大象传媒

We sailed to France on one of the old Isle of Man steamers. I think it was called the something 'Princess'. We crossed from Dover to Calais and ended up in St Denis. It was quite a pretty little village. I remember a duck pond and a cathedral. The cathedral was fabulous. After a few days there, the Germans attacked in Holland, and we had to move up to the front line. We travelled through Lille, and into Belgium. The Germans overran us and we had to retreat.
We were sharing the roads with thousands of refugees, people with carts, hand barrows, anything they could use to carry their belongings. The roads were completely blocked by this human tidal wave, so that we couldn't get through in our trucks.
Eventually it was decided that we should abandon the vehicles and field guns. I remember we went into a field where a senior officer told us we would have to spike the guns, so that the Germans wouldn't be able to use them.

A shell was rammed into the breech, then another shell put in behind it, so that the first would explode inside the gun. We had to stand well back as the shell exploded and shattered the barrel. They used lanyards to pull the firing pins so no-one got hurt.

When we had spiked all the guns we were told we would have to walk to the coast, to Dunkirk. Everybody was choking for a drink. There was nothing to drink anywhere.....

When we arrived at Dunkirk, the germans were shelling the beaches. The only thing we could do was to dig a hole in the sand and get down as low as possible. It gave a bit of protection from shells exploding on the surface. At least we were in a hole.
After a couple of hours in these holes a young subaltern came down the beach. He said "Now lads, I'm afraid it's every man for himself. You can either wade out into the water and try to get onto one of those small boats, or you can try to get to La Panne. It's about 7 miles along the beach. There are two destroyers there. They will wait for you. If you want to, you can try to get there. The choice is yours."

Another Bolton man and I decided to walk towards La Panne, to try to reach the destroyers. It was hard going, walking through the soft sand, but at last we reached the pier where the destroyers were berthed. there were some military police at the end of the pier. They were very brave men. They stood there as the shells were dropping all round. Still they stood there, directing people , telling them where to go, helping everyone.
They told me and my mate to stop. They told us to get down behind the breakwater, which was made of stone. They said they would give us the nod when to run, then we should sprint to the end of the pier and get onto one of the ships as fast as we could.
Eventually they gave us the nod, so we ran to the end to HMS Venomous. A young lad was firing a machine gun at the planes overhead which were dropping bombs. We were still carrying our rifles, so he told us to throw them onboard first. Mine hit the side of the ship and dropped into the water. That was terrible. I could have cried. I had struggled with it through seven miles of soft sand, only to lose it like that.

We were told to go down below, then Jimmy and I sat leaning against a pillar. A young sailor gave us a bottle of brandy and we had a good drink. I think we must have slept, because we woke up in Dover.

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