Today, 6th June, marks the 80th anniversary of D-Day, when Allied troops invaded Normandy in the greatest amphibious operation in history. Many Old Bloxhamists were involved in the events that day, and one died on D-Day. Robert Bell-Walker (Wf 23-30) was a Banbury boy and was noted at school for his abilities as a rugby player. Yesterday, Simon Batten, the School Archivist, visited his grave to pay his respects on behalf of the School, at the beautiful Hermanville Cemetery in Normandy, close to Sword Beach where his unit landed.
Lieutenant Bob Bell-Walker of the 1st Battalion, South Lancashire Regiment, personally dealt with a concrete pill-box, creeping around the back, throwing a grenade in through the gun-slit and then giving the interior a burst of Sten Gun fire. He was killed instantly by a burst of machine-gun fire from another position, but his action had enabled the rest of his company to get off the beach. At the moment he died he was commanding his company as both the battalion commander and company commander had been mortally wounded.
He left a widow who was six months pregnant. His daughter Angie, born in September 1944, visited the school in 2007 and attended a Remembrance service. She told Simon: ‘I didn’t find out what he actually did until three years ago when I was 60! I don’t think my mother or my aunts knew either and it was a relation who read about his actions in a book in a Devon second hand bookshop!’
Bob Bell-Walker’s story reminds us of the great cost to human life as we commemorate these events today.
