after sending out a small patrol, whose report enabled him to work out exactly where the Germans were digging, he gave orders for the mortars that had become available to be fired at them. “From the shouts and shrieks, there must have been some direct hits,” Hallett observed.

 

But, as Hallett’s account confirms, that was the last time he was able to impose his will on the battle:

 

“As it began to get light, [at] about 5 a.m. [on 27 May], the tanks arrived, huge fellows, and about a dozen. I phoned Battalion HQ….Then they cut the line. This was the last message I go to the Battalion. The forward section came in, leaving their guns, and worse, their AT [anti-tank] rifles. And for a bit there was…..chaos…..Eventually we had a brainwave, and ran out below the tanks’ angle of fire, and put Mills grenades in the tracks. It did not do the tanks much harm, but [it] frightened the drivers, and they ditched them. We got the LMG [light machine-gun] back in position, and the AT rifles mounted.

 

Luckily the German infantry were a long way behind their tanks, so when they came, we were ready for them. And come they did, in masses. I never believed I’d see troops advancing shoulder to shoulder across the open, but these men did, and suffered accordingly. The Brens fired till they were red-hot, and also the riflemen. But we [also] suffered heavily, and in the end, I was left in a big farm with an attic, with an AT Rifle, and a rifle for myself, and one rifleman to help.”

 

After some further exchanges of fire, even Hallett’s last remaining helper was killed, and he himself was captured while trying to escape.

 

Back at Duriez Farm, the state of the front-line battalions was monitored from messages received in the ‘signal office’ in the cellar under the farmhouse kitchen. A similar pattern of signals emanated from each company. First, messages came through to say they were holding. Then a more desperate voice, which could barely be heard above the firing in the background, informed the commanding officer that they were involved in hand-to-hand fighting. Sometimes the signalman at the other end of the wire had a personal chat with his mate in the battalion signal office. When B Company was about to be overrun, their signalman Alf Blake confided to Bob Brown, the nineteen-year-old telegraphist: “I’m afraid we’re for it. Don’t forget me. We’ve had some good times together. I don’t know whether I’ll ever be seeing you again.”

 

It was the last message from B Company, and the last time Bob Brown ever heard Alf Blake speak. He must have been killed shortly afterwards, among the many who did not survive long enough to surrender. There was no time for Brown to be sentimental: as soon as the line went dead, he shouted up the stairs to the officers in the kitchen, “The line to B Company’s been cut.”

 

Before the lines to the companies were cut, it was discovered that the Germans were attacking in two main lines: between the Royal Norfolks’ left and 5 Brigade, and in the area held by Hallett and his men. After overrunning the front-line companies, the German troops were free to concentrate on Battalion Headquarters, which they did with a vengeance approaching Duriez Farm from the north, the east and the west in spite of the fire put down by the men in the courtyard. “We engaged the enemy furiously,” Long reported.

 

“[Then] suddenly the enemy on the right stopped advancing, and…ran back towards the wood. We had one moment of exultation. We felt the counter-attack had been successful somewhere, and the German line was falling back. But our exultation in one moment turned to consternation.

 

A sudden flurry of noise and rattle of shots was heard in front of the Battalion HQ [i.e. to the south]. A section of German motorcyclists had rushed up the road to Bn HQ. They were dealt with effectively, and fell back on the RAP [Regimental Aid Post] buildings [a short distance to the east, across the road from the farmhouse], leaving 2 dead in the road. From the RAP they filled the air with shots, and it seemed impossible to get at them….It was a very awkward moment which was saved by RSM [Regimental Sergeant-Major] Cockaday. He seized a Bren, and rushed forward into the open. Taking up a position, he opened fire with a gun. In the course of this, he was wounded”

 

Thanks to Cockaday, who was backed up by Ryder and Long, the Germans were eventually driven away from the south side of the farm, and an escape route, in theory at least, was kept open. Long attempted to secure it by ordering some of the men to hold a couple of neighbouring houses as outposts. However, the difficulties Long experienced in going to and from these houses must have convinced him that salvation might well be impossible. According to Long, the “piece of open country [between the battalion and the houses]….was whipped with fire. The route [I took] was the only one possible, and I’m damned if I liked it. This was the only time I felt frightened. However we got there, and lost no men.”

 

Holding these outposts became even more problematic when the brigade’s artillery, probably reacting to a telephone call from Long telling the brigadier where the Germans were attacking, began to shell them. It was a frightening moment. After holding off the enemy so courageously, it seemed as if they were about to be annihilated by British guns. The barrage was only stopped when Long dashed back through another hail of bullets to telephone through an urgent request to the brigade to put an end to their unwelcome ‘support’.

 

No sooner had the guns been silenced then another problem emerged. “The men seemed to lose heart without anyone to command them,” Long wrote later. “So once more, I dodged back again, and got the men in position and cheered up.” However, the situation in the outposts was only stabilized after he had placed an NCO in each of the two houses he had ordered his men to hld. Long was then free to return to the farm.

 

Hastings has described what he witnessed there:-

 

“At one moment I am watching the movements of the enemy through glasses through a hole in the roof. Another moment I am firing a rifle. Now I am firing a Bren gun which stops…A party of Germans try to get past at short range. Everyone that can get a rifle gets some shooting. Richardson has a German Tommy gun taken from the dead motorcyclist in the road…Now the outlook is good. Now again it is bad…Now I am putting the Battalion papers and war diary in a sack and weighting it with stones, and tying it up ready to sink it in the farm pond. Now I am looking down from an upper window on the dead German motorcyclist who still lies in the road with his arm outstretched. A stream of blood has run from his head to the gutter. As I look, I see a soldier steal out at the peril of his life, and remove the wrist watch from the dead man’s hand. He slips back as quickly and quietly as he slipped out…

 

Charles Long is a great success with the men. He is telling awful lies, but he talks as if he himself believes what he says….The men love him…He set a fine example by his disregard of personal danger, and certainly did more than any other officer to keep morale at a high level. He has a breezy manner, was always cheerful, and full of unbounded optimism…All this he managed to convey to the troops….

 

Something that looks like a tank approaches. Where is the anti-tank rifle? It is lying out in the road. I go to get it. A private soldier comes after me. “Let me get it Sir” he says. I don’t let him, but I am touched at his offering. It has a hole in the side of the barrel, but it can still be fired. The tank stops behind a hillock. Its top can just be seen….It’s an armoured troop carrier….

 

The CO is ringing up Brigade. He says: “I shall not ring you up again. We are doing very well.”….I think he [Ryder] is about to crack. He says to me: “When I think of the magnificent battalion I took over only a few days ago”….He is unable to go on. I wonder why he does not abandon our position. I think we could still get some men away safely. We both know now there is no hope of holding on much longer. However, he says [that] others are depending on us. I think he knows more than I do. I glance at the Battalion papers in the sack. He nods his head, and I pitch the sack into the farm pond. It doesn’t sink. I throw a bicycle on top of it. Now it sinks.

 

Now I am going round counting up rounds of ammunition. I see Richardson. He is quiet and very grim. He is watching the development of the enemy’s attack from the side of the troop carrier. I am getting ammunition collected from the rifles and pouches of the wounded. Bren gun magazines must be broken up and the rounds distributed. We are very short of ammunition, but everyone has a few rounds.”

(End of preview extract)

From “Dunkirk:Fight to the Last Man” by Hugh Sebag-Montefiore

books.google.co.uk/books?id=V7r-F7FxtrYC&pg=PR183&amp...

 

On the night of 26-27 May 1940, the German force which included the 1st Battalion, 2nd SS 'Totenkopf' Regiment, moved up the south bank of the La Bassee Canal. It attacked across the canal in a northerly direction with Bailleul as its objective. In the area immediately north of the canal they were held by the Norfolk Battalion in much depleted strength because of the previous fighting and the physical exhaustion of the men. The Battalion and the Royal Scots were holding the villages of Riez du Vinage, Le Cornet Malo and Le Paradis. The Battalion Headquarters was in Le Paradis.

 

During the night, the 2nd SS Infantry Regiment crossed the canal using the ruins of the bridge Pont Supplie. They met heavy British resistance and advanced very slowly and at high cost. They eventually occupied Riez du Vinage and spent the night in the Bois de Paqueaut.

 

At dawn on 27 May 1940, the German forces emerged from the wood and began attacking Le Cornet Malo. No. 3 Company was in the centre, with No. 2 on the right and No. 1 on the left in semi-reserve. The British troops defended very stubbornly. According to a German account four officers and one hundred and fifty men were killed and eighteen officers and four hundred and eighty men wounded of this and another action. Fritz Knoechlein's company suffered the greatest casualties. With the village of Le Cornet Malo burning and its fields dotted with dead, the Germans attacked Le Paradis.

 

The British Battalion's last contact with Brigade took place at 11.30am. They were then told that they were isolated and must fend for themselves. They had fallen back upon the Battalion Headquarters situated in a farm on the Rue du Paradis. This road formed the boundary between the Norfolks and the Royal Scots who had been fighting on the right of the Norfolks. The location of the Battalion Headquarters on the the boundary between these two forces, accounts for the curious events that followed the surrender, for although the Norfolks were attacked by one SS Battalion, most of their survivors were captured by the SS Company which up to that moment had been fighting the Royal Scots. This other SS Battalion took a number of prisoners, among them Captain C. Long, MC, who was the Battalion Adjutant. The treatment they received was good, and gave little cause for complaint. Had all the Battalion fallen into their hands the events of the Le Paradis massacre would not have happened.

 

When the Battalion surrendered about one hundred men were collected and paraded on a minor road off the Rue du Paradis. There they were given many evidences of the mounting temper of German troops. Their equipment was taken and they were marched into a paddock of a farm and shot.

 

The German Battalion Commander had gone forward after the surrender, which took place in the early hours of the afternoon. While the men were waiting on the road two machine-guns of No. 4 Machine-gun Company were brought forward and set up in the paddock. Fritz Knoechlein was No. 3 Company Commander of the Battalion and also the Deputy Battalion Commander. He was directly responsible for the crime and it was on his orders to fire that the killing of the prisoners occurred. After the shooting of the British soldiers Knoechlein had gone around the locality looking for British prisoners or wounded. He found some French civilians and threatened them. These civilians saw a wounded soldier shot with a rifle after the mass shooting.

www.stephen-stratford.co.uk/pooleys_revenge.htm

 

On May 27th, their ammunition expended, and completely cut off from their Battalion and Brigade Headquarters, 97 officers and men of the 2/Royal Norfolks surrendered to No. 4 Company of the 1st Battalion of the 2nd S.S. Totenkopf (Deathshead) Regiment. They were disarmed, marched into a field, mowed down by machine-guns, finished off by revolver shots and bayonet thrusts and left for dead. By a miracle two of them escaped death, and were hidden and succoured for a short time by the people of Le Paradis. Later they became prisoners of war, and ultimately returned home to set in motion the wheels of justice which, on January 28th 1949, brought to the gallows the German officer who gave the command for this massacre.

 

A day or two after the atrocity the local people, under orders from the Germans, buried the dead where they lay. In 1942, however, the bodies were exhumed and moved into the part of Le Paradis churchyard which is now the war cemetery. Other casualties were brought from scattered graves in the area.

www.cwgc.org/find-a-cemetery/cemetery/2027400/LE%20PARADI...

 

The Mayor of Bethune reported details of the Le Paradis massacre to the allied authorities, in October 1944. In the report he states that 97 soldiers - temporarily buried at the massacre site until 1942 when they were re-interred at Le Paradis war cemetery. He gives a list of 45 identified bodies - 4 named but uncertain as to veracity and 48 unidentified bodies.

 

One of those identified bodies was Private 5764130 A.B.Preston, Royal Norfolk Regiment.

ww2talk.com/forums/topic/3219-le-paradis-massacre-confirm...

 

Done