大象传媒

Smiler was called up in 1939. His only child was just over one year old but he felt okay because his wife's and his folks all lived in the industrial heartland of Britain town of Smethwick. So they should be well lokked after.

Smiler was in the pioneers. He was a professional painter and decorator - but they didn't need many of those in the army of '39. So with one rifle and 23 shovels, Smiler and his 22 army colleagues and many others went to France to face the Nazis.

Smiler became one of those who stayed behind at Bolougne so that the crack companies like the Black Watch could escape. With German tanks shooting over their heads from one direction and the guns of a Royal Navy destroyer firing back, Smiler and his not so crack army colleagues held their ground long enough for the others to make their escape back to Blighty.

They held the enemy from the docks for a long time until Smiler was given by his superior officer the inglorious task of carrying the white flag that heralded their surrender.

Thus began many long years as a prisoner of the Nazis during which he marched 1700 kilometres from France through freezing mountains to the freezing north of Poland's prison camps. He and his colleagues were bombed twice by allied aircraft. Once he nearly drowned in the Danube. He saw his friends shot. He endured forced labour in Polish coalmines.

Eventually he was liberated by Patton's army.

When he got home in 1945, his son, now a bouncing 7 year old, proudly announced to everyone that his dad was a black man, because the years labouring in the coal mines had ingrained his skin with coal.

Smiler stayed in the army and retired a sergeant after serving for 42 years.

He and his wife raised two more sons and all three of them are proud of the role he played and the sacrifices he made so we could all be free.

Those that were not evacuated at Dunkirk and Bolougne either died or we made prisoners.

They also served.

Without them the others could not have escaped to fight another day.

The details of Smiler's war may follow soon.

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