Remembering the Fallen: on this day in 1971, Private Roger Wilkins, 1st Battalion, the Royal Anglian Regiment, died in Northern Ireland from wounds received two weeks earlier.

On the 27th of September he had been on duty at an observation post at Bishop Street in Londonderry when a shot was fired. As he then scanned the area with binoculars, he was shot in the head, the firing coming from the Lone Moor Road direction. Private Wilkins was taken by helicopter to the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast, and spent two weeks in the Intensive Care Unit before succumbing to his injury.

He and his wife were living in married quarters in Londonderry with their five children, Mrs. Wilkins being pregnant with their sixth child at the time of her husband’s death.

Roger, from Hastings, was 31 years old.