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This story was submitted to the People's War website by Pam Riding of Kirklees Libraries on behalf of Douglas Smithson and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

Wednesday 29th. We had some food brought to us, the first since Sunday. We had water, much more important than food. We had some hard tack and ate some of the chocolate block, it tasted more like solid Bovril. A plane came over and I was pleased to see that it was a Blenheim [A twin engined medium bomber], the first British plane that we had seen since our entry into Belgium. It was flying very low. Diary -"Very heavy mortar attack worst experience of my life! "

There was more activity and shots came over our heads. We replied but no actual enemy bodies were seen. A fairly quiet night for us but the noise of guns in the distance was now almost continuous and now and then shells came over our heads.

Thursday 30th. Gradually more activity, shells overhead and more rifle fire both from us and to us. Not that much was to be seen. Bill Sleigh, a sapper, was on the Bren about 40 yards from me [We were spaced about 10 yards apart] He seemed to be wasting ammunition, firing without anything to aim at but it was worse than that. I was crouched down as near to the ground as I could get and only looking over the bank quickly and then at Bill, when he suddenly slumped over the Bren shot. Two of his mates carried him away. He had stayed with his head above the bank too long. Mortars were now being used against us continuously. They were of the 6 -barrelled variety and became very frightening. We could hear them fired and then hear them coming with a swish and then the bang when they landed. The nearest to me landed on the canal bank, in front of me but on the canal side. From then we got more used to them and when we heard them fired we took as much cover as we could.

Thursday evening, excitement. Still light and when I looked along the canal road I saw that some of our men were crawling back across the road and going down the bank there. They called out to me and said that" The Germans have crossed the canal on our left where the Berks are." The numbers crossing came nearer and our mates started going back as well. So I went as well, over the road and down the bank into the field and then to one side and found myself in a small wood. I could not see anyone around me. War is not as one sees it on the films. Then one or two privates from the Berkshires were there and told me that the Germans had crossed the canal and that they were retiring. Just then one of their Officers came along and told them to stop and start firing back. At the same moment 1 heard Psh - Psh past my head and wondered what it was, but not for long. I dived for a tree and stood sideways on to it and hoped that it would protect me. Looking past the tree I started firing in the general direction of where the Suffolks had come from. The firing quietened down and I found Major Drayson alongside. He was brandishing his revolver and shouting "Up the 246 [My Royal engineers Company of which he was O.C.] Follow me". He moved forward and I followed, at the same looking behind me for the others he was shouting at. There was one other. [I never knew who he was]. We went back on to the canal. As I followed the Major back I almost laughed. I never really believed that anyone behaved like that. I did not find things funny after that. Back on the canal bank I found my spot for digging in was better than my first hole. The side of the canal was higher and I had a lot more cover. I suppose that in a story we had been attacked and counter attacked. Fear was strange. When we were doing things, we had not much time to be frightened but when waiting for things to happen, thoughts about what was going to occur made one very scared.

Friday 31st.. The night had been sleepless. Shells, mortars and rifle fire most of the time. If we thought that any rifle fire was coming from a particular place, like the window of a house [there were about three that we could see] or the base of a tree, we borrowed the Boyes NT rifle as it made more noise and did more damage to anything it hit and therefore made people keep their heads down. It was not a serious defence against tanks. During the morning we had the first orders with regard to what was going to happen. Some stew was brought up and at the same time we were told that at midnight that night we were to leave the canal and start to walk to Dunkirk. As far as I remember the stew was the second amount of food we had had since Tuesday. I had some hard tack biscuits in my pockets and I nibbled at them. The day was the same as Thursday although more noise seemed to be coming from the Dunkirk area. [About nine tenths of a mile away.]

After the first night on the canal banks we had difficulty in keeping awake and told anyone who happened to be next to us to keep calling to us or, which is what I often did, to throw little stones at us.

We had numbered off during the day 1- 2- 3… I was number 3 and told that that was the order in which we should leave the line [i.e the canal]. The interval that was to elapse between the turn of each soldier to leave the line was 5 minutes. [How this was to be kept I had no idea, as not all the soldiers had a watch and no one wished to be last.] This was during Friday the 31st May.

In my diary, the time given to start leaving the line was 01-30 hours, which meant that the line would be empty in 10 minutes. I think it was less than that. We were informed that the Grenadiers would arrive 30 minutes before we started with Bren Carriers and take up positions 200 yards apart along the line and carry on firing in order that the Germans would think that it was still held. They were to hold the line for an hour after we had left so that we had time to get a mile or two on the way to Dunkirk. Surprise- Surprise. I was last to leave my part of the canal and made good time but I had not gone half a mile before we were passed by the carriers speeding down the road. Up to then I had had a great feeling for the Guards. [They were still magnificent on the beaches.] It worsened somewhat.

We carried on walking, mainly with people we knew. It was almost light and made more so with the shelling and very-lights over La Panne and Dunkirk. After about three miles we saw a strange shape a few hundreds yards in front of us. As we got nearer it was seen to be a horse with one of its front legs stuck out at a very peculiar angle. When we got nearer we saw that its forelock was caught in some barbed wire. Two of us got hold of its leg, two at its head and two held the wire. By pulling the wire backwards and at the same time pulling its leg forward we managed to free it. The leg had a deep cut in it but did not seem much worse for it. Then who should arrive but Lt. Pritchard. It did not take long for him to find out what had happened and also that the horse was fit to be ridden. That was the last I saw of him until we were back in England and being reformed.

We carried on walking and it became lighter still and after about three hours we came to the edge of La Panne. There was not much activity but the town was in ruins. In the centre, two Staff Officers pointed the way to the beach and we continued on our way. Passing a ruined house with some soldiers sitting in the doorway, I got my water bottle filled up. I had been with Corporal Winfield a lot of the way and we had discussed what to do under various circumstances. We had no idea what it would be like, so we just carried on. We got to the beach, at the back of which were the sand dunes. They stretched for miles. Unlike what I have since read and seen pictures of, as we walked on the first stretch of sand there was no one in sight. Looking closer we could see a few groups of soldiers here and there. We got our own position and sat down, possibly five sixth of us. A destroyer was about a mile out at sea. Within minute's, nine [I counted them] Stukas arrived and started to bomb. It did not last long and soon only the top of the destroyer was to be seen. We were very shaken. On the foreshore there were a few smaller boats and we decided to have a closer look. Half a dozen of us had no chance of moving a 3 to 4 plus ton boat. We gave up and went back to the dunes.

Back in the dunes about 40/50 yards from where we had been before, we settled down again and hoped that we should see some boats; although the bombing that we had witnessed when we arrived on the beach didn't make us too optimistic as to what might happen. In fact, within half an hour of our again settling in the dunes, some Stukas were overhead again. We soon had our heads down in the sand making ourselves as small as possible. The noise of the planes became ear-splitting and then the extra noise of the screams from the falling bombs terribly frightening. The final explosion of the bombs was indescribable - this was the nearest that I came to being killed [The shots passing my head when we left the canal might have been nearer, but not so frightening.). One of the bombs landed about 10 yards away in the sand but no one was hurt. Later it was pointed out that the sand had made bombing not so dangerous as there was no hard rubble to be thrown into the air, only sand. Bricks stones and other dangerous parts of buildings were not there. [One of the so-called miracles of Dunkirk.]

My diary says we marched 18 miles to Dunkirk. I think, as I look back, that it was less, probably about 14 miles. Being hungry and very tired, it would seem a long way.

Saturday 12-00 hours and still hoping for boats to pick us up. Not much conversation was going on. Time passed and I happened to look out to sea and thought I saw some smoke. I dared not say anything, it might be nothing. Minutes passed and I now became sure that it was a steamer of some kind. I turned to Cpl. Wing field and said that I thought there was a ship. He said the same as me, that there was one but he also had not dared to say anything about it as it may not have been so.

The ship came nearer and I estimated it to be around 10,000 tons. As I know little about the sea, it could have been any size, but it was a ship and it was heading towards us. Soon the stragglers on the beach and dunes were moving towards the nearest point to it, and waiting on the edge of the sea, probably 50/60. Then a motor boat came towards us and we went in the sea to it. There were two sailors on board. Some of the soldiers scrambled on to it, helping and pushing each other. I helped Cpl. Wingfield to get aboard as he was in a bad way and then passed him my rifle. At that moment the leading seaman shouted out that it was no good getting on the boat as it was aground and we should have to try and push it into deeper water. Some of those on the boat did get off but not all, I think they were too tired to move and thought that any boat was better than none. I went to the stem of the boat in order to go round to the other side, as there were only a few men there and we needed a balanced push. This was another time when 1 thought that my end had come. The sailor at the controls of the boat had been reversing the propellers and had made a large hole in the sand. I was unaware of this and as I went past the stem I trod in this hole and as I had my overcoat and equipment on, I sank at once: I started to swim and swam harder than I have ever swum before. It was only about 4yards but I thought it was the end. When one is dead tired, effort is difficult to pull out. Afterwards I got rid of my overcoat and from then on did without it. The boat was tight aground and it was clearly too hard to float it, push as we might.

I saw then that a large rowing boat was coming towards us from the steamer and paying out a large hawser as it moved. So some of us went to it when it got to the shore. The two sailors on it told us to get on, which we did, not needing telling twice. We then pulled on the rope and got to the steamer. Here I found that climbing up a ship's net was not as easy as it looks. It moves all over the place as the ship rolls and swings. At last I got to the top and was helped over the side by more sailors. As we took our bearings a Petty Officer told us to go to the seaward side of the ship and keep clear of the next lot of soldiers coming aboard. This we did and I started to relax and look about me. The ship seemed to be some kind of tramp steamer but, again, I was very much a landlubber and what kind of ship it was, was not very important. It was a ship!! After about ten to twenty minutes I felt a bump against the ship and when I looked over the side I saw a launch with a sailor at the wheel. He called out and said that they could take some of us. On being asked how many, he shouted back, about sixteen. When twenty to twenty five had jumped down he called back in panic that if any more jumped down he would sink. No one did and he pushed off I was one of the first on the boat and got in the small cabin amidships among about ten or a dozen others all crowded together. There were windows that we could see out of as well as glass in the roof. Some started to sleep as tiredness took over. Quiet for half an hour or so when someone shouted "Jerry bombers". Everyone tried to get on the floor, myself included but I could not resist trying to see what they were. I slowly eased myself up on to a seat and then asked what they were all doing on the floor. I told them the Jerry bombers were three Hudsons and were unlikely to bomb us. I had done quite a lot of plane spotting at one time and knew that these were really passenger planes from America and converted to other uses. We relaxed again and had an uneventful journey to England, landing at Ramsgate.

THAT IS THE END OF THE ACTION DUNKIRK, IN FRANCE, BELGIUM AND DUNKIRK

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