大象传媒

This story has been submitted to the People's War website by Don and Betty Tempest of the Lancshome guard on behalf of Charles Ritchie and added to the site with his permission.

In 1936, at the age of 18years, I joined the Territorial Army and served in the 52nd. Field Brigade. Just two weeks before the commencement of World War Two I was promoted to Bombardier and on the 1st September 1939, we were mobilised for Active Service. By then we were the 52nd. Field Regiment R.A.T.A., upon mobilisation we stayed in the same unit and were part of the 42nd. East Lancashire Division, and I retained my rank as Bombardier.

We were sent for training to Northumberland and stayed there until February 1940 when we were sent to Berkshire to prepare to go to France. By this time of course we鈥檇 had a lot of firing practise, so we were pretty good.

In mid March 1940, we went to France and eventually got to Lille on the Belgium Frontier. We were preparing positions there, to hold back the Germans, and then on May 10th. they attacked us. We moved to a place called Tournai, but as we did so we met thousands of Belgium people coming towards us, mostly walking, to escape into France. Obviously, as we were going in the opposite direction it was difficult to get through.

Eventually, however, because the Germans coming towards us had heavier firepower, we had to turn round ourselves and head back to France. We were on the Belgium/France border, being pushed about by the Germans until, about the third week after the attack had started, we had to abandon all our equipment and head back across country towards Dunkirk. It was every man for himself, we were on foot and were being Machine Gunned and Air attacked and strafed by the Germans.

We eventually reached the Channel Coast at a place called De-Panne, and went onto the beach. The water was very shallow and there were many ships moored about half a mile away in the deeper water. We tried to get to these boats by wading out into the sea until we were chest deep. There were thousands of soldiers there and the ships lifeboats came in, loaded up with about 50 men at a time, and then went back to their ships.

We had arrived there about 2pm. in the afternoon and were there until late evening, moving about in the sea to try and get a boat. When it got dark we had to come ashore, spend the night on the beach, moving towards Dunkirk.

When we arrived at Dunkirk there were hundreds of men, but it began to get more organised. We gathered in groups of about 50 and each group had an officer in charge. We moved along the beach, keeping in these groups, towards the boats. Every 15minutes or so, we were bombed, strafed from the air and shelled with heavy artillery. There were many casualties, but I was fortunate and escaped injury.

It took us two and a half days, with no food or water, to get to the Jetty and at ten o鈥檆lock in the evening, on May 30th. I think it was, we were picked up from the Jetty by a boat. We then sailed to Dover. It took two and a half hours, stopping on the way to pick up some survivors from a plane that had been shot down.

We were met at Dover by the W.V.S. with cups of tea and coffee. They were wonderful. After the cup of tea we were taken to the Railway Station where we were met again by the W.V.S. with more cups of tea and a sandwich.

The trains moved out to various destinations in England and I was taken to Topsham Barracks in Exeter. When we arrived there we hadn鈥檛 been to bed for ten days, and we were very tired. We were also very hungry and on arriving at the barracks we went straight to the Dining Hall for a meal. After that we were taken to a Gymnasium that had been filled with beds. We were told to go in the Gym and sleep as long as we liked.

We slept for 24hours, and then we were taken back to our own units.

The escape from Dunkirk had been long and hard, but we had made it back to England and we began to prepare for the rest of the war.

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