大象传媒

[Part of an account by Jeffrey Jackson, slightly edited by L Jackson.]

[Death by cheese]

[Northern France, Bailleul (near Arras) - Lille, May 1940.]

"Some time in May [1940], as part of a misguided attempt to get back to peacetime soldiering, we were ordered to blanco our gas-mask haversacks (I can't tell you what blanco is, but it takes the form of a greenish powder, which is applied to the webbing of which a soldier's equipment consists). However the order fell into abeyance because there were more or less continuous air raids during the night and in the morning we learned that the Germans had invaded France, Belgium (which directly concerned us, as we were not far from the Belgian frontier) and Holland. So we moved up into Belgium, ending up at a town called Hekelghem between Alost and Brussels; it is or was famous for its "sand carpets", but I never got to see one. We stayed here for a few days, but I don't remember doing any work - I seem to have spent most of the time watching the endless procession of British army convoys moving in the direction of Brussels. However, one of our drivers went off somewhere and came back after two days saying that he'd been involved in a gas attack. The wildest rumours were in circulation about German parachutists. I watched one parachute descending and heard a good deal of small arms fire, but was told afterwards that it had belonged to an RAF pilot who had not been at all pleased by his reception. There was, of course, no way of knowing whether this story was correct. I remember going round a working windmill and trying to talk to the miller in my almost non-existent Dutch.

At some point it became clear that the flow of military vehicles had reversed direction and was now moving away from Brussels. My unit soon joined in the procession. After this, unfortunately, everything became very confused, and I have no idea of dates and very little about places or the order in which things happened. I know that we passed through many places, such as Ypres, well known from the First World War, and that we also spent some time in Vlamertinghe, sheltering under trees in the park of the chateau, from incessant German air raids. It was some time during this period that I was sleeping in a narrow space at the back of a lorry that was filled with crates each containing two huge New Zealand Cheddar cheeses. When it had to reverse, the back wheels went into a ditch, and I woke up just in time to see the crates about to fall on top of me.

Somewhere or other I saw columns of refugees (by this time the roads were full of them) being bombed by German planes, and I also remember sleeping in a field wrapped in a ground sheet and watching what I now realise must have been Stukas dive bombing some unfortunate target. On another occasion I slept on a concrete slab, using my tin hat as a pillow. I remember being stuck in an enormous traffic jam with a German bomber moving lazily (as it seemed) overhead, when it was shot down by a British Bofors anti-aircraft gun, to my great relief.

Another memory is of being called out by a corporal, together with others, and told to take my rifle with me. The old soldiers in the group were full of good advice about aiming low and holding fire - we all thought that we were going into action. In fact, we ended up at the Naafi stores in Lille, loading all sorts of goodies, such as tinned cream that we'd never seen before, into our lorries. In connection with this trip, I somehow found myself in the Lille marshalling yards. As usual, German planes were overhead most of the time, so I took cover under a railway truck, only to find that it was loaded with ammunition. In the intervals between raids, a potty little plane called a Lysander came over (I think it was used by the British Army for artillery spotting, but I can't imagine what it was doing here)."

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