大象传媒

On 9th of May, 1940 I had a large piece of rock fall on my leg which forced me to go to the surgery. On Friday, the day of the German invasion I asked for two or three days on sick list to enable me to see which way things would turn and the doctor gave me my papers to start work on Tuesday, 1st of May, Monday being whit Monday. But on whit Sunday(the French N.C.O.鈥檚 and remember since Friday we had been continually bombed and machine gunned also with all the refugees passing through the village we did not know who were 5 th columnist or who were not. Came 12 noon a bomb dropped in between three houses about a hundred yards from our house and killed twelve to fifteen people, mostly Belgium soldiers. That decided us and with two suitcases and three blankets we started off on our adventures.

In 1938 the British consul at liege had already warned us that it might be necessary to evacuate our homes, so my wife had already brought the suitcases for our most necessary clothes.

At ecqueline the scene was indescribable, there were hundreds of thousands of refugees and all those houses were crammed from cellar to roof. People were arriving by train, motor car, cycle and on foot. As the cyclists arrived the threw their bikes on a heap and went to find places on the trains which were being formed every quarter of an hour for France or anywhere away from the advancing Germans. In the evening of the same day as we arrived in ecquelines we had the extraordinary luck to get a place on a train of cattle trucks bound for France. In getting through the doors onto the platform I had my coat nearly torn off my back and I lost my felt hat. My daughter almost lost her suitcase anyway. We made it and were soon sitting on the baseboards of the truck which took us by way of Paris, Limoges, Orleans, blanc to Pezanas. We had several very small babies in our truck, we also had two families from liege who had walked 80 miles and had lost all their belongings in a house which they took refuge on the road. The house was hit by a bomb and they were all buried in the cellar. When we saw them all ther finger nails were torn and bleeding from use in digging themselves out. Well we were very well looked after on our journey. We stoped at different places and had hot drinks and food being distributed , also hot milk for babies and dry clothes for very small babies. Anybody who wished to see a Doctor at any hault could do so. At the first hault we had straw given to us to sleep on. By the way there were about 14 German spies and 5 th columnist found on our train.
Ernest

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.