´óÏó´«Ã½

Dunkerque diary

Henry Bond

Royal Engineers: 700th General Construction Company

Monday 27th May 1940 (diary entry)

Experienced our first bombing and machine gunning directed at us. Three bombs in village, demolished house, side of church, lorry and several soldiers and civilians killed. No casualties in our barn. Received spattering of tiles from machine gun bullet. Marched forthwith to Dunkerque, passed 3 delayed action bombs en route, took cover from another raid and on arrival at Rosendahl on outskirts of Dunkerque, were kept in a constant state of nervous tension by continuous waves of bombers up to 27 in number. Terrific damage done to Dunkerque and Malo. Out towards Bray Dunes and slept fitfully in ditch and watched Dunkerque fire and listened to shelling which commenced at night and continued throughout

Tuesday 28th May 1940 (written on headed notepaper Cambrai Barracks, Perham Down, Andover)

After spending a cold and cramped night in a ditch, with fitful sleeping disturbed by shell fire in Dunkerque, explosions from delayed action bombs and fired ammunition dumps and the glare from Dunkerque fire and another fire, the location of which we were not certain, and in addition the uncomfortable closeness of enemy Jerry lights, we moved just before dawn. Our route took us towards the sand dunes but further away from Dunkerque, in fact in the immediate vicinity of a large coal mine south west of Bray Dunes. This pit was a very obvious collection of concrete buildings and tall chimneys which I thought might well be the object of Jerry’s next strafing after Dunkerque and I felt none too secure about taking cover in its shadow. However, we slept peacefully in the dunes well covered by saplings and shrubs from about 4.30am for 2½ hours.

Shortly after 7 o’clock we moved off up the railway track towards Dunkerque and dispersed in the sand dunes near to the Hotel Terminus on the front. Here we stayed for the whole morning, breakfasting very unenthusiastically on (…one word illegible) soused herrings once again! The morning passed fairly uneventfully, our hearts being considerably cheered and our hopes raised by the appearance of a Hurricane Fighter patrol, which appeared to be protecting us for the day, but were away for 5 minutes in came the Nazi bombers again, but their attention once more was directed against Dunkerque rather than us personally. We were still uncertain when we were likely to get shipped but during the morning Chadwick contacted a Lt.Col. who had some rather uncertain control over transhipment of troops, but he promised that if we moved up towards the shore, we should get an early opportunity to move on to the destroyers which were lying offshore immediately below the Hotel Terminus. Acting on this we moved futher forward to a large crater immediately adjacent to the Hotel, the Hurricanes having disappeared, the Nazis arrived and made several abortive attempts on the destroyers lying offshore, and were chased off by really heavy fire from the ships themselves and more than one was brought down. The Major reported having seen planes out to sea dropping magnetic mines and the naval craft replying by firing low over the water, the shells ricocheting over the waves in what he imagined to be an attempt to detonate the mines.

About 4 o’clock, having taken cover many times during the afternoon, we assembled under the Hotel Terminus verandah in the hopes of securing transport to Dunkerque, but this was completely disorganised and only one load got away. Rain commenced falling heavily and in answer to our fervent prayers it increased and continued for the whole of our 4 miles trek along the wide promenade of Malo-les-Bains to the jetty at Dunkerque.

Thanks to the providential rain and I feel sure that only, we were spared a bombing and machine gun attack along the prom where there was little or no cover. Once we hastily took cover as a plane zoomed in from the sea at low altitiude, came up to the beach, banked steeply, showed its allied circles under the wings and out to sea again!

The last trek along the jetty was nerve racking to say the least when an enemy plane passed over and opened fire on the destroyer that was going to take us to home and safety and we saw the possibility of a lst minute failure

However we safely gained our destroyer HMS Grenade — the vessel that figured notably in the Namsos evacuation. It was reputed that we had a 1000 souls aboard in addition to the crew. The Navy’s hospitality extended to hot tea, bread, butter, jam and drinks and at 1 o’clock in the morning I fed on Force, Demerara sugar and Lyle’s Golden Syrup! We sailed at 6.35pm and didn’t reach Dover until about 2.00am the following morning. Although we were down below aft all the time and could not follow our route at all, doubtless this long journey was due to (one word illegible) up and down the coast each side and following the safe lane across the straits. We were alarmed shortly sfter starting up by a lous explosion and subsequent noises, which we thought — or rather hoped — might be a gun! This was verified later by a naval officer who made solicitous enquiries soon after concerning our welfare. We asked if it was a gun and he replied ‘yes — some bloody fool fired it by mistake — it happens in the best regulated ships’!!. The only other eventful happening was that the vessel stopped to pick up twenty wounded from a small boat, who had apparently been bombed on embarking from the shore

Reached Dover two-ish and felt really safe and cheerful at last as we stepped ashore — immediately joined our train with issue of chocolate and apple and shortly started off to an unknown destination and slept until we reached Paddock Wood where we were issued with bread, cheese, tea and apple. Visions of London and immediate leave disappeared as we continued westwards from Redhill and on towards Basingstoke, We finally turned up at Ludgershall about 10 o’clock and were all transported to Perham Down and the RTCs palatial mess where we were made very welcome and fed with a grand meal of ham, tongue, pork pie and salad etc etc and then followed hot baths,shave of 2 days growth of beard and a general freshening up

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