Harold John Blackler, served on HMS Keith. HMS Keith was destroyed at Dunkirk by aircraft on 1 June 1940 when a bomb went down one of her funnels. 36 lives were lost, but 130 survived. Unfortunately 100 of those were lost when the tug they were returning to England on was sunk. It seems Harold survived both these disasters, records of his death state that he was serving at HMS Pembroke (which I believe is one of the land bases) rather than HMS Keith when he died, they also say that he died at Dunkirk while on war service. However the date given is 28 Jun 1940, when the evacuation ended on 4 Jun. Have I misread or misunderstood, or missed something?
Well his death was entered as "2" Maybe he went missing prior to 28th but was only entered as died on 28th.
Thank you. That makes sense, if he was on another sunk boat but the body was not immediately recovered. I assume that's either when they found his body or it's when they stopped trying to locate or identify remains I meant to look up what those codes meant, but then I saw another record which said "Died on war service", so missed out on the fact that he was missing initially
