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On the day the Second World War began I was best man at the wedding of my sister. The best man was to have been a medical doctor but the authorities would not allow him to leave the hospital so I had to take his place at the last moment
Being a reserve I was soon told to report to Worcester and they promptly sent me home again for a few days. So goodbye to farm life for the time being, I had no idea it would be six and a half years before I should permanently return. Within a few weeks I was posted to four different RAF stations; I seemed to be living on a train.
Travelling to Cardington, Bedfordshire then Manston, Kent before finally to Blackpool where I had to take tests on Mechanical transport. I passed very successfully and was immediately promoted to Aircraft's man 1 (AC1) with a recommendation for leading aircraft's man (LAC). Then I was assigned to the permanent staff at RAF Halton in Buckinghamshire with promotion to LAC. Not my understanding of permanent as one week later at midnight I was awakened and told to get my kit as I was being sent out to the British Expeditionary Force in France. I was given my inoculations by torch light and presented with my overseas kit.

So it was into the back of a lorry and I was on my way to a railway station outside London. On to the overnight boat and in France next morning; this was my first time outside of England; before joining up I had barely left the county of Worcestershire. Being in transport I was moving around quite a lot and was given a weekend leave in Paris at the Forces club. All the local people seemed to be enjoying themselves; it didn't seem there was a war going on. But soon after this things warmed up no end; there was a lot of German air activity and we were having our share of dive bombing and strafing. Thousands of terrified French and Belgian inhabitants were coming down the roads desperate to escape the invaders. They were loaded up with as much as they could carry on horse and carts, barrows, prams, tractors, cycles, lorries, and on foot. They dived into ditches as planes fired at them and so did we. We were trying to move towards the enemy against this tide of humanity so we were rather hampered. Army platoons both British and French were moving in both directions; quite chaotic with no one knowing what was happening.
A few weeks of mixed boredom and aggravation went by when I was ordered to find another driver and go to a woodland supply dump to load up two vehicles with cans of aviation fuel for delivery to a site some distance inland. These were new American vehicles, originally for the French Air Force, but now used by us and far superior to any of ours. It was late evening when we arrived and we were very tired and hungry having been held up most of the way by fleeing civilians. We had been strafed and bombed by the Luftwaffe, and had many difficulties in navigation. We found soldiers dug-in in trenches guarding a huge ration dump of tons of food in a field and I remember saying to the officer how quiet it was. He replied "Well it won't be for long. Jerry is just down the road". The dump was piled higher than a house and longer than a football pitch; covered in tarpaulins sheets and camouflaged netting. Soldiers were carrying tins of petrol, now including ours, to the top of the food pile, slashing the tarpaulins with their bayonets and pouring in the fuel. The officer asked if we were hungry, and pointed us towards some tea, sausage and beans - it was very welcome as we had not eaten all day. Close by was a tent full of chocolate, cigarettes, tins of fruit and jars of rum, and we were invited to help ourselves, as everything must be destroyed before the Germans arrived. We took what we could including a jar of rum each. He asked us if we wanted to try our luck with him or to make our own way to the coast, and we chose the latter. His recommendation was to get back towards the coast as soon as possible; confirmation of our thoughts at the desperate situation we were in. I often wondered how they got on, and if they made it back OK.
It was now getting dark and as we couldn't use lights and risked getting lost, we pulled our lorry off the road into a com field and tried to get some sleep. It was almost light when we were aroused by bangs and crashes and all hell broke loose. We jumped up and could see buildings on fire; people shouting and screaming and could feel shells exploding too close for comfort. The squeaking of tank tracks rumbled near; I thought if I can hear a tank it is far too close; time to be off. We jumped into the vehicles and away down the road as fast as we could with German shells helping us on our way. This shook us up quite a bit.

We eventually found our way back to where our unit had been only to discover that everyone had gone. The chaos and debris showed that they had left in a hurry. We went to the petrol store in the wood to see if any of our chaps were there. Some French soldiers remained but ours had gone. So we loaded up with cans of petrol and went on to find another wood to lie up for the night. Now we had to use our own initiative and decided to travel on in the same direction. We later encountered RAF officers and were ordered to park our vehicles under trees and to come back with our kit and weapons. An NCO checked if we were hungry and gave us a a large loaf of rock hard black bread and tin of bully beef, stamped on the base 1936. We suspected the bread was older than the bully beef and we certainly couldn't eat it. Then we were given a spade and a couple of hand grenades and told to start digging a trench. Everyone was digging trenches, and it was here I unearthed a French coin of 1614 which I keep as a memento of these different times.

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