大象传媒

On the morning of 3rd September 1939 when Britain declared war on Germany and entered World War Two, just two months before my 19th birthday, I found myself standing by a main road near our camp in the company of my regiment's transport officer, a police constable and fellow drivers engaged in commandeering civilian motor vehicles of all kinds for our regiment's use. Suitable vehicles were stopped by the policeman, inspected by the officer and the shocked driver was given a receipt for the vehicle and a travel warrant to get him home. Our job was to drive the commandeered vehicles back to the camp to be serviced and treated with camouflage paint. Lorries were also being fitted with racks to hold water and fuel containers. Within a few days of this operation my regiment had been brought up to war time strength and had disappeared to France, but for reasons best known to the military mind they had left Evan, the "Warrior", behind.
War, as it tends to, had created confusion. A few days after my unit had gone to France its remnants, including me, were placed on a train heading north. It was a long and tiring journey with nobody appearing to be aware of our destination, but we finished up very late at night in a tented camp at Morecambe Bay, just north of Blackpool. Exhausted, we sat in the dark eating a rather foul tasting stew, which on striking matches, we discovered had a film of oil floating on top. The mystery as to why this should be was solved when it was discovered that in the darkness and confusion a mechanic had somehow managed to boil his overalls in it, but we survived!.
The next day we found that we were not wanted at Morecambe and, like a lost tribe, we were again on the train. After some more moving around, which included a spell on an airfield near Exeter, I arrived at a camp located outside the Somerset town of Yeovil waiting for a posting to a new regiment, but not before I had found myself sailing from my motor cycle through a fish and chip shop window!
It was at Yeovil that I met my first serious girl friend, Minnie, and with all the passion of youth fell head over heels in love. Minnie, a very attractive girl from the Welsh valleys was employed as a maid in a large house in Yeovil, but the day arrived when I had to part from Minnie and get on with the serious business of fighting the war. I had been posted as a despatch rider to the headquarters of an anti-aircraft brigade.which was due to join the British expeditionary force in France.
In the early part of 1940 I went ahead with my new brigades transport and a small advance party to establish our headquarters in France. We joined a troop train passing through Yeovil, which continued its journey with its passengers hanging out of the windows, waving and singing "We'll hang out our washing on the Zeigfried Line", Germany's impregnable defence line. Hours later after finally arriving at Portsmouth, I went on board the ocean going freighter 'Cyclops', an old friend from Liverpool that was to transport our drivers and vehicles to Le Havre. By the evening I was a desperately sea-sick, as well as a love sick soldier, setting out to conquer the enemy in a ship that was still at anchor and which would be for hours to come.
Arriving finally at Le Havre we collected our vehicles, formed a convoy and headed for our destination, Lillers, a small northern French town close to the borders of Belgium. The weather was terrible, the roads were frozen and the countryside covered in snow. Huddled and cold in the back of a truck with my mates we eventually arrived at Lillers to take part in what became known as the "phoney war".
Brigade H.Q. was a small unit staffed with a few senior officers including its commander, the Brigadier, as well as the padre, a few clerks, the cooks, the drivers and a few of those people known in the army, as the odds and sods who carry out general duties. Everybody knew each other, had a job to do and got on with it with the minimum amount of fuss. The Brigade's batteries were distributed over a wide area and I found myself taking despatches to their commanders, collecting maps from the newly established map printing unit and often escorting the Brigadier's car as he visited his units.
As the brigade consolidated we moved to a larger building that had a small back garden, in the coal mining town of Lens. I do not really know how the choice of accommodation was made but we found ourselves next door to a brothel, they were legal in France in those days, and when times were quiet we could be found chatting over the fence with our neighbours or offering them cups of tea. It was at Lens, outside our headquarters, that the Liverpool comedian, Arthur Askey, in the company of Gracie Fields, to the amazement of the French and to our delight, gave an ad hoc performance of his famous Bumblebee song and dance routine.
The British troops in France were having the time of their lives, being paid in French francs and with having the benefit of a high rate of exchange with sterling they had full pockets. The cafes were open all day, there were no licensing hours, alcohol was cheap and plentiful and there were always the ladies next to our headquarters to entertain them. There was one other financial anomaly in the British soldier鈥檚 favour. In those days of twenty shillings to a pound, if you changed French money to sterling and took it in notes you got pound notes, if you took your change in silver you got twenty five shillings, a 25% profit each time you changed money which, of course, the wiser amongst us took immediate advantage of.
Lens boasted a men's public toilet "a pissoir". This was a metal structure which showed its occupants feet and most of his legs while he was performing, it was into this toilet I dived one day when I saw a large German bomber flying at low level following and the main street with its machine guns unsportingly spraying bullets at all and sundry. Suddenly the phoney war was over and the blitzkrieg had commenced. We were soon to experience the horrors of war.
The French had put all their defence arrangements in one basket, relying for their defence from Germany on their fortification known as the Maginot Line. The German army simply by-passed this and their own Zeigfried Line, the one we were going to hang our washing on, and attacked through Belgium and Luxemburg. The result was that roads were soon blocked with refugees fleeing from the advancing Panzer divisions. These Panzer units included motorcycles with sidecars, the side-car passenger operating a heavy machine gun; a type of warfare that the allies were not prepared for. People were in panic and rumour was rife.
Almost as soon as the Germans attacked Belgium I was called into the Brigadier's office. He informed me that one of the new mobile radar sets was in Belgium and the army was worried it would be captured. I was given a map reference and told to find it and hand instructions to the officer in charge. These were to either to blow up the radar set or bring it out.
Heading against the tide of refugees, who were now blocking all the roads, I struggled to make my way through to the Belgium town of Tournai. The refugees were a pitiful sight and were using all forms of transport from horses and carts to wheel-barrows and bicycles to carry their possessions, their children and their elderly.
As I approached Tournai a wave of German bombers came over with bomb doors open. I watched in horror as they let their bombs drop en mass. Within minutes the town was wreathed in smoke and the bombers had gone and many more terrified refugees were added to the swollen tide. When, a short time later, I entered Tournai its streets were almost deserted. The doors of the houses and shops were wide open and empty, buildings were burning, curtains were flapping out of broken windows, overhead wires were trailing over buildings and sparking and the streets were carpeted with dirt and broken glass.
A number of bridges cross the river that flows through the centre of Tournai. Facing one of them was a troop of Royal Artillery who had been using a light anti-aircraft gun with open sights against German tanks. Looking down on them, from the top of an electricity pylon was the face of a pretty girl on an advertising poster where it had been blown. The troop commander assured me that the Radar set had been destroyed and that they were moving out.
On the journey back to my unit, having the advantage of a motorcycle to manoeuvre through the crowded roads, I was able to witness an army in full retreat. The roadside was littered with abandoned military vehicles and equipment and at least one large petrol dump was blazing fiercely with tins of petrol hurtling into the air and exploding above my head. Diverting my journey to call at one of our batteries for food and fuel I went through the town of Armentiers, of Mademoiselle fame, which had just been subjected to an air raid. I stopped in the square and rested in the mode of despatch riders, legs astride supporting my machine between my thighs, along-side me was another motor cyclist resting in the same manner, he was a sergeant of the Royal Engineers chatting with his men. After a few moments he turned his head, looked at me and said in a broad Liverpool accent "Hello kido how's it going?" It was my eldest brother, George, who had been called up with the territorials and had been in France since the early part of the war. We chatted for a few minutes in that bomb torn town and then went our separate ways. Little did I know that I would be last of my family to see him alive; a few days later he was drowned during the evacuation from Dunkirk.
My journey over, I found my unit still intact and preparing to withdraw to Dunkirk and engaged in destroying the contents of the headquarters, such as maps and confidential documents, on a bonfire in our back garden. The garden where we had relaxed and chatted to our lady neighbours such a very short time before. There was no rest for the wicked. I was soon on the road again and while overtaking a British convoy, I found myself between two lorries, but the one in front was full of sleepy soldiers of the German variety! Those who were awake were as surprised to see me as I was them. A few quick manoeuvres and I was away, reporting their presence to the military police controlling the next cross roads, from whom I learnt that the town of Arras was under attack.
The commander of our brigade was an exceptional man and a soldier who led from the front and knew every man in his headquarters on a personal basis. Under his leadership we arrived at the outskirts of Dunkirk just after nightfall and rested in a small wood. Part of this wood was on fire and through the flames we could see the sad sight of weary columns of British and French soldiers making their way to the beaches. I had been riding my motorcycle with very little rest for the best part of a week and was tired and hungry. While I was sitting shivering under a tree it was discovered that the area we were resting in was the abandoned site of an army supply unit. Digging around a stone jar of neat rum had been discovered; the Brigadier took charge of this treasure and proceeded to pour a generous measure into a tin mug. He passed it to me with instructions to get it down, which I did in a couple of gulps. After a few shudders a band of heat went from the top of my head to my feet and in minutes I was revived, full of courage and ready to take on the whole German army.
The next day having disposed of our equipment we made our way into Dunkirk on foot. The town had been badly bombed and the surrounding areas were still under attack. Picking our way carefully through the debris and ducking instinctively when there was a particularly large thump or bang, we made our way to the harbour front. On the way we came across a small courtyard in which an elderly couple were sitting holding hands on a bench beneath a tree. Around them their home and possessions were in tatters and the town that they lived in was being destroyed. It was a sight that will always be with me as a reminder of the futility of war.
At the harbour a British destroyer, crowded with solders and under attack, was just pulling away from the quay. It was the last vessel to leave Dunkirk harbour, from then the evacuation took place from the beach. Sheltering among some large wine barrels, while waiting for our officers to confer, we were attacked by a bomber flying so low we could see the bomb aimer as he released the last of his bombs. These, by good fortune, were small incendiaries, which spattered red wine from the barrels all over us which was the nearest we got to an alcoholic drink.
It was clearly too dangerous to stay by the harbour so, led by our Brigadier who was carrying a case of tinned stew on his shoulders, we made our way to the beach. The evacuation had not yet been properly organised and many of the troops were scattered in the sand hills behind the beach where we joined them. The weather was warm and in our favour and after a couple nights sleep in the sand orderly queues of men began to assemble at dawn on the beach, with those at the front of the queues standing up to their waist in the water while waiting to be picked up by the life boats from ships lying off shore, which at that time were few.
It was not without the help of a prayer, that early that afternoon I found myself being helped onto a small coastal ship, but moments later, after a stick of bombs fell alongside, I was back and out of my depth in the water. Fate must have been on my side, I was grabbed by the collar and hauled aboard a motor torpedo boat patrolling in the vicinity. Every war has its unsung heroes, mine was a cheerful a young sailor who, with the cry "Here we go again", was constantly diving into the sea and rescuing panic stricken soldiers who, like me, could not swim. Sixty years later this same boat was seen on television as it joined with other vessels and some of the remaining Dunkirk survivors on a return trip to celebrate the anniversary of those days.
Once the boat was fully loaded it opened up its powerful engines and with those rescued clinging for their lives to its tiny foredeck, it started its fast journey back to England. It was an illuminating journey back, as those on board were able to witness the full length of that famous convoy of small ships as it headed towards Dunkirk to rescue those many thousands still left on the beaches we had so recently left.
Arriving at Dover the troops disembarking from ships in the harbour were being marshalled, without any fuss, to the station and on to packed trains. Outside Dover the train stopped for a few minutes at a small station where members of the ATS and the Women's Voluntary Services had set up a small field kitchen and were baking bread. There were tables with tea urns on them and others where ladies were busy making doorstep sized corned beef sandwiches in the still warm bread. One of these sandwiches, together with a cup of tea, was thrust into my hands and the train was on its way. It was the fastest served, and most delicious meal of my life. We continued our journey in a trance until some time late that night we found ourselves in a tented camp at Exeter, where, having been asked our army number, and details of our units, we were given a post card to address to our next of kin and shown to a marquee where beds with straw filled mattresses had been made up. I slept for the next thirty six hours only to find that when I awoke I was alone.

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