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I was an apprentice at the Intertype on the Farnham Road, in slough. A friend and I decided, after listening to Hitler on the radio, to join the Territorial Army, which was the 1st Bucks Battalion in 1938. In 1939 we were at camp in Lavant, near Chichester. While we were there it was obvious that war was about to be declared so the unit was held together. A week before war broke out we were called to the colours and after guard duties at the slough trading estate. On the declaration of war, September 2nd 1939, 60 of us were transferred from the 2nd Bucks to the 1st Bucks Battalion in order to bring the 1st Bucks up to war strength. On arrival at the 1st Bucks I was analysed by the RSM and the Cornel. They found out that I was a member of the St John’s cadets and decided to put me in D-company as a stretcher - bearer, as they were one short.
So now I was officially in the army. At the end of December the battalion got orders to move to France. We moved from Bolohne to La Neuville, there winter conditions kept the battalion in limbo until May 1940. When the German onslaught into Europe started the Battalion immediately moved up to Waterloo.
After brief contact with the German forces the battalion was ordered to commence on orderly retreat. The retreat consisted of light skirmishes with the enemy until we came to a town called Hazebrouke. At Hazebrouke the battalion was told to hold their ground. Thectown was part of the Dunkirk defence perimeter, where evacuation of the British expeditionary force was in operation. The battalion organised an evacuated building, which had been an orphanage as HQ, using its cellars as a wounded clearance centre. Unfortunately, being surrounded by German forces at the end the HQ was heavily shelled and bombed as a result the ceilings collapsed and buried all our wounded.
I was rescued by two German Officer, who pulled me out of the rubble. Wounded and semi conscious I was sent to a French field hospital on the outskirts of the town. There I was a lone British soldier in a ward full of wounded French soldiers. It didn’t take long before a German soldier singled me out. He requested my identification papers, which stated that I had special medical urotection under the Geneva Convention, he never returned them to me.

I was then transferred by truck to a make shift prisoner of war camp, which was basically a field. From there we were marched to the town of Trier in Germany, where after a very hostile reception we were herded into cattle trucks, 75 at a time. This was the start of a horrific train journey to Poland, which lasted 5 days. On arrival at Poland, we went to a camp called Torun. We were housed in marquees; the temperature was by then reaching lows of —25 degrees. I was still suffering, from my head wounds at Hazebrouke, but considered fit enough to work by the Germans. One job consisted of being given a two handed saw, which had one handle replaced by a large lead weight. The purpose of the weight was to enable the saw to be used single handily to cut ice blocks from the river Vistula, which average 2-foot square by 6 inches thick. Theses blocks were pulled to the side and stacked up.

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