大象传媒

This story was submitted to the people's war site by a volunteer from East Grinstead on behalf of Sidney Seal and has been added to the site with his permission. Sidney Seal fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

On the 28th August 1939, aged 19 years, I joined the Royal Sussex Regiment 4th Battalion. On the day war broke out I was sent to Lingfield in Surrey to prepare a prisoner of war camp.
In the following winter I went to Dorset for training.
In the spring of 1940 I left Southampton en route to Cherbourg. Following a train journey through France and Belguim and a five-day 115 mile march we met and were overrun by the German army. We retreated to Castera and were given the instructions to make for Dunkirk in small groups. Days later, on the 31st May, a party of eight of us arrived in Du Panne in Belguim, under heavy German fire which resulted in sprapnel injuries to my face and arm.
Desperate to get away from the advancing German army we saw an opportunity to escape and the eight of us took possession of an abandoned rowing boat and blindly rowed off into the English Channel without knowing which way to go! Luckily we were eventuallly spotted by a fishing boat, taken aboard, and brought back to Ramsgate. My face and arms were covered in blood and my back was black where I had been resting on the hot tar-covered hatch of the boat - I looked quite a mess
We were handed a printed card which said "Back in England. Will be home soon" and asked to address it to our families. We boarded a train and I awoke to find myself in Derby! My family drank the celebration beer to local publican had produced for my home-coming but I arrived home five days later!

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