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This story has been submitted to the People's War website by Pam Riding of Kirklees Libraries on behalf of Douglas Smithson and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

THE WAR STARTS
MEMORIES OF THE YEARS FROM 1939 TO THE START OF MY TIME AS A PRISONER OF WAR IN GERMANY.

We had become aware that war was inevitable. Conscription was announced. Norman Metcalfe [my friend] and myself decided that if we had to join up it was better to join the Army than the Terriers [the choice we were given]. For Norman the choice was unfortunate as, like all governments, they wanted an army on the cheap. Norman, being about 6 months older than me, had to join the Militia, a form of training that was not the same as for the Army and was greatly disliked. However this did not matter as war was declared on Germany on the 3rd of September that year. Thus members of the Militia went directly into the Army and Norman was now a signalman in the Army. I was called up on the 16th of October to join the Royal Engineers that I signed for when called up under conscription. I did this because my Father served in the regiment during the First World War. My civilian qualifications were of benefit as I was awarded extra pay that being half the basic pay of a sapper on joining and was 14 shillings plus 7 shillings and made 21 shillings per week. A meagre sum now but then reasonable considering keep, food and clothing, were all in. [A tradesman in the building industry got £3-17s. per week at that time.]

Ripon was the place where I joined the regiment. It was a really enjoyable time. Training was interesting. We built three legs out of telegraph poles that we used to lift heavy weights with block and tackle. P.E. was held every morning followed by drill. Watermanship on the River Ur, when one of our number fell out of a rubber boat and we all had a good laugh looking at him stretched out with his feet on the boat and his hands on the river bank his trunk parallel with the water. We could not pull him back in and it was only when he let go of the bank and held our hands that we could pull him out without him getting too soaked. My early stay at Ripon was marred by an accident I had when I was returning to camp from my first evening out in Ripon. I do not remember anything about the accident but only about awakening in the camp hospital and having a complete loss of memory. Even now 1 can remember not knowing anything about myself, not even my name or where I was or even where I had come from. It was very strange and even stranger when I came to, as I could remember not knowing who I was. At first I thought the medical officer was mad asking me if I knew who I was and where I came from. Of course I did! It was only later that I remembered that I could not remember. Very strange! The time spent drilling was almost pleasant once one got used to obeying orders. We had equipment and rifles from the First World War. The rifles we kept but changed our uniforms when we went to France. I only did one guard duty and even then was picked out for "stick man" that meant that I did not do any parading about in front of the guardroom. All I had to do was deliver messages and fetch the food for the men. I had a good night's sleep.

January and all we could talk about was where we were likely to serve, Europe or the Middle or Far East. In danger in Europe or a long way from home in the East! Needless to say we had no choice. We then had "Home" leave, and we knew what that meant. [I had my 21st birthday at home.] We were ready for posting. On our return from leave and after some rather sad partings from home [We were all young, mainly in our 20s] mixed with a certain air of excitement, we were kitted out with complete operational kit but not live ammunition. We were ready for the war.

About 100 of us marched to the railway station the Monday night after we had returned to camp. There we entrained for we knew not where. It was soon obvious to me, from the towns we were passing through, that we were going to Southampton or Portsmouth. At last we arrived at Southampton and messed about for some time before getting on a boat, which I guessed to be a cross channel steamer. Coming dark, we set off I was assigned to see that there were no lights of any kind on deck, so I had a very interesting crossing. I had never been out of Britain before, so everything was new to me. Bombing, being blown up by torpedoes, all went before my mind. The crossing was peaceful and calm.

We arrived and landed at Cherbourg. My first foreign country, even the smell was different could it be garlic or French cigarettes, I do not smoke, but I knew I had not met that smell before. Even the dockers talked French, somewhat different from what I had learned at school. We soon formed up and marched to a transit camp about 3 miles away. I was starting to learn what marching was like in full marching order. We had a meal and a rest and then set off marching back to the centre of Cherbourg. Here I had another lesson as to what it was like to be in another country. Walking alongside us were two French couples, arm in arm, when one of the couples went to the side of the road and, still arm in arm, the man started to urinate, finished, and then they both carried on along the road. An experience, the like of which I had never seen in England. I was very young.

To the railway station in Cherbourg and on a train, for still an unknown destination. More lessons in life. I had one or two books with me as well as threequarters of our companions. They were soon bored and after a couple of hours they showed their interest in the carriage. No. 1 opened the window; no.3 opposite side of the carriage did likewise. After a few openings and shutting no.1 found that the window strap, made of a cord type of material, could be pulled apart in strips like the liquorice braid we used to eat as children. He pulled apart one strip and giggled. No 3 laughed and did the same to his strap: No. 1, another strip and so on alternately until the window straps were unusable. The train was very old and soon the lamp [an oil one in the roof] was pulled down and thrown through the window. I had never met anything like this before and was very glad when we reached our destination, Pornichet, a fishing village near La Baulle in the Bay of Biscay.

Two or three days here, where I think I peeled more potatoes than I have ever seen in my life. One of the sergeants who had been in charge of us on the way from Ripon went into the village before setting off back to England and there he found the delights of Pernod. I have never seen anyone so drunk and still standing up. The local hairdresser had a lot of clients. The hairdressers were girls and that was unusual at that time in England. The lads almost queued up to be shaved even though very few really needed it.

On the second day there we were divided into groups of various sizes. I was in a group of two and our warrants said "Lille". I seem to remember that we changed trains at Le Mans and from there we two were on our own. I do not remember much of that journey until we arrived at Libbercourt where we had to wait along time until our train came in. Then we were told that we could have caught a tram outside the station and been in Lille in 10 minutes. . [But we should have had to pay for ourselves.] In Lille we had to get a tram for Hellemes [a suburb of Lille where our company was stationed.] My companion was attached to the section there and we parted but I had to wait for the arrival of my section, which was to arrive that evening from Annappes [A village about 5 kilometres away]. The company was going on an exercise and I did not even unpack. Quite an introduction to active service! I was now a Sapper in 246 Field Company Royal Engineers.

My company was originally a Territorial Company from the Cardiff area. I was placed in No. 1 Section and soon learned that we were attached to the King's Company of the Grenadier Guards. Memories of the exercise we were going on are very little but I was soon called upon to help a little in translating, although I am sure my French was very poor. The first night I was in the back of a truck when the transport Corporal came on his motorcycle and bawled out to us to ask if anyone could drive. I said that I could and at once I was at the wheel of a 15cwt. truck and driving along in a column of other trucks and trying to make out the small light shining on the differential casing of the truck in front. I am sure that I almost knocked down an old man who tried to cross the road between the line of wagons. In the morning the proper driver took over and I finished the exercise in the office P.D. [Personal use truck.] We moved about the border area between France and Belgium seeing many of the names of places I had read about from the First World War, Seclin, La Bassee canal and quite a number of others.

Annappes. The first day back and I had my first experience of the Grenadiers. We were digging some trenches in the land opposite our billets [a house taken over by the army] when a section of Grenadiers came out to do some drilling. Every movement was done as if on the barrack square. It was very impressive. Spare time was taken up by walks in and around the village. I got to know a number of people and now and then got invited to one of their houses. It was at this time that I acquired a taste for wine and it has stayed with me until the present day. I still find that I prefer French wine to any of the others that are so very common today. A French lady in the village did my laundry. She had four children, a girl about 12 years, two boys 8 and 4 as well as a baby under a year. I was never allowed to leave the house until I had promised to visit them again and given a fixed date. I showed them how to make collops [potatoes sliced and deep fried in batter]. They all wanted to eat them with sugar and not the Yorkshire way with salt pepper and vinegar. I started a few lessons in English with the eldest girl but we did not get very far as the end of the phoney war intruded. Quite by accident I managed to inform my parents at home where I was billeted. We were not allowed to pass any information about our unit and our section officer Lt. Pritchard M.C censored every letter. In this case I mentioned, quite inadvertently, that we had been to the baths in Lille. Lt. Pritchard passed this and then they knew at home whereabouts I was at that time. It was understandable how it was missed. We had two places where we went for our baths, the other being a local school. The different phrases "baths in Lille" or "at the school," rolled off the tongue and it was so common that the city of Lille was not noticed. I did not realise what I had done until later.

A sad affair occurred when we were waiting on the border with Belgium, it being a time when it was thought that the Germans were going to attack but it was a false alarm. I was in the P.D. outside No. 2 Section's billet talking with Lt. Pritchard when a sapper came running out of the billet and leaned into the P.D.’s window and said to Lt. Pritchard "Corporal Davis has shot…?" [I do not remember his name. He was a sapper of No 2 Section]. The lieutenant leapt out of the truck and ran into the billet. After some time he returned and said, almost casually that it was true. The sapper was dead. It turned out that the sergeant was showing a group of men how to use an aiming disc. The sergeant had picked a rifle out of a nearby stack and told the sapper to hold the disc and look through the little hole whilst he aimed the rifle [they are both on the floor, head to head]. The sapper could then tell if the sergeant. was aiming it properly. The sergeant then pulled the trigger. He was not aware that the spare rounds were in the rifle magazine. The cut off was on but the drill is so easy and he was concentrating so hard on explaining the drill that he had not noticed and opened the cut off as he went through the drill. The sergeant was court-martialled and rejoined the Company back in England after we had got back from Dunkirk. I always felt that the main cause of the accident was the order to issue 10 more rounds of ammunition than could be fitted in our pouches. Most of the sappers put them in their rifles. It was understandable that the sergeant did not expect the rifle to be loaded.

The weather was cold but not much snow. We now spent a lot of time building various fortifications for the Grenadiers. Sadly most of them were built with the positions facing the wrong way.

At last the real action starts and I am again in the P.D. waiting on the Franco--Belgium border. The barrier is down as we wait to be allowed to cross. Very shortly it lifts and we are across, probably some of the first soldiers into Belgium.

My first sight of war. About 30 to 40 miles into Belgium and about a quarter of a mile from a small village we stopped suddenly and jumped out of the truck. Someone had shouted "Stukas". There were about nine German dive-bombers heading towards us. We moved at once into the ditch at the side of the road and tried to make ourselves as small as possible. The dive-bombers then altered course a little and screamed down on the village. [The bombs could be seen as they fell and we watched them all the way down]. The noise was frightening and later, when we passed through the village, the damage was terrible with the villagers standing around not really knowing what to do. We had to carry on, later stopping for the night in another village. I spent the night on the floor of a bedroom in a family house.

We passed through the outskirts of Brussels and waited not far from the River Dyle for the rest of our section to catch us up. [Royal Enginers sections at that time had 64 men and were larger than an infantry section.] We were close to Louvain.

Our first job was for the Grenadiers who were holding the line on the River Dyle. A house was pointed out to us that the Guard's Lieutenant. said was spoiling their line of fire, "could we remove it?" Lt. Pritchard said yes we could flatten it. He told a L/Corporal and three sappers of which I was one, to pick up some explosives and follow him. On the way to the house we passed three Guardsmen with a Bren at a Y road junction. They told us that they were there to stop any Germans coming down the road. On being asked what they would do if tanks came down, they replied that they could stop one tank but if there were two they would need the Boyes anti-tank rifle and if there were more than that, they would have to call for the 2 pounder anti-gun. The latter was then used by the Royal Artillary. We were very green and we believed them. We then went forward of the lines to the house. We placed gun-cotton in all the corners of the downstairs rooms and wired them up with F.I.D. [Fuse instantaneous detonating.]. We then took all the spares with the exploder to a point about 100 yards away and blew the house up. It had cleared the site of any obstruction to the Guards line of sight. [The Lt. was awarded the Military Cross and the Corporal was mentioned in Despatches].

My next memory is being left to guard a road that we had prepared to blow up when ordered. Our orders came but not to blow it and we set off to find our unit. [There were three of us, Corporal Wing field, another sapper and myself.] We had no idea where the company had got to but carried on walking towards Brussels. On the outskirts we found that it had been heavily bombed and we had to walk through rubble and over cables and tram poles. There we were fortunate and saw an Officer from No 2 section of our Company. On being asked if he knew where our section was, he said yes and gave us a lift to very close to it. Luck was on our side.

Our unit was in a wood. Everyone was feverishly digging with anything they could find. I joined them and found it was hard work trying to dig close to trees. The reason for the activity was that earlier they had been shelled and some shells had fallen nearby. Again we had been lucky. Through the night only a few shells came over and they were not too near.

Our next major job was to blow up a bridge by making a hole in an approach road. The full Company was on this job and it became one of the largest explosions at this time in that area. The CRE had holes drilled in the abutments on both sides of the bridge and filled them with gelignite and wired together. We, using earth drills, made camafles [?] on top of the bridge, two at each end. After the bridge was blown it was found that there were still the holes along the abutment where the holes had only been blown out with no serious damage to the bridge. The four holes on top of the bridge, near the abutments, had destroyed the bridge completely.

We were now heading back towards France, although we had little idea as to the development of the situation. We were only aware of what we were doing and not much idea as to why. Once alongside a canal, lam not sure which; but the Guards had asked us to cut firing and look out holes in the walls of a blockhouse which had already been built at a cross roads. On being asked in which wall did they want the holes cutting, they replied that we had better cut some in all the four walls as they had no idea from which direction the Germans would come.

We were now back inside Northern France. Some of the names were very, very familiar. In this area not far from Tourcoing and Roubaix we were billeted for three days in a large house, going out working from there each day. In the evening we had chance to pass some time in one of the local estaminets One of the original sergeants took full opportunity and had to be carried back to the billet. In the morning he was too ill to go out. He was carried into the bushes in the garden and left there. Unfortunately when he came to, he made his way to the estaminet and the same thing happened again. When we left there he was in the back of a truck. From then on I did not know what happened as we were in separate sections. [I was told later, in England, that on his return from Dunkirk, he was given a medical and at once discharged grade "D". He died shortly afterwards. He should never have gone to France as a Territorial].
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Sunday, still in the same billet, was the day when the National Day of Prayer was held. We had a form of Drumhead Service. I have no idea where the drums came from. It was very impressive. That evening the situation altered very, very quickly. Those in the estaminet were called back to the billet and we had to pack at once and move out. Did we move - inside fifteen minutes we were on our way. Where to, no idea! It was soon dark and we were now in a convoy of more trucks. During part of the journey, the sky was lit up on both sides of us at a distance of about five miles flashes of guns were seen as well as the roar of them in our ears. Later we learnt that the Guards and others had held a corridor which we passed through on our way towards Dunkirk. We had now heard about the evacuation from there and wondered what was likely to happen to us. We now had some idea as to where we were as we passed a large monument on our right which was easily recognisable as the Menin Gate close to Ypres
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Our sergeants birthday! We were in another field in the area of Poperinghe. The rum was dished out and Sgt. Winney became slightly fresh. Lt. Pritchard was not left out, and we forgot the war for a time.

At another rest near a barn, there was a Belgium family of refugees close by and I got talking with the son, a medical student at University. He could speak very good English. I asked him how it was that he could speak so well. He said that many people, particularly students, spoke foreign languages because the best text books were in English or German and as English included American, most learnt English. It was a pleasant change from the general excitement. They were from Brussels and were heading towards France. Where are they now?

We passed a road junction which had just been bombed probably by Stukas. It was a dreadful sight. A Belgium horse drawn artillery company had caught the worst of the attack. Horses and men were strewn all around with parts of horses hanging from the trees as well as on the ground. An Officer stood by, looking at the damage, a stricken look on his face wondering what to do. We had to move along as there was no help we could give. One hundred yards along and our column was attacked by a Messerschmitt.110 . He was not a good shot as all the bullets burst in a field on our left. Our shooting was also weak although some of us did manage to fire our rifles at it but we all missed.

The date as far as I remember was about the 25th of May and a week after the National Day of Prayer. Of course my memory can not be exact to a day or so. We were still making our way to Dunkirk and at this time we were starting to see trucks in fields and along the roadside, empty, and clearly put out of action in various ways. The talk was all about when we should have to leave our trucks and how we should do it but we still carried on and the numbers of the broken vehicles got larger and larger. We began to wonder if there was anything different for us. At last we were stopped by a Military Policeman and we all had to get out bringing our rifles and kit with us. I thought that now we had to start walking to Dunkirk so I asked one of the M.P.s which was the direction of Dunkirk. He looked at me and pointed in a general direction towards our front. Then he said "But you are going that way" and pointed directly in the opposite direction. We were all shaken as we knew that was towards the Germans and our idea of a quick walk to Dunkirk and a sail to England was not on.

We had a talk from Lt. Pritchard and were told that as Royal Engineers we had had a somewhat easier time than some of the other troops and were therefore going to hold the perimeter until everyone else got away. None of us believed that but no one argued and we set off. I have little recollection of the distance we walked. At last we stopped and we spent the remainder of the night in a field. I lay down on the ground with my head on my haversack and partially slept.

In the morning I became attached to No.2 section, but this made no difference to subsequent events as we had no idea of the overall situation. We then moved about 50 yards forward and found ourselves on the banks of a canal, with barges alongside the other bank. [This was the Fumes / Nieuport canal, which I only found out later.] We were spaced out along the bank and quickly started to dig in using our bayonets and anything we could find. We were along a road which was on our side of the canal. Where I was digging was about 18 ins. above the level of the road and I did my best to dig deeper than the road level, very slow progress was made. There was little activity through Tuesday the 28th and after some talk we decided that the barges would be better on our side of the canal than where they were, as it would be easy for the Germans to use them to hide behind and also use as a part - bridge across. We dragged them across and then blew holes in them to sink them so that they could not be moved. They did not sink very far but enough for us to see over them. On this day we had a surprise. It was quiet at the time and out of the blue, a small group of Belgium soldiers were seen on the other bank of the canal, carrying a white flag. This was the first time we had any knowledge of their surrender. They passed along the canal bank almost silently. We did not know what to think. Belgium had surrendered on the 27th May.

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