- Contributed by听
- daughterone
- People in story:听
- Percy and Eva Stead
- Location of story:听
- Journey from Dunkirk to Scotland.
- Background to story:听
- Army
- Article ID:听
- A8864364
- Contributed on:听
- 26 January 2006
This story was one of the few that my Dad actually related of his experiences during the War. He spoke very little of his journey through Belgium to Dunkirk. What we, his family, know of this time has been pieced together from what he did tell us, plus some of his comrade's memories. Mum always said that he went abroad 'a happy, fun loving extrovert, and came home with a changed, much more serious personality'.
"After spending several days queueing in sand dunes at Dunkirk, my Father crossed to England on HMS Malcolm on the 4th June 1940. He spent the first night back in UK in a cell in Usk police station...the authorities were expecting Prisoners of War!
His regiment was ordered to regroup in Scotland; there was no way to inform his wife, Eva of his survival. While on the train he realised that it was going to pass through Yorkshire without stopping, so hastily packing a spare kitbag with a few personal possessions, (items that Eva would know that he wouldn't be parted from), he labelled the bag, and threw it from the moving train as it passed through Huddersfield Railway Station.It was safely delivered to Eva at Hartshead Moor, Cleckheaton. That is how she knew he had survived! He, Eva and daughters were re-united in Auchterarder, Scotland some weeks later.
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