大象传媒

I was just 8 years old at the time of Dunkirk. My father, a schoolmaster member of the Territorial Army (Royal Signals), had been at summer camp when war was declared and was sent out almost immediately to France. My mother,my small sister and I were staying with grandparents in Bristol, and my father decided - wrongly as it turned out - that it would be safer for us to remain there rather than to return home to Westcliff on the Thames Estuary (but that is another story!). The name Dunkirk will always call up vivid memories and emotions. My grandfather had taken our dog for a walk in Eastville Park (Bristol), where he was astounded to find it full of tents,with a sergeant shouting out 'Anyone take a Tommy home for a bob a night?' My grandfather immediately said that he'd take one and duly returned home with a very exhausted private in tow. ('He's in a very bad state', the sergeant had said). Well, I was asleep in bed, when my mother came upstairs and woke me. My bed was needed. There was a soldier downstairs - no, not Daddy. Someone called Wilf.. I shall never forget. I came downstairs and went over and sat on Wilf's knee. I was used to my father's rough khaki - but Wilf's was far rougher. Stiff, dampish, smelling of salt. (He'd been on the beaches for days, and his feet were in a dreadful state, because of the wet sand that had got in his boots).
Wilf stayed with us for several days. I still have the French francs he emptied into my hands as a memento when he left.I learned much later that he had been a coalman (a coal delivery man) in Newcastle and his parents and fiancee were later killed in German airraids). My grandmother wrote to him for many months - all across North Africa - but then his letters in reply ceased to arrive....
My father had been based in Lille, but was called back to England just a week or so before Dunkirk. He was sent up to Yorkshire, to Robin Hood's Bay to defend the coast with a company of some 70 men. They did manage to blow up the pier! Lster he worked in Baker Street for SOE, testing the signals skills of recruits.

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