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"This story was submitted to the People's War site by CSV/´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio Nottingham on behalf of Eric Barnes with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions"

In 1939 I was called up to the 9th Battalion Sherwood Foresters. I was 20 years old. We were taken to France, we travelled across France in cattle trucks to Rennes and stayed there for a few weeks doing field training. We travelled right across France in these trucks to Belgium. We were there for the evacuation of Belgium. We were being bombed by the Germans. There were loads of refugees and they were running off the roads out of the way of the planes which were overhead. We were close to Oordenaud and we had to make our own way from there to Dunkirk, it took us about a week. We marched about 20 miles on my 21st Birthday (19th May). We marched alongside cars and the Germans were coming over machine gunning. We had to abandon all our kit before we got to Dunkirk to make more space on the boats. When we got to the sands at Dunkirk they sent us back inland to defend the Bercue Canal to relieve another regiment. We were about 600 strong at that point. A lot of our lads came from Bestwood Colliery.
We thought the Germans were on the other side of the canal, one of us went over to go and see if they were there and he got a shot to the head, the sergeant dragged him back to the base. He went to the hospital but they left him there at Dunkirk.
We were among the last people left at Dunkirk and during the night of the 2nd June we made our way into Dunkirk, we went along a pier that had been bombed in various places. Germans bombed over us and hit some of our men. They were put to one side and then we carried on walking right to the end. There was a boat there, a flat round bottomed boat with the engine running. We were told to get on quickly to give the crew chance to get away. My rifle slid away but slid onto the boat and down a metal staircase. I had a tin of fish and some biscuits — I ate these and went to sleep. The next morning I was woken up and I could see the white cliffs of Dover. It felt very good, a great relief. We were given a cup of tea and put on a train to Aldershot.

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