大象传媒

I am writing this inspired by the documentry on the 大象传媒 showing the evacuations at dunkirk. I was most interested in the accounts of the old soldiers that survived dunkirk but also dismayed to find that there was no mention of the scottish regiments and in particular the events at st valery. I realise that the tv programme only touched the surface of these events . The loss of an entire regiment at st valery along with many others. The highland regiment continued to fight a hopeless battle at st valery when the battle had obviously been lost and the BEF were being evacuated, well my father JOHN MCALEER was one of the unfortunate highlanders he was one of 8000 soldiers taken prisoner by the advancing Germans on the 12th of june 1940 their fight hopeless as they had few weapons or ammunition to match the might of the German army. He along with many other soldiers from our home town of Johnstone near Glasgow were lined up and marched from st valery final destination to be POW camps in Germany and Poland. Whilst marching through Belgium John Mcaleer along with others escaped from the line and took refuge in woods at Renaix they aquired civilian clothes and moved to a farm at Tournai where they stayed for a few weeks. from there John Mcaleer and James Mclean headed south to Dijon where they swam across the river Doubs to cross the demarcation line and continued south through France where they were arrested and taken to Lons-le-saunier and then on to fort st Jean in marsellise. whilst in prison in marsellise they made contact with the rev Donald caskie of the church of scotland at the seamans mission at the rue de fourbain . From there they along with three others were dispatched by caskies helpers[this was in the infancy of the pat line] who were organising repatriation of escaped POWs through the pyrenees and in to spain. when they got to spain they were arrested at figueras and imprisoned in cervera,saragossa and then miranda where they were then released in to the care of the british embassy probably after 8 weeks in jail, my father often spoke of the time he spent in miranda he said the spanish treated them badly he seemed to dislike the spaniards more than the germans. from there they were taken to gibraltar and then sailed back to scotland arriving on the 14th of february 1941 at Gourock. He was then posted to a training camp at lochmaben in dumfries and then went on to join the recconnaisance corps and was posted to Burma and the 14th army RAC where he served until 1945.He won the military medal on his birthday on 08 of march 1945 at ngazun near mandalay His citation reads when on recconasaince with a fighting patrol they were engaged by heavy and accurate shelling from a 75mm gun. Realising they were pinned down trooper mcaleer on his own initiative stood up although under fire himself and advanced towards the freshly located positions firing his bren from the hip and inflicted further casualties on the enemy and enabling his patrol to get in to cover without loss of life and with all the information required. He was definately scarred by the events of 1940 at st valery and never really spoke of that time i have found most of the information i have from war historians and from the war office.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.