大象传媒

CONSCRIPT HEROES - BEFORE ST VALERY

Peter Scott Janes
Gibraltar November 1941

This first part of my diary can only be a remembered r茅sum茅 of what I wrote out from day to day in my other books which, owing to circumstances beyond my control, had to be left in Marseilles. I do not intend to write much about the war, beyond only this: I came to Le Havre on the 28th of April 1940 and passed four more or less eventful weeks at Roalles just outside of town. There I learnt a meagre smattering of French as well as a good deal about the Army. Had my teeth seen to, five filled in the town, bought cartridges for my automatic and got drunk more times than I should have done. Babe wrote me many loving letters, all of which I kept and which are now in France. From there we heard the news of the invasion of the Low Countries and were afterwards mixed up in the bombing of Abbeville when we lost a dispatch rider.

Afterwards we moved to Dieppe and stayed at Arques la Bataille in a large chateau. There I saw the bombing of the two hospital ships that formed such a big item of the news and fired my first shots at the attacking planes. From there I also raided the bombed warehouse of the docks with Lofty and little Redfern in order to get the rations which we could neither draw nor buy. Then up to St Valery sur Bresle near Aumale when our battalion was shot to pieces by a Panzer Division. I helped Captain Thomson rescue the wounded men, Sergeant Stone, Nethercat and another of the Royal Artillery, Fry and Heywood of our own battalion and one other man whose name I do not remember. Then the death of Richardson, the wounding or death of Captain Thomson and the awful retreat. My rescue by the Royal Engineers and subsequent reunion to the Surreys took only half an hour before our flight to St Valery en Caux.

During this journey through the fleeing French and Belgian armies Riley was accidentally shot by a burst from a Bren gun, one man went crazy and nearly shot both myself and the police sergeant. All of the cigarettes were then issued, each man getting about four hundred each and also a muster of made of all available ammunition and weapons. Then we came to St Valery en Caux, even then being shelled to pieces by German long-range guns. This was on the morning of the 11th of June. We passed the day, I myself sleeping most of the morning, in fields about two miles from the town. Here I bought another automatic pistol and found some more of my regiment. Then we moved into a field where we found two French wireless vans with the sets in one swimming in the blood of its operators. One of the MPs here told me that he had helped to make the film 鈥淭he Four Feathers鈥�. At midnight we moved into the town, a nightmare march that I shall never forget. The road for two miles was blocked with motor and horse-drawn vehicles as well as dozens of dead bodies of men and horses. The town was blazing in several places while shells of heavy calibre were still crashing into it. I have been told that these shells were fired from British ships out at sea but do not know how much truth there is in this. The harbour was a fantastic sight, littered with wrecked boats of every size, the whole scene lit by blazing warehouses with every few minutes a whistling scream as another enormous shell crashed into the stricken town. Then also several machine guns started firing tracer bullets at short intervals and star shells went up to complete the fantastic scene. Into this we went: no-one had washed or shaved for several days, every one of us wearing steel helmets, several already wounded, with rifles and machine guns at the ready. I had a Bren gun which I had already cocked, intending to fire from the hip if the chance came. We saw a long line of stretcher-bearers and first-aid men also a good few dead men of all nationalities. Then our little force, we were only twenty-eight in all, entered an already hit house and passed the night in utter misery being soaked through with drizzling rain.

In the morning of the 12th a sergeant came and took our names and numbers and when I asked him if we were going to have a real go in the morning to my surprise saw tears running down his face. Just before six o鈥檆lock we crept out of the house loaded with as much stuff as we could carry and went through a town the like of which I have never imagined in any dream. The place had been blown to hell, not one single house or building was complete. The roads were littered with debris feet deep in which were dead men and horses, guns and other equipment and the whole place stank with the horrible smell of powder smoke, blood and burnt wood. There were hundreds of small bombs of a peculiar type scattered everywhere. In the shadow of the house was a Hotchkiss machine gun with hundreds of rounds and dozens of steel strips scattered around it while the bodies of eight men showed that this town at least was not sold out.

Another thing I saw was a dead man with a 12 bore shotgun in his hand. I was so weak from starvation and loaded with ammunition that another fellow who was carrying absolutely nothing helped carry my Bren gun. At last we got to an orchard and several of us started digging little holes as usual but the sergeant major told us "never mind" which was the first intimation of what was coming. Then came the order "unload your guns" and we all stared in amazement. Then the truth dawned on us, that we, like most of the Allied Armies, were surrendering.

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The r茅sum茅 goes on to describe how he was captured by the German army, marched across France, rescued some ten days later by two young French girls and then sheltered in the Pas de Calais for a year and a half before being taken south on the Pat O'Leary escape line to Spain in September 1941 and eventual repatriation from Miranda concentration camp. The 'other books' mentioned - diaries he maintained throughout this adventure - were left with M Louis Nouveau in Marseilles and returned to him in 1945 after M Nouveau's own miraculous return from Buchenwald.

For more details of this extraordinary story see www.conscript-heroes.com

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