Return of the Dunkirk soldiers at Ampthill

This story was submitted to the People’s War Site by Jenna Benson, for Three Counties Action, on behalf of Richard John Bunker, and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

I remember the soldiers who came back from Dunkirk being ‘dumped’ in the streets in Ampthill. They’d been brought back by train straight from the beaches and were just lying there completely exhausted and completely dirty. The smell of them! I can smell that smell now on a hot summer’s day. I told my mum and she came out to have a look. It wasn’t long before the tea parade started. All the ladies came out with cups of tea. The lines of men went on for 200 yards along the pavement. They were men from the Scottish regiments and had marched a mile from the railway station to get to Ampthill.

I went to the Sands School Ampthill. At morning assembly we sang all the national anthems. Knew them all off by heart: “Land of our Fathers”, the Greek one, all the allies’ national anthems. We followed the war in all our subjects. Learnt geography by following the course of the war. We learnt a lot of patriotic poems by heart, such as ‘Drake’s Drum’… “Slung a’tween the round shot in Nombre Dios Bay …” “Strike it when your powder’s running low” …

I remember the crash landings at Woburn Park. There was a landing strip there in the middle of the park, and when bombers got shot up so badly they couldn’t get back to Cambridgeshire aerodromes where they’d started from they’d land at Woburn Park. Then tractors with hauser cables would drag them out under the trees so that the Germans couldn’t see them from the air.

I remember watching a crippled plane flying in Bedfordshire that had been shot down in Bournemouth and was struggling to get home. I remember the old Foundry where soldiers would be sent to fulfil orders picking up detonators and big drums of gelatin getting ready for D Day. And the tank regiments coming through all got ready for the D Day landings with extra long exhaust pipes so the water wouldn’t get up them. A Welsh regiment was stationed in Ampthill, and there were German and Italian camps for prisoners of war. The ladies used to work at Grimmer’s Garage turning out parts for shells.

We boys used to bike out to Cranfield to see the Spitfires stationed there. Once I saw five V1’s flying together over Ampthill

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