Dunkirk 1940

This story was written by my father for our 10year old son,in 1983. Until then my mother was not aware that my father had been at Dunkirk. He omitted to recount that when he and his fellow soldiers were finally aboard the trawler, he produced a small barrel of brandy.

"The retreat to Dunkirk and the subsequent evacuation of the whole of the BEF to the UK was a disaster, although it is recorded as a victory due to the fact that many thousands of the armed forces were safely evacuated by sea, as it proved. 'They lived to fight another day'

I was serving with the 2nd Army Corps HQ (Corps of Military Police), and we had advanced as far as Leuven, a town Northeast of Brussels. Here we were stopped by the Germans and retreated by way of Brussels, Oudenaark. Armentieres and on to the open beaches between Dunkirk and the Belgian border.

As we got nearer to the beaches, the roads became more and more congested with discarded motor transport of all kinds, army stores and arms; these had been dumped by the troops who over the previous few days had gone before us and been shipped to England. Most of the motor vehicles had been rendered useless to ourselves or the enemy, but a few were still mobile as we found over the next few three days we spent in the evacuation area.

As time went on things became progessively worse, the Germans got nearer and nearer and their artillery and mortar fire became more intensive. The queues of troops waiting on the beaches grew longer and longer, but strangely enough they remained very orderly, except when disrupted by shellfire and dive bombers. I was serving with a Military Police Company, and it was our duty to maintain an orderly scene, and to help to get the wounded to the Field Dressing Station situated in the basement of a bombed-out house on the sea-front; needless to say, this was kept very busy, and I should imagine the wounded and the medical staff were all taken prisoners.

This being an open beach it was not possible to get boats very near into the shore, so the Royal Engineers came up with a brainwave. They recovered some three ton trucks, then ran the first one as far into the sea as possible and then ran the others nose-to-tail behind it. Planks of wood were secured to the canopy supports with a rope handrail. This made a sort of pier which enabled the troops to get far enough out to get onto some large rowing boats which were available. They then rowed themselves out to the sea-going boats. A couple of unfortunate chaps would bring the boat back, and so it went on. Of course the stonger swimmers swam out to the boats.

I went out in a rowing boat with about 16-18 others and got on a fishing trawler. The boats carrying troops back to England were supposed to have waited for a naval escort, but the skipper of our boat said he knew the way throught the minefields, so away he went solo, having a pot at the enemy aircraft with the machine gun that was fixed onboard, and we landed safely at Ramsgate.

Life on the beaches was not very pleasant, there was very little cover and you can imagine it was very difficult to dig a trench in sand; if you got a few feet down it was not long before the vibration from exploding shells soon filled the trench in again.

Looking out to sea, one would think it impossible for any of the boats - large or small - to endure the dive bombing and shelling and make it back to England. But many did, and many owe their thanks and their lives to the men at the helm."

In 1941 my father was posted to the Guards Armoured Division Provost Coy, and in 1943 was apppointed RSM in the 6th Airborne Division, and underwent training at Tatton Park in Cheshire. Here he was involved, with Capt. K.G. Wells, in the mid-air rescue of a paratrooper whose webbing had become caught up in the plane's tailwheel. He landed at Pegasus Bridge on D-day, and survived the war but spoke little of his experiences.

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