大象传媒

Jamie Fisher鈥檚 story was contributed to a volunteer story gatherer at the Border Regiment Museum.
Dunkirk
We were put on a boat and sent across to France we went to a place called Le Havre
You cannot imagine the change between the south of England and the French coast the latrines were just a sheet of tin sticking up from the ground and the smell.
It rained there just like it rains in Cumberland what a storm we were in. We were like a lot of school boys we were wearing what our parents had been wearing in the 1914 18 war.
Puttees and lace up boots.
The pay wasn鈥檛 very good, 14 shillings a week they kept out of that 7 shillings that was insurance if anything happened to me my parents had a claim.
That left me with seven shillings, two shillings they wanted for if I lost any of my kit, so I actually finished up on a Friday with two half crowns.
We had iron rations
A dog couldn鈥檛 have pulled it to pieces it was so hard you needed an axe to chop it up.
We eventually got back to Dunkirk we pulled along by a canal you could have walked down the canal on vehicles turned upside down they had to be demobilised putting the picks through the radiators and slashing the tyres where possible when we were with drawing.
I remember seeing the first bombs dropped only a matter of two fields from where we were we didn鈥檛 know what it was these planes were just flying tree top high when they started going off with a thud we knew our spitfires used to come over and fly around and off back home again and when they went home Jerry used to fly over.
Dunkirk harbour was like a duck pond, ships that were split in two. Half was sticking out of the water just like a ducks tail when they were diving down .
I got out of Dunkirk on a destroyer, I was lucky we walked up the beach we hadn鈥檛 many minutes to stay there, lurking in the area was a submarine, one of Jerrys. There was some terrible sights on the beach .
I saw a lot of the boys taking their kit home. I buried all my correspondence it will have been ploughed in by now,
I just dug a hole and popped all my personal things it. I thought somebody might find it and send it on.
After Dunkirk I was in a Coach company for a while. Taking the troops out into the country on exercise.

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