Roll of Honour 2023

P AGE 170

W ORLD W AR II

S T . E DWARD ’ S S CHOOL , O XFORD R OLL OF H ONOUR

Name BASIL THOMAS ROBERTSON GLASSPOOL (Lt)

Lef SES 1931

Roll Number 2451 Died 28:05:1940

Set / House D

Arrive SES 1929

Where WORMHOUT MASSACRE, DUNKIRK Serving with 4TH, CHESHIRE REGIMENT

Age 25

Buried Ledringhem Churchyard, near Dunkirk Remembered The Dunkirk Memorial and The St. Edward’s School WW2 memorial

Born Sevenoaks, Kent 1915. At the School a very short time. ‘He was a very likeable boy and endeared himself to his contemporaries by his gift of friendship. He displayed a keen and cheerful spirit in everything to which he set his hand especially in his work and games’ (Chronicle). In 1939 he joined up with a commission as a Second Lieutenant in the Cheshire Regiment (TA) and was promoted to Lieutenant in the 4th Battalion a year later and shipped out of France as part of the BEF. He was reported missing in 1940. It later turned out that the Cheshires, as part of the 48th Midland Division, had been ordered to hold a key road junction during the retreat on Dunkirk. They did this with distinction causing significant losses on the enemy until their ammunition ran out. They were then taken prisoner by the Waffen SS Division, Liebstandarte Adolph Hitler, who herded them into a barn in Wormhout, where they threw in numerous stick hand-grenades killing many of the unarmed POWs. Any survivors were ordered out in groups of five and machine gunned down as they appeared. Glasspool was lost during this episode. In all, eighty prisoners were killed and fifteen miraculously escaped and were later treated for their wounds in regular German Army hospitals. The site today is a memorial. After the war the perpetrators were hunted down but due to lack of concrete evidence were never brought to trial.