大象传媒

Dunkirk remembered

Ex signalman Leslie Gray - Army no. 2589002

I will be 85 years old next week. I enlisted in October 1939 as a despatch rider in the Royal Corp of Signals. At the time of the evacuation from Dunkirk, I was 19 years old.

I suppose for me the defeat of the B.E.F. began as we were ordered to leave Arras. I was in an HQ section and, as we left Arras, fighting was happening at the other end of the town. We were then billeted outside Hazebrouk and set up an HQ in the town.

After a short period I was told I had to take a convoy of five vehicles to Dunkirk hoping for an evacuation. We set off under the cover of darkness and within about half an hour we had lost the officer. He just disappeared. Half an hour after that we had lost the sergeant.

Eventually we got to Dunkirk. The military police demanded to know where we were going. We said to the beaches. 鈥淣ot in these vehicles, you鈥檙e not鈥�, they told us. We had to leave them in the ditches and walk. When we got there, we found all the queues. What bit of kit we had we buried in the dunes. We joined the queues and went out to the boats as far as we could get.

It was a very uplifting sight to see the boats coming in and a very depressing sight when the boats went off without you on them. When there were no boats about we went back into the dunes for protection from the Stuka bombers.

One morning we were told we were going to go off from the Mole, the eastern breakwater. By this time we were suffering from a lack of food and water. We were dehydrated. Every time the queue stopped, people were laying down or sitting down. They were dead beat. It was a daft thing to do because they had to get up again. Some we could not rouse. Unfortunately, we had to leave them. They said they would come along later. Whether they did or not, I don鈥檛 know.

I was one of the younger ones which was a good thing. It was only the fittest that survived.

It became a bit of a bottleneck. It was the only time I heard any dissent. A naval commander jumped up on a pillbox and said he was taking charge. He took some men from each section to keep it fair. We eventually got onto the Mole and onto a destroyer.

The minute we got on, all hell was let loose. We were attacked by the bombers. We hid anywhere we could and then the raid finished.

We came back on a lovely calm sea to Dover. I can鈥檛 remember the date I got home, we were more interested in survival.

It was from disaster to deliverance. The disaster was having to retreat and the deliverance was thanks to the navy and the small boats.

August 2004

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