Louis Block

Other Events and Attributes:

• Military Service: Infantry soldier. Private Royal Berkshire Regiment 5340010

Notes:

Died:
Killed at Dunkirk. The War Graves Commission records his age as being 21. This is incorrect. He died aged 18 because. Louis lied about his age so that he could enlist without obtaining his parents' permission which would otherwise have been required because of his young age.

Louis Bloch Private 5340010 4th Bn., Royal Berkshire Regiment who died on Sunday 26th May 1940. Age 21.
Cemetery: DUNKIRK MEMORIAL, Nord, France.
Grave Reference/Panel Number: Column 111.

Location: The Dunkirk Memorial stands at the entrance to the British War Graves Section of Dunkirk Town Cemetery, which lies at the south-eastern corner of the town of Dunkirk, immediately south of the canal and on the road to Veurne (Furnes) in Belgium.

Historical Information: Dunkirk witnessed the landing of the British Expeditionary Force in September and October 1914. Throughout the First World War, it was a seaplane base and later an American Naval Air Service base. The town was also a French hospital centre and the 8th Canadian Stationary Hospital was there from November 1918 to April 1919. Although an estimated 7,500 shells and bombs fell on the town during the war, ship-building and other port activities continued. During the Second World War, Dunkirk was the scene of the historic evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from France in May 1940. DUNKIRK TOWN CEMETERY contains 450 Commonwealth burials of the First World War, ten of them unidentified. The graves are situated in Plots 1 to 3 in the public part of the cemetery to the right of the main entrance, and in Plots 4 and 5 of the Commonwealth War Graves section adjacent to the Dunkirk Memorial. Of the 800 Second World War burials, more than 200 are unidentified and special memorials are erected to 58 soldiers known to be buried among them. These graves are in Plots 1 and 2 of the section by the Dunkirk Memorial. There are also Czech, Norwegian and Polish war graves within the Commonwealth section, and war graves of other nationalities will be found elsewhere within the cemetery. The DUNKIRK MEMORIAL stands a the entrance to the Commonwealth War Graves section of Dunkirk Town Cemetery. It commemorates more than 4,500 casualties of the British Expeditionary Force who died in the campaign of 1939-40 and who have no known grave. The memorial was designed by Philip Hepworth. The engraved glass panel depicting the evacuation was by John Hutton.