大象传媒

After the evacuation of the field hospital in the shoe factory the retreat towards Dunkirk gathered pace. I understand that my father was in a truck with one Charlie Morse and a "Chalkie" White along with at least 2 and possibly three unidentified soldiers.

At some point in this journey the truck was "hit". Whether this was a near miss from a dive bomber or by enemy artillery is unclear. The net result was that one of the unidentified soldiers was running round, like the proverbial headless chicken, screaming about how badly he had been hit.Needless to say he was not injured at all but badly shocked. They then discovered that one of the other unidentified soldiers had been badly wounded.As always seems to be the case, he was lying quietly on his back not saying much. He called to my father and said that he also thought he had been hit. My father discovered that his buttocks had been cut off square. I am unable to say what happened next, because I cannot recall my father continuing any further on this anecdote.

What did come as an enormous blow to them was that by this time they had run out of English cigarettes and they had to resort to smoking "Caporals". This reduced my fathers nicotene intake fantastically. Whereas he could quite cheerfully consume 60 Players a day, he could only manage to smoke half a Caporal, before he was racked with the most violent hiccoughs which would last for up to an hour.

My father always spoke of being evacuated from the beaches, so my guess is they then made their way to Malo les Bains or Lapanne. When they arrived at the beaches I recall my father telling me that he had never before seen,(nor did he see subsequently),detritus of war in such phenominal quantities. I recall him telling me in the late 1960's that it was inconcievable that the beaches of that area would ever be cleared of the war debris. It came as a tremendous shock to me in the 1980's to visit the beaches at Malo les Bains and see how pristine they were.

Whilst on the beaches my father encountered at least two of the least recognisable casualties of war. One chap was sat on the beach with a Bren Gun and a mountain of ammunition,which was gradually decreasing as he shot holes in the sky. When my father asked him what he was firing at, he replied he was shooting at Stukas "You can't miss them. . . . the sky is black with them!" The second encounter was with a chap who had abandoned his issue helmet and respirator. He took to donning a white enammelled tin basin on his head and a wet tea towel around his face when ever he felt they might come under gas attack.

It seems strange to think that my father believed that he had had a bit of a coup, when he and his colleagues discovered a large quantity of new battle dress clothing. They immediatly shed there own blood stained, stinking clothes. I recall that he said that they were particularly pleased because the new battle dress was of Canadian origin and was therefore of much better quality and a far more chic shade of green than the battle dress they had shed.

Like thousands of others at some point he joined one of the queues and gradually edged his way to the front.When he arrived at the front of the queue he was detailed by the despatching officer to take over despatching duties, which he duly did. After carrying out these duties for a period of time, his survival instinct kicked in and he handed over the role of despatching to someone who was junior in rank to him.

As I understand the situation, he arrived back in the UK in only the clothes he stood up in. Everything else had been jetisoned along the way between Flines Les Raz and Dunkirk. The only things that returned to the UK with him that had left the UK with him were his identity disks,his wrist watch and his sergeants stripes.

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