大象传媒

This story is taken from a manuscript by Lawrence Travers Dorins, and has been added to the site with his permission by Bruce Logan. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.
====

CAPTURE 20th. MAY 1940

We were still waiting uneasily on the farm track as the afternoon went by. On the main road there was no sign of movement and we appeared to be isolated from the rest of the world. We had no radio and depended on a dispatch rider to bring orders. All day we had heard the sounds of gunfire in the distance but on the ground there were no signs of hostile forces. Then, at about 18.30 hours, we were given the order to move. The convoy moved out on to the road and continued in the same direction as before. I was in one of the last vehicles in the convoy. We had not gone very far when there was the sound of machine gun fire and the convoy came to an abrupt halt. Up ahead the convoy was under enemy attack and after a short interval an order was given by an officer to start turning the vehicles round. At the same time he ordered me to take up a position in the roadside ditch and cover the road we had just come along. Within a few minutes five lorries had turned round and were starting to move back towards Doullens when the firing stopped and the convoy moved on in the original direction, leaving me stranded. I felt very frightened and lonely and uncertain about what to do. I knew all about the punishments handed out in the last war, including the death penalty, to those who left their posts in battle. Suddenly someone in the rear lorry moving towards Doullens shouted out to me to run after the lorry. I ran as fast as I could and after a desperate chase I was hauled over the tailboard and into the lorry. I did not feel safe but immensely relieved to be with my comrades and not alone in the middle of the enemy. We moved along steadily but I could not see where we were going because of the people around me and the tilt covering the lorry. Suddenly there was a sound of firing quite close to us and the lorry came to an abrupt halt. There was a great panic and everyone rushed into a nearby wood and I soon found myself alone again. I had always been a good runner and fear had lent me wings. Once more the firing stopped and I heard shouting and with the others, found my way back to the lorries. As a fighting force we did not inspire confidence but it should be remembered that we had come to France to train, had no infantry experience, had never been in action and also, had no officers or N.C.O.s with us. At some time we left the road and I remember us driving across fields and catching sight of German tanks, some distance away, firing tracer shells. The men who were driving our lorries were doing a good job in maintaining a distance between us and the tanks. By this time it was getting dark and we managed to get away from the tanks and on to the road.

The road, unfortunately, was choked with refugees and their vehicles and we just crawled along at a snails pace amid the tangle of cars, lorries, horses pulling carts, people on foot, prams and bikes. It was a sad scene. I can't remember how long this went on but suddenly it all came to an abrupt halt. A moment later there was a sudden crash and a tank burst through the hedge, hit a telegraph pole which broke and fell across the back of our lorry, covering it with wires. To add to our alarm and confusion, the tank began to fire bursts of tracer bullets over our heads. A brigade major, probably from a vehicle further down the road, shouted to us to put our hands up and climb down from the lorry. He evidently spoke some German and when we got down, either he or the Germans by gestures, told us to take off our equipment and kneel in the roadside ditch. In my pack I had two pairs of army issue long woollen underpants which I had never worn but had been forced to carry around. They would have been just right for a Polish winter. Already facing us was a machine gun on a tripod and beside us a couple of large carthorses. It looked like a choice between being shot or trampled to death. The major told us that, according to the Germans, the British were firing on them further down the road and they were going to shoot us. Meanwhile , the road had been cleared of refugees and the tanks began to come through. We had also been told that the last tank would gun us down. As the tanks began to come through at intervals we watched anxiously for the one following the one heading towards us. As I knelt there I was very quiet and felt numb. I thought of my mother and home and that this was to be the end of my short life. After what seemed like hours of watching and waiting we were suddenly told to stand up and start marching We had not gone very far when we came to a high stone wall bordering the road for quite a distance. Could this be the place of execution? Imagine our relief when we eventually came to the end of it. After quite a long march we arrived at the town of Frevent where we were put into a jute factory for the night. Although we did not know it, we were in for a lot of marching with very little to eat or drink in the next seventeen days. I don't know why our lives were spared or if they were ever really in jeopardy. At that time I did not know enough about the German forces to know if our captors were Army or Waffen S.S.. Certainly some S.S. units did commit atrocities against both the Warwicks and the Norfolks in France in 1940. Perhaps a local commander was enjoying giving us a little mental torture or perhaps it was really intended but countermanded by a senior officer. For us it was very real and I'll .never forget it. During the last months of the war, when our guards were marching us all over Germany it was always a worrying memory which made me fear that we might be executed.

The next day we did a shorter march from Frevent to Nunc where we spent the night in another jute factory and the following day we returned to Frevent. The partly charred body of a French soldier was still lying under his lorry as we passed by. Slowly we moved across Northern France, spending nights in old buildings or in the open in hastily erected barbed wire enclosures. We passed through Doullens, Albert, Baupaume and Cambrai where we spent the night in a cavalry barracks. While we were there two British planes flew over and we all cheered but they quickly disappeared, leaving us even more depressed. When we were on the march the column seemed to stretch for miles as if everyone on our side, including the French and the Belgians, had been captured. It was very depressing and, to add to it, there were some signs of hostility against the British, an undertone of complaint that we had let them down. This was probably a reaction to the evacuation from Dunkirk about which we knew nothing. This was a shock for me as I had been brought up to believe that the British were universally loved and admired. Each day we marched along the hot and dusty roads, hungry and exhausted with little to eat or drink. There were some brave French women who risked the wrath of the guards to give us water as we went past. The nights, especially those spent in the open, were very cold and we were not able to get very much sleep. We dragged our weak and weary bodies along in the clouds of dust created by advancing German troops, keeping going because we were afraid of what might happen to us if we fell out. The cardboard tanks which we had been told about at home were not to be seen but there were plenty of real ones. I was amazed at their equipment and the seemingly endless stream that came past. There were large numbers of tanks and armoured cars, troop carriers, artillery pieces drawn by half tracks with the crews sitting comfortably in rows like trippers in the early pre-war charabangs, motor cycle combinations with two men on the bike and one in the sidecar behind a mounted machine gun. There was also a variety of other vehicles. This was a mobile, well equipped army which could also improvise, borne out by the companies of infantry who whizzed past on bicycles which they had obviously commandeered on their way. One of our unit told me later that he was lost and on his own when he saw a Bedford truck approaching. He was just about to hail it when he realised that it was being driven by German soldiers so he dived into the nearest ditch. Beside the grey green army uniforms there were blue ones with short tunics and red collar flashes for Ack ack units and yellow for the Airforce, (Luftwaffe). It all looked very efficient and impressive and, from our point of view, depressing. What we did not realise was that this was one of the most elite formations of the German Army and still the majority of the Army relied on horse transport. One thing I will always remember is the very strong and distinctive smell of the fuel used in their vehicles.
As the troops came past they were in a very triumphant mood and many called out to us in English, "For you the war is over. Breakfast in Calais, lunch in Dover, dinner in London." It was a refrain we got very tired of. Propaganda had convinced them of their own invincibility and they also had the evidence of the Polish campaign to confirm it. I wonder how many of those confident and triumphant young men survived the war or did they encounter another side of war on the eastern front or in the hell of Stalingrad. In war it is perhaps wise not to be too confident too soon.
Fat ladies often take their time before they burst into song. We were slowly moving eastwards across northern France and had reached a place named Le Cateau where we were herded into a field at about midday. As we waited it began to rain so I put on my gas cape. I had lost all my kit but I still had the cape which had been invaluable for sleeping in the open. The rain increased and a guard came over and indicated, by pointing with his sub machine gun, that I was to hand over the cape. As I did so I felt despair. Things had reached rock bottom and I felt utterly miserable. Not long after we were loaded into large Army supply lorries, standing in the back and packed in like sardines. We were driven across Belgium, through the Ardennes. On the way we crossed the Meuse at Dinant which made a deep impression on me. I vowed that I would visit it after the war and have done so several times. Eventually we arrived at St. Vith, a Belgian town near the German border where we were held in the grounds of a Convent School which had been fenced with the inevitable barbed wire. We were there for about five days. At the bottom of the field was a railway bridge which had been blown up. The single track railway led over the border into Germany. At night we were out in the open, huddled over near the school walls to try to keep warm. It was very cold and we found it almost impossible to sleep.

In the daytime they marched us down to the station to unload trucks for the army. As we went through the streets we were surprised to see the shops and houses festooned with Nazi flags and swastikas in a Belgian town, welcoming the invaders. It seemed as if they had all deserted us and gone over to the enemy. What we did not realise at that time was the fact that this area had been part of Germany until 1918 and the people were mostly ethnic Germans and their first language was German.
Later their joy at returning to the Fatherland was modified by the loss of their
menfolk and the destruction of their towns and villages in the fighting, especially during the Ardennes Offensive in late 1944.
At the station we had to unload sacks of flour which we could hardly move in our weakened state but we also had to unload loaves of bread and we were able to eat pieces of broken loaves which we found on the floor.

After a few days we were marched out early one morning and headed for the German border. Before long the sun came up and we began to sweat as we plodded along the sandy tracks. The Eifel is a continuation of the Ardennes, rolling hills and deep small valleys. We felt weak and very thirsty but managed to keep going at a steady stagger. On the way we passed through the Siegfried Line with bunkers dotted over the hillsides but no sign of washing. It was an exhausting journey and we were glad when we finally came down the hill to the little village station at Pronsfeld. Since the war I have visited it several times and talked to people who, as children, saw the prisoners there. I have also enjoyed some good meals at the local pub. At Pronsfeld we were given a thick slice of army bread, smeared with margarine and also, I think, a drink of water. It was about three thirty on Tuesday afternoon as we climbed into cattle trucks, about forty-five to a truck, very cramped, just like sardines. We came out of the train on Saturday in Torun in Poland. On our journey we had had nothing to eat and the Thursday was my twentieth birthday.

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