大象传媒

This story is taken from a manuscript by Lawrence Travers Dorins, and has been added to the site with his permission by Bruce Logan. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.
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FRANCE 1940
At the end of March, 1940, we prepared to leave Gravesend. We had already had embarkation leave so it was no surprise when our train arrived at Portsmouth and we boarded a destroyer which took us across to Le Harve. We disembarked and moved to a waiting train of cattle trucks, eight horses or forty men, and we were soon
rolling through the countryside. It was no express and we ambled slowly through Normandy, waving to the peasants toiling in the fields and feeling like heroes come to save them. We obviously had no priority and stopped frequently to allow other trains to pass but we eventually arrived at Buchy Junction where we transferred into trucks which took us to St. Saens, a small town about thirty km. from Rouen, lying in a pleasant valley with a stream running through it and water meadows, orchards and woods.

Our camp was on the side of the valley, about a km. from the town in an old mill. It was fairly primitive with earth latrines, washing with stream water, sleeping on the floor with straw mattresses and washing our mess tins in the stream until a dead sheep came floating down. The owners lived in a villa on the site and were constantly making complaints about the way the property was being used. I heard later that they were Jewish and had managed to escape during the occupation but they were there when I visited in 1952. It seems a doubtful story. Facilities for cooking were very poor and I remember quite a lot of meals consisting of cold bully beef or tinned pilchards. Water had to be fetched by truck from a spring in a village named Rosay, about five km. away. At some of the farms and cottages eggs and chips were available at modest prices in the evening. The lads were soon able to order Les Erfs and Bombardier Fritz. Although we had very little money we were obviously much better paid than the French troops. Some of the lads went overboard on beer and wine which I sampled myself, and got drunk on very little, but my friends and I were always hungry and much more interested in the cakes and coffee in the local cafe. The cakes and the milky French coffee were exciting new experiences. At home coffee came out of a bottle with camp written on the front and a picture of a man wearing a skirt. It was regarded as a special treat, although I never found it very exciting, and it certainly did not bear comparison with the French version. I remembered very little of the very limited amount of French I had learned at school, so with the others I was enchanted, listening to the proprietor's daughter talking to her mother and father. It sounded delightful although, if we had understood, she was probably saying that she had done the washing and was about to clean out the drains.

At home I had sometimes walked along the seafront and stared out to sea and wondered what it was like over there in France. Before the war we led very insular lives. As I grew up I only knew one person locally who had been born a foreign national and today I know several in this village. It is not surprising that France seemed a strange and exciting place. But now that I was there I had mixed feelings about it. I was young and naive with a conservative view of the world. Brought up to take a pride in the fact that large areas of the map of the world were coloured red, belonged to us, and their inhabitants were grateful to us for running the countries for them as they were not capable of doing it themselves. I am sure that we all thought that the British were superior to everybody else. We were due for a nasty shock. It was a rural area and the local people seemed to be poor, the French uniforms were not as smart as ours, their vehicles not so modem as ours. Very superficial judgements. France had had its problems in the years between the wars but so had we. I was young and inexperienced. I even felt a slight feeling of surprise that they had electricity which was quite irrational; I knew they did before I came. The cobbled streets were a surprise as they had disappeared from my home town long before. At the hotel in the village there was an outside lavatory with just a hole and footprints to stand on, and on the square there was a urinal with only a waist high screen, where men would greet passing ladies or even carry on a conversation while urinating. All very decadent for someone brought up to suffer agony rather than ask for the lavatory when visiting friends. Archie Hobbs and I were batmen and had to walk to the village hotel each morning to clean shoes and kit and also, to take the officers their breakfasts from the kitchen. They were not always hungry, especially if they had been out to Dieppe the night before, so we shared the delicious French rolls, jam and butter between us.

There was a contingent of the R.A.O.C. in the area who were bringing in large supplies of ammunition which was distributed under the trees in the numerous orchards. The heavy traffic had taken its toll on the approach road to Buchy Station and we were called in to rebuild it with the help of a very erratic civilian steam roller driver.

We had no radio communications but relied on despatch riders and now had our first casulty when Douglas Barden from Pett was killed when he crashed on the road from H.Q. .The tragic death of this popular young man might not have happened if he had had the type of helmet which was later issued to despatch riders instead of the old type steel helmet.

One day we were taken to Rouen for the day to visit the public baths and then we were given some free time in the town. We visited the cathedral and saw the spot outside where Joan of Arc was burnt at the stake. After this Bert Catt and I followed some of our unit into a very large cafe with loud music blaring out, people milling around including many well built ladies, mostly no longer young or very beautiful. There also seemed to be constant movement up and down the stairs leading to the upper regions. We were young and naive and had led sheltered lives but we had listened to the lectures given by the M.O. and had been suitably frightened by them so we departed in haste, not even stopping to buy a drink in case we caught something from the glass. Later in the day we returned to St. Saens and back to our routine.

The situation of our camp did not lend itself to military training. There was no place which was suitable for square bashing but we did some route marches. The work at Buchy Station was still continuing but, as far as our role as engineers, there was little going on. We had no bridging or other engineers equipment and I think that for the time being we were just marking time until more equipment became available. One morning we were in town when a long convoy of British troops came through on its way to Le Harve from where they were to embark for Norway. As far as I can remember, these were regular troops who were being put in to stop the German advance.

On the 10th. of May, the Germans began their attack on Holland and Belgium at 5.30 am., and we entered a new phase in the war. Not long after this a trickle of refugees began to come through the town which gradually became a flood.

There were some very critical comments from some of our chaps when they noted that some of the young men in the columns looked as if they should be in the forces. Suddenly there was a great panic about fifth columnists and we were put on alert.

There were stories of bogus nuns with sub machine guns concealed beneath their habits, who turned out to be German soldiers. The rumour mill was working overtime, and we were told' to be on the alert. I can remember watchmg some figures movmg along beside a wood on a hillside about two miles away in case they were German parachutists but an officer picked them out with field glasses and decided they were peasants. These were the pre transistor days so we had no radio and had no real idea of what was going on. The folks back at home in England probably knew far more from listening to the news. We all realised that our pleasant life here in St. Seans was very soon to end. The war had suddenly become very serious and frightening, made worse by our lack of information. It was no surprise when we told on the 17th. that we were to move the next day. But where were we moving to?

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