大象传媒

Dunkirk Coincidence

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Eileen Linder on behalf of Don Foster and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.
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We had a few miles to walk to Dunkirk after we had been forced to abandon military equipment along the road due to the incessant bombing and machine gunning. And still continuing so that we were continually diving into ditches as soon as a Stuka appeared. Added to that a burning sun and temperatures hovering in the eighties Farenheit. Reaching Dunkirk at last and hurried across a small open square to seek shelter. As I crossed I noticed two soldiers in a shell hole who belonged to my regiment, Gunner Craig with a gaping hole in the back of his head was obviously dead but Gunner Best had lost a leg and was moaning in great pain. I called out to him that there was an ambulance across the square which I would direct over to him. Unfortunately it had gone by the time I got over. I later learned that he had been picked up by another army ambulance but this had been blown up.

I thought I was in luck in finding shelter in the basement of a three storey house but after an hour or so a series of screaming bombs demolished the street including the house above me, leaving the packed cellar in dusk and darkness. Again my luck held as people outside knew there was a number of soldiers trapped in the basement and must have organized picks and shovels to dig us out through a small hole where a half-moon window was at pavement level. The house above was a pile of ruins.

My luck still held over the next couple of days, despite continual bombs and heavy field guns from the outskirts shelling us every few minutes I finally was picked up by a destroyer after climbing along a bombed male. The ship was hit by one bomb in the stern but we managed to reach Dover more than seven hours later.

Flash forward to 1951 when there was still rationing. My wife and I were registered with my father who was a grocer. Every Saturday I called with him to collect our rations, and one day I was introduced to a Mr Craig who was manager of a Lipton鈥檚 store along the road. When my father said I had come through Dunkirk, Mr Craig remarked that his brother was lost at Dunkirk. The telegram stating 鈥渕issing 鈥� killed on active service鈥�, and when he said his brother had been in the same regiment as myself I told him I had found him dead in a shell hole.

About 1960 on a holiday in Belgium my wif e and I drove to Durnkirk to see the British cemetery. It is a lovely peaceful place with rows and rows of immaculately cared for headstones. And with the sun shining and birds singing,so tranquil. My wife had tears in her eyes reading on the headstones, some of which stated 鈥渒nown only to God鈥�. As I paused to let my wife catch up with me I glanced at a nearby headstone and was astonished to see that I had stopped at one inscribed Gunner Best, 19 years, 3rd Ulster Searchlight Regiment.

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