248628 Pte. William Reginald O'Callaghan British Army Royal Norfolk Regiment from:Dereham, Norfolk William O'Callaghan was born in Middlesex in 1914 and moved to Dereham in Norfolk with his family in 1920 and joined the TA at the age of 16 before becoming a regular soldier with the Royal Norfolk Regiment and serving in Gibraltar from 1937-1938.
He was sent to France as a member of the British Expeditionary Force and was involved in fighting German SS troops at Le Paradis in May 1940 as part of the rearguard action that allowed over 300,000 troops to be evacuated from Dunkirk.
He was one of almost 100 British soldiers who surrendered to the SS Totenkopf at Le Paradis on 27th May, 1940, and was subsequently marched to a barn where 97 men were massacred by the Totenkopf under the command of Fritz Knoechlein.
Bill was one of only two survivors of the massacre and spent the remainder of the war moving between prisoner-of-war camps, ending up in Stalag XX1D.
After the war he returned to Norfolk where he was married in 1945. He had two children - Dennis, born in 1946, and Heather, born in 1953.
Bill died in 1975. In 1956 a book entitled "The Vengeance of Private Pooley" by Norfolk historian Cyril Jolly was published, telling the story of the massacre and the part played by the two survivors in bringing Knoechlein to justice.
The full story of the massacre at Le Paradis is told on the web site at leparadismassacre.com.
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