From Catford to Dunkirk

My father joined the Territorials in Catford with five office colleagues in 1938 . It was a Royal Artillery AA gun unit and they formed a new predictor team. The predictor was a device for pointing the guns at enemy aircraft.
He was called up ,formally ,in 1939 in late July. Shortly after that he was posted to France as part of the BEF .
The winter of 1939/40 was unbelievably cold and the troops suffered terribly . We had a letter one day to say that they had been issued with another-making three- and he was sleeping in a garage. It was so cold that birds froze when flying and a cup of tea poured from an upstairs window hit the ground as ice.
He spent a lot of time in a village in Northern France called Misery . The local cafe owner and his family were very welcoming and they all made friends with them. We actually went back in 1957 and saw them . The original owner was dead but his son ,running the cafe remembered my father well.
Eventually the German army forced them to retreat which was a pretty hazardous situation . They ended up on Dunkirk beach with the thousands of other troops.
They were continually strafed by fighters but this was largely ineffective because the huge area of sand dunes provided good cover against the fire and there were no ricocchets .
Each time a plane came over to strafe everyone dived for cover in the sand. When the planes had gone the men rejoined the long queues to get on to a boat or anything that floated There was no queue-barging they all went back their original places.
There was little food , the French cafes had run out, there was a shortage of water and some men unwisely got bottles of wine.
Eventually my father got onto a jetty which was used by little ships to ferry the men out to larger ships anchored out in deeper water. Each time the fighters came over the "gunner" on the little fishing boat they were boarding let loose with an ancient Lewis gun (a notoriously unreliable weapon ) and yelled out " come on then you B----y Jerries ".
They were ferried out to a destroyer and there they were given copious amounts of hot tea and bread and butter. the first proper food and drink in three days!
On arrival in Dover they were put on a train and sent off to what turned out to be a brand new barracks. They had absolutely no idea where it was and really did not care. The barracks had beds and to the astonishment of the soldiers running the place asked if they could sleep on the beds. The local soldiers did not realise that it had been weeks since they had had any form of proper beds or rest.
The next time my father saw this barracks in Arborfield near Reading was when he came on a visit with the family to see me doing my National Service billeted in the self same building ! Deja vu!
He stayed there for a few weeks ,had some leave and then was posted to Aberwystwyth.

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