Add Information to Record of a Person who served during the Second World War on The Wartime Memories Project Website
Add Information to Record of a Person who served during the Second World War on The Wartime Memories Project Website
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243147
Pte. Kenneth Austin Beasley
British Army Queen's Own Royal West Kent Regiment
from:Tunbridge Wells, Kent
(d.27th May 1940)
On the retreat at Dunkirk two brothers met, one Ken Beasley had been ordered to stay behind to help keep back the German advance. He gave his brother, Elan, a plant he had come across to take back to Tunbridge Wells to give to his father, who was a plantsman. Although Ken's date of birth shows him to be 19 he was actually 18. He didn't make it but his brother returned to England safely. A neighbour recalls that Ken was machine gunned by the Germans and run over by a tank. There are tributes to him in St. Mark's Parish Church, Tunbridge Wells. He is one of the unsung heroes of Dunkirk.