大象传媒

I enlisted in the Middlesex Regt. of the Territorial Army at our local Drill Hall in North London, England, as a reluctant 20year-old in April 1939. The Regiment was embodied in the Regular British Army at the outbreak of war on Sept.3rd.1939, and after some training, I found myself in charge of the unit's Medical Officer's convoy of three trucks as a L/Cpl.Driver-Mechanic.
Immediately after Christmas 1939 we were ordered to France to join the British Expeditionary Force (B.E.F.). We landed at Cherbourg and made a miserable but uneventful trip across Northern France to the Belgian frontier near Lille in the worst winter the region had encountered in 100 years. We settled in billets in the French village of Houplin, near Seclin, and my duties there consisted mainly of driving the M.O. to visit urgent medical cases in the surrounding villages, all the French civilian doctors having been called up into the French Army. This was difficult because of the icebound roads and because our trucks were designed for work in the desert.
On May 10th.1940 we were awakened early with the news that the Germans had invaded Belgium, and we were ordered into Belgium to attempt to stop them. We joined the advanced infantry at Louvain,just east of Brussels, and added the firepower of our Vickers machine guns to help to keep the Germans from crossing the river. The M.O. set up his Regimental Aid Post (R.A.P.) in a farmhouse at Meerbeeck, just behind the lines. After four days there, we heard the French Army on our right had collapsed under the weight of the German push and the Germans were advancing to our rear and cutting off our supply lines.
We had no alternative but to make our way through roads and towns choked with refugees and constantly being strafed and bombed from the air as best we could to the coast to establish if possible a base at Dunkirk, the only port left open to us. Driving as often as possible, and sleeping and eating whenever we could, we and the other 300,000 troops of the BEF made it after a hectic ten days on the road.
Our battalion added their machine guns to the rearguard defending the Dunkirk perimeter east of the city and over the border into Belgium. The MO set up the RAP in a farmhouse near a village called Bergues, and we stayed there under intermittent shell-fire until the night of May 31st., when we were ordered to withdraw to the Belgian seaside resort of La Panne, about 8 miles east of Dunkirk. This was under heavy shell-fire; we abandoned our vehicles on the promenade and took shelter under a bandstand until we heard the voice of Col.Rackham, our battalion C.O., forming up what remained of the battalion to march along the beach towards Dunkirk. He said that was our best chance of escape; the lines of soldiers on the beach waiting to be picked up by small boats had little chance, he said, and advised us to make for the East Mole, at Dunkirk, where ships were loading for "England, home and beauty".
Later that morning, the 1st.of June, 1940, after a brief rest until again the Messerschmidts came over strafing the lines of men on the beach, I discovered a road on the top of the dunes and an Army truck waiting there for stragglers like myself. We were wandering about in a semi-dazed condition from lack of sleep and food. The truck took us into Dunkirk; we found a cellar where tea and buns were being served, and then staggered down to the Mole ( a jetty about a mile long). Here I boarded an Isle of Man ferry steamer (I think the "Craig-ny-Baa")from England; as it was about to cast off with a full load of evacuees a Stuka dive-bomber started his dive towards us, but our rifle fire caused him to drop his bomb harmlessly into the water and we got away safely and reached Folkestone, on the south coast of England, in the early evening.
We were loaded into trains and sent to Aldershot to reform our formations as far as possible, and then despatched to various points to defend the country against the expected German invasion. About 250,000 of us got away; almost the whole effective British Army at that time. We had left all our vehicles and heavy equipment in France, so if the Germans had come to Britain we could only have thrown Molotov Cocktails and rocks at them! On defence in the Isle of Wight and other places we wired and mined the beaches, filled Molotov Cocktails, and were issued WW1 Canadian Ross rifles, one to three men, and one Lewis gun per platoon. Civilian vehicles of all kinds were requisitioned for our use. Fortunately for all concerned, the invasion never came; I later transferred to the R.A.O.C. and again to R.E.M.E. when it was formed in 1942, and spent the rest of the war in England, South Africa, Iraq and Persia(Iran) while my old battalion went on to join the Eighth Army in North Africa.

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