大象传媒

My brother Charles Jaggs joined the army in 1939. He was sent to Scotland in the R.A.S.C. as a driver in the 51st Highland Division. He went to France in early 1940, stationed near Metz in Northern France. When the Germans overan Belgium and France his regiment was directed south and went through Abbeyville then on to St. Valery.

Most of the 51st H.D. were surrounded and captured at St. Valery. My brother walked along the coast to Veul-les-Roses and managed to get away in a small boat with a few other soldiers and rowed out to be picked up by a ship and was brought back to Southampton. Only 15 members of his regiment escaped.

He was then sent to Scotland and in the re-formed 51st Highland Division they wen t by ship round South Africa through the Suez Canal to Egypt. He was always driving ammunition lorries and one time they were attacked by German dive bombers and they got under their lorries for protection. A bomb went off nearby and he said something hard hit the back of his neck and head, he felt expecting to see blood, but it was only mud and sand. Just before teh battle for Tripoli and Tunis they had to take supplies of shells and other armaments up to the front line, it was a moonlight night, but fortunately they were not attacked.

From North Africa he was sent to Scicily then Italy. He came back to Britain at Christmas 1943 for leave, then back to Scotland to prepare for operation Overlord, D.Day.

He drove his lorry up the ramp that had been bull dozed at Arromanche on D.Day, Mulberry Harbour had yet to be built. In the push accross France he was driving supplies all the time he even went into Holland but was unable to reach our paratroops cut off at Arnham. He was finally stationed at Bad-Mein-Dorf in Germany before being demobbed in January 1946.

We took him back to France in 1984 to all the places he had been, this was the 40th anniverary of D.Day. Sadly he died in January 1989 aged 70.

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