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The Dunkirk Memories of William Marshfield (1907—1996)

During this time I was working on roofing in Portsmouth. I had one or two bad falls through bad battens on the roof. You had to walk up the roof with tiles on the your head. I always carried mine on the shoulder. The worst fall I had was when we were moving scaffold boards from a top girder to a lower one. The two people I was working with on one board gave way. And down we went, about 30 or 40 feet below. I never told Dot what had happened or told her where I was hurt. In fact, looking back to that time you were afraid to go sick as the job would be taken by some other bloke. That was all for eleven pence an hour then.

I did find another job with another tiler and was sent away into the country, near Liss, with a mate of my own. Then I was paid tiler’s pay, which, when the job was finished and was paid up that week, was about £7 or just a bit more. In fact that was quite a sum in those days. At other times I went back to Keeble’s and had to go away to load up tiles on roofs and sleep on the job — at times in the shed on bags of cement with rats for company.

Then came another spell of out of work around 1939, when I was sent to the Dockyard to help fill sand bags, as the war was in the offing.

That was when I was recalled into the army.

Like a fool I went straight away — to report at Colchester. And for a week, before being kitted out, had to sleep in one of the corridors of the huts, before being finally sorted out into companies, which was the 18th Field Park Unit, Royal Engineers. After a hectic two weeks dashing about on the square again to be shaped into soldiers again, we were allotted tents. After a while we were moved out to Fingringhoe, Essex, till we moved away to a unit. There we went up to Bristol to be transported over to St Nazaire, France.

There we split up. One half of the unit went into France. I was one of the crowd left behind for a while. There we were billeted in a huge coal shed and fed on Smiths crisps and corned beef for our main meal each day for a fortnight.

We were then assembled to pick up the rest of the company at a place called Lens, not far from Lille, where we eventually moved in a real snow storm, when we arrived about 1am. I was promptly told off for guard duties that time.

While we were there we had a few scares as regards Germans landing in some fields some miles from where we were stationed. We had to go off on the hunt for them. At other times we had to train new arrivals in rifle drill etc. Then at one time we went out laying land mines. We were told we had a covering party to look after us. Instead we were not far from Jerry, who opened up on us. We soon got out of that position. That was after we had laid the mines.

One night I went out with three other blokes for a drink. Of course we ended up very happy. We were supposed to be back by 12.00 hours. Instead, I and two others got back late and stood outside the billet singing ‘Old Father Thames’. For that I got 14 days CB. I was with Dutchy Holland. We were skimmished!

During that time our company was told to move out. I was one of a party told off on rear guard to report to DADOS . That is where all the stores were kept anything from a packet of pins to most things a unit wanted, from a pin-up to a skammel’ .

Anyway, we eventually found out that the evacuation was on. That was after being there for the first week. We ran out of rations and pay.

One day our Sgt stopped an officer and told him we had no pay for over a week. Anyway, wherever he got any money was his business. He paid us all out over and above what we were due and no pay book asked for. For rations two fellows from the RA went out and came back with a sheep all ready cut up Eventually we were told to move out and leave everything as it was. After leaving the dump we formed up with the RA Sgt in charge.

We started our hike across that part of France.

We got in with a battery of RAs, with their guns, and were told off as ammo feeders. Eventually the order was given to spike the guns. That was the first time I had ever seen such a thing happen. One up the breech and one down the barrel and a pull on the cord that was the end of the gun.

After that we went our way again, got lost and ended up back in Arras, where we had quite a sticky time for a while. We got out of there in the early hours all intact then on the long walk till we reached a village called Paniché or something like that name.

That was after a few incidents on the way down.

Still hungry, then we got in with an ammunition convoy till we parted at Cassel. They went left, we went down the other road. Not long after that there was a raid on the lorries we had just left. They were attacked by low flying aircraft.

We eventually reached a field hospital that had been strafed and bombed. What a shambles that was!

After helping there awhile we went on to a village, Paniché . there we met a bit more trouble. We eventually got out of that lot and after a great deal of walking came to Dunkirk.

Talk about being in a daze, you could hardly believe your eyes. There we found it was under attack by aircraft. A dead horse was very good cover for a while. Then some officers got hold of our little crowd with some others and ordered us back to hold a cross-road by some houses that were on fire from shell fire. Our Sgt said in no uncertain words. ‘This is where we get out.’ So back we went to the beach instead. We found ourselves on the promenade, miles back from the ships taking the troops off. That is one of the things you will always remember.

At Bishop’s Waltham [in Hampshire, where William was posted after the evacuation of Dunkirk, and to which his wife and two sons had been evacuated], at an army concert, Dot asked an officer why hadn’t my husband got a stripe. ‘Too much tongue,’ he said. I used to answer back. We all used to pinch army rations if we could. Old Sergeant Major Fixit helped. Got half a pig once out of the cookhouse. I used to take Alan [his eldest son, then aged eight] down the workshops. Pinch stuff and bring it back to Mrs Hobbes. Had a piece of coal once but had to dump it in the hedge as PC West was coming down the lane too.

[Before the Bishop’s Waltham posting William had been sent to Salisbury, then to a transit camp in Chard for a few weeks.]

[According to William himself, talking to a tape recorder, the Bishop’s Waltham camp was a holding centre and he was there for only a few months, although to Alan as a child it seemed longer. William says his unit was kitted out with ‘cold winter gear — woolly underclothes’. Then he says he went to Aldershot where their new gear was taken away. His brothers Tom and Jack turned up there too, he says. Jack was a sergeant. He says there ‘were a lot of rackets’ going on. He went out for a drink with is brothers. If it’s true that Tom was there too, and the matter is open to doubt, it must have been before 16th June 1962, when Tom was posted to North Africa.]

After leaving the army I had a job in the Airspeed Factory that was at Hilsea or thereabouts. It was in the leather shop. The foreman was Mr Evans, a very good man but he liked his little tipple and a bit of a fiddle

In the shop there were about 20 females on the machines. Eventually I had a sewing machine to do leather work on.

After the D-day started I was put into the fitting shop because work was pretty short for the number employed.

From that factory I was sent to the main de Haviland factory on Eastern Road with a number of other fellows.

There I was put on the heavy jig shop where all the heavy jigs were made. I was quite some time in that department till I was sent to another department to pick up riveting . After a while I was given a mate to hold up.

We then went to the sheet metal shop to work on drop tanks and cannon sprouts. Factory life was hellish. Repetition. I was doing curling. Pal of mine was here behind me holding up while I was riveting. Hell of big dome. Eventually at the end he lets go. It went flat as a pancake. Big project scrapped.

After the firm was taken over by Hawker Siddeley they took most of the work from Portsmouth to their main factory.

After a while I was put in the sewing machine shop to work on my own, which was a lot better, having no one over me. I could then plan the work day myself. That was quite a nice period, every thing run smoothly — till I got made redundant when the firm closed down.

After a while I was one of a number of people taken on at a window frame factory till the July when we had our holidays. After we returned to work all the people that had come from Hawker Siddeley got the sack. Not long after that the firm closed down.

[Transcribed from William Marshfield’s notebook and audiotape recordings by his son Alan Marshfield, see www.abraxaspress.co.uk.]

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