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I went to France on the SS Canterbury. It was a rough trip across and very crowded, people were sitting where they could, on the floor, in doorways. Most were sea sick but I wasn’t so I volunteered to take the tea round in this bloody big urn. We landed in Brest.

I got lost one bloody night near Lille and pulled up near this Gendarme. I managed to speak a little bit of French…I asked him where the British HQ was…it was in a school. He directed me where to go. I got two officers with me on that occasion and I had to take them to some hotel…Station Hotel…Hotel Legarre…Legerre. I had to drop these officers there and pick them up the next day. I had to clean their Sam Brown’s and their shoes. They put me in the same hotel as them. I was free to do as I pleased and that night I remember going around on me jack and I came across some more British soldiers from the same division…3rd div. I really enjoyed that night…I got some chips from a little kiosk.

At Dunkirk we were strafed, bombed, all the bloody lot, under shell fire as well. Luckily it was falling into the sea at this time. I could see water spouts coming out where the shells were dropping. I spiked and left my vehicle at Furnes. I saw trucks being used as a jetty. At Dunkirk everything was spiked while in Nth Africa we mostly disabled things.

I saw cowardice on the beaches, queue jumping, I remember 1 officer cowering in a deep slit trench crying. There was also panic… but then of course it wasn’t their own fault. Some of them was cut off…there was so much cutting off in France in those days it was so easy to get cut off and you had to make the best of what was going. You would run out of ammo and food and if anything came your way you would grab the bugger and get it the best way you can. Once a bloke realised he was being fired upon on the beach… fired at by bloody Stukas…being dive bombed and machine gunned at the same time was enough to break some men.There was rumours flying all around on the beach at Dunkirk. One was that Jerry was shooting one in five prisoners.

I remember cows being shot because they were in pain from not being milked; this was very upsetting to a lot of the lads especially the ones from the farms.

I saw men going under and not coming back up, they were so weighted down.

There were 4 of us Grenadiers that stayed together all the time and we just used our common bloody sense,we was good mates and we came back to England together. We got away from everybody else and we were all banging away at low flying aircraft that came skimming along the bloody beaches. It becomes bloody effective when 4 or 5 of you fire together. We used to have training in England down in Surrey. Aircraft action was the order shouted by the person in charge. On the order aircraft action you all pointed your rifles into the air and fired all together. Just imagine if you had 50, 80, or 100 men firing all at once…just as effective as a machine gun. We had that training long before the war…firing at aircraft on the march…just as effective as a machine gun. We were on a part of the beach that sloped back like an armchair that you could lean back on… we leaned back, rifles in the air and just followed the aircraft from right to left and banged away together. They didn’t come back after that I can tell you. There were a few others firing back in ones and twos but we were Guardsmen and we fired together because of our training. I would like to think that our gunfire was effective.

I remember it was night…dark… we used to go away from everybody else. You had a better chance of being picked up…as in my case. We were regular soldiers, we weren’t bloody stupid.

We all carried Bren gun magazines with 30 rounds in each, we carried at least 3 or 4 in a pouch and we also carried some in our haversacks. We also were issued with bandoleers.

There was ammo all around on the beaches, that is how I picked it up. I had this bloody tip mentality in those days. I couldn’t bear to see anything lying around and not being picked up. I picked a lovely hairbrush set that had been thrown away.

A lifeboat took us out to a whaler; I was pulled up by the arse of my britches into it. We were taken out to a Destroyer(HMS Codrington).We were attacked by aircraft and shelled from shore batteries but were not hit. I had my pockets and kit full of ammunition; I couldn’t bear to see things go to waste so I had picked up a lot of it. This ammunition was gratefully received by the crew of the Codrington.

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