大象传媒

Extract from the diaries of Frank Masters who at the time of Dunkirk
In 1940 was a trained nurse and a Corporal in the Royal Medical Corps.

The Town Hall in Armentiers was an impressive building surmounted by a tower which housed a large clock. It played the first bar of a French song called La Madeline at a quarter past the hour, two bars at the half hour and three bars at a quarter to the hour. On the hour everyone within about a mile was treated to a rendition of the whole song. It took some time to get used to it and we thought we should not hear this melody again after we left the town, everywhere else was quiet until the Germans thought otherwise, but it was ironic that having left Dunkirk and the beaches at La Panne (now called Du Panne), many soldiers half dressed, walking wounded leaning on their comrades for support, punch drunk, cold and hungry with many unable to comprehend what was happening arrived at Dover and struggled up the gangplanks to be directed to waiting grains. I was half way up the plank when something typically British happened. A soldier dressed only in a shirt and very torn trousers put a cornet to his lips and played that damn tune again as he marched up the gangplank and as a pied Piper led the troops to the train marching in step and whistling the tune that had haunted those who had been stationed in Armentieres for nearly six months.
I had passed my test to be a Nursing Orderly Class 111 and my secretarial duties with Captain Brown enabled me to sit the examination for Clerk Class 111. Unfortunately the object of this exercise was to benefit from the higher pay these qualifications brought with them and as all the paper work had to be processed in England it took so long that I did not reap the benefit of my five shillings and threepence per day until we reformed as a unit in Scotland after the withdrawal from France and Belgium. I needed money to send home as I was allowed to keep paying my superannuation contributions during my service with the Army and I could not expect my mother to meet the additional expense and my 14/- per week was totally inadequate to meet my expenses.
Every week whilst in Armentieres we had to go on a route march to keep fit and as an NCO it was my job to supervise this activity. Whilst marching through the surrounding countryside we developed an interest in the many soldiers cemeteries from the First World War so I always arranged a break at the appropriate time and we used to solemnly read the names of the fallen and I suppose the thought crossed a few minds that we night finish up underneath a similar headstone. As they are today the cemeteries were always beautifully kept and occasionally bunches of flowers, often placed there by local people, were a welcome diversion from the regimented rows of headstones and neatly cropped grass.
The winter of 1939/40 was most severe with frozen snow three feet deep, the roads impassable, water pipes frozen and a shortage of fuel as all transport had come to a standstill. It became serious when the pubs ran out of beer but on the credit side the infanteers did not get drunk and remained a little more friendly with each other. When the snow disappeared I was given leave to go back to England for a few days and as an NCO had charge of a party of five and responsible for taking them back to France. At the end of our leave as arranged, I met the five lads at Lime Street station and when the Guard blew his whistle I noticed Paddy standing on the platform saying good bye to his pal who had come to see him off, although I doubt if either could see very well under the alcoholic haze they generated around each other. Paddy was on the platform and his friend was in the carriage. We carefully rearranged them so that Paddy was in the carriage and his pal on the platform when the train moved off.
Not long after our return to the unit and some seven months after our arrival the wagons were loaded with our equipment and we set off in an easterly direction. Nobody would disclose where we were going or why but we would discover our learning curve would rise acutely with a few days. The cold war would soon hot up.
The next morning we arrived at Tournai, a town on the Belgian border and I had to set up a First Aid Post for the convoys passing through, where they were going to nobody knew. Realising we needed a different set of francs for money and with nothing much to do I went into a shop and changed my French for Belgian francs and got two Belgian for one French franc. A passing soldier enquired how to get his money changed and he had no idea of the rate of exchange so I gave him one for one. I repeated the exercise with Frank Stubbs, who was with me and he carried out a shuttle service changing the French francs in the Belgian shops at a modified rate that made it worth their while. The profits which filled our pockets were never put to good use as the opportunity to spend was, from then on strictly limited and on our return to the UK we found the money was worthless following the fall of Belgium and France.
We occupied a farm near the Hal Canal and our task was to set up Car Collecting Posts, (a nursing NCO 鈥� and by this time I had qualified as a Class 11 Nurse 鈥� two stretcher bearers and a driver with the ambulance). We did not have maps so were taken by an officer to our location and introduced to the medics in the infantry unit down the road leading to the canal and who were manning their own Medical Aid Post. Our job was to take their casualties back to our Company ADS (Advance Dressing Station) about two miles away. We had been shown where it was on the way out. About an hour after our arrival we heard guns firing for the first time and aeroplanes flew overhead. We were obviously scared to death when the shells landed close by and bombs started falling. We had to forget our fear when we had to transfer the first wounded soldiers we had seen to the ADS. No textbook can really explain agony, pain and fear, or that some men screamed and cried with a minor, but frightening, bullet wound, whilst others with limbs blown off would lie quietly and perfectly still, smoking a cigarette For three lads in their early twenties this was a horrific baptism. We were told we would be relieved after twelve hours but nobody came and at this time the murderous Stuka dive bombers, fitted with screaming exhausts to create fear and panic, and how successful they were; located the infantry to whom we were attached. They were defending the canal and foiling the attempts of the German army to cross. The precision attacks of these dive bombers was very accurate and when they hovered over our heads we dived underneath the ambulance in the belief we would be protected. The Infantry positions got most of the direct hits and one bomb exploded very close to us and we heard the shrapnel scything through the ambulance. Four of us lay face down side by side clutching our steel helmets covering the backs of our heads, said nothing and did not move for what seemed an eternity after the raid was finished. As the NCO I suggested we got up to assess the damage and do the job required of the 鈥淢edics鈥�. The lad lying next to me, an infantry medic, did not move so we pulled him out by his legs thinking he was too scared to move. A large piece of shrapnel had penetrated the Ambulance and embedded itself in his back fracturing his spine and causing instant death. All we could do was to look at each other, speechless, death was so near yet the rest of us did not have a scratch.
This was the first of many similar experiences we were to encounter during the next few weeks and by the time we were evacuated from Dunkirk I suppose we got used to dealing with the wounded and the dead not realising that many of their faces, their screams or just their delirious words would haunt you for the rest of your life if you let you mind recall your baptism of the true horrors of war. The Infantry were withdrawing and the Germans were crossing the canal a hundred yards away so I ordered an immediate withdrawal, taking our shrapnel riddled ambulance, the dead soldier and three other wounded soldiers we found along the roadside to the ADS which was just about to move off in a westerly direction. The start of the great withdrawal which was to end at La Panne on the Belgian coast.

Continued...
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