- Contributed by听
- dorothy frazer
- People in story:听
- ronald barry
- Location of story:听
- Dunkirk
- Background to story:听
- Army
- Article ID:听
- A2276877
- Contributed on:听
- 08 February 2004
My Mam and Dad met in the early days of the war. Mam was in the Land Army and Dad was a soldier. They married, and when Mam fell pregnant with me she had to leave the Land Army and return home to have me.
They seperated and I didn't see my Dad again until I was about thirty-six years old. How I regret those lost years now. Mam had died by then - she'd had a brain tumour. When Dad and I did finally meet at his home in South Wales, it was instant love and I adored him from that day on.
When my dad died, he left me a book and inside was an unused birthday card with engineer's badge on it, and a tiny prayer book. He had showed me these before and told me that they were given to the Royal Engineers when they went to war. He had given me his medals years before, including the Dunkirk medal.
When I visited him in Wales we used to sit for hours while he told me what life was like at Dunkirk.
He was a sapper in the Royal Engineers. His regiment was the 250th company and he was a driver, no.1906194, under the command of Lt John Bennet of the Royal Engineers.
When the 250th started the march to Dunkirk there were 150 men and officers, and when they arrived at the beaches there was only about forty of them left.
It was an officer in the MPs called Dibbens, who, while watching the chaos and the boats upturning and drifting away, thought to himself that what they needed was a jetty. He looked around and saw the hundreds of lorries standing idle and he shouted to one of his men, 'I need some sappers! Get them!' My Dad's company got the job.
Lt Dibbens told Lt Bennet that he wanted a jetty built with the lorries by driving them into the sea while the tide was out. He also said that if they did this they would be the first to walk across the jetty to the boats. Lt Bennet agreed to get the sappers to do it.
They raided a lumber yard for the boarding and scavenged around for everything else they needed. The tide was out when they started. The lorries were loaded with sandbags to weigh them down, then lined up, and the tires were shot down to keep them steady. The tide was coming in and the sappers were covered in oil and muck, and at times they had to link arms to get the lashing together, but at last it was finished.
The troops walked across it in their thousands but Dad's company didn't get to walk across first because they had to stay behind to maintain the jetty.
That is my Dad's story, at least what I remember of it, but I will always recall him and his memories of Dunkirk. He told me other stories about the other countries that he was in during the war, but that is the one that sticks in my mind.
After the war he was sent to Austria to do the 'cleaning up', as he called it, and about ten years ago he told me I had an Austrian half-sister.
I have visited Gladys in Austria and we get on great together, so I still have a little bit of him to love now he has gone.
Every person who was on those beaches are heroes in my eyes, and they always will be.
Dorothy Frazer
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