Eric Victor Wright

A Corporal with the 2nd Battalion, Eric died on 29th of May 1940 aged 20. 

Eric was born at Lowestoft on 23 July 1919, a son of Sidney William and Gladys Muriel Wright. Eric was baptised at Saint Margaret’s Church on 7 August 1919 and his family lived at 41 Park Road which was still their home in 1921. Eric’s mother died in 1928, and his father remarried. In 1939 his family lived at 15 Reeve Street. 

In May 1940 Eric’s battalion were involved in the general retreat toward Dunkirk. On 27 May the battalion fought a rearguard action around the villages of Riez du Vinage, Le Cornet Malo, Locon and Le Paradis. During that day the battalion were subject to full scale attack and by the end of the day the surviving men of the battalion had surrendered, but the commanding officer, Major Ryder, said that if any man thought he had a chance to get away he could do so. Of the men taken prisoner ninety-nine were taken to a farm at Le Paradis and massacred with only two men surviving the incident.

It is not possible to say exactly what happened to Eric. Official casualty list 242, dated 27 June 1940, shows Eric as one of dozens of men from his battalion who were missing on ‘date not recorded’. Sources show that three of the men named in that casualty list were victims of the massacre at La Paradis. 

Official casualty list 806, of 24 April 1942, states that Eric was presumed to have been killed in action between 29 May and 2 June 1940 and this information is repeated in Eric’s Commonwealth War Graves Commission records.
Work is ongoing to fully identify all of the Le Paradis victims: whether, or nor, Eric was one of them is not clear at present.