Falling Back to Dunkerque

This account is the best description of events leading up to the evacuation at Dunkirk,that I have read. The original letter is in my posession. In summary it recounts my grandfather's experience as an ambulance driver with the BEF during the months leading up to Dunkirk. He witnessed the machine gunning of refugees by German aircraft, the speed and confusion of the withdrawal and the horror of being trapped under bombardment in the port of Dunkirk itself. The narrative is very descriptive and at times funny. Following Dunkirk Arthur spent the next five years in North Africa without break. Please take the time to read his story, 8500 words, and comment as you wish. Any place name spelling errors are mine.

N.Wales 8th July 1940

Dear everybody,
I hope you will forgive me and blame ‘that man’ for the time that has passed since my last letter. If I remember rightly, all was peaceful in France and Belgium then, and my particular feud was with the geese and other feathered frightfulness which haunted our billets. We were stationed at that time, in Villers Bocage, Somme, a village about seven miles north of Amiens. I get a kick out of the disclosure of what were then military secrets.
Perhaps it would be better if I wrote a short resume of our travels up to my last date of writing, then I will continue giving names of places, instead of the mysterious ‘somewhere in France’.
We landed at Cherbourg on a very wet Sunday last January, after a rough crossing from Southampton, a brand new motor ambulance convoy, complete with all equipment and over one hundred vehicles-no one waved us farewell, and no one shouted welcome when we landed. We thought that we were England’s secret weapon, it was all so hush-hush. A couple of days of rain, cold, unloading, tin-food, and general discomfiture, then a two day journey to Oiseau-le-petit, a village near Alencon. We stayed here for several weeks, then proceeded to Villers Bocage.
About the middle of April, our unit left the last named village, we had a real send-off from the people, with whom we had fraternised for some weeks, and who had treated us with every kindness, and much generosity. There was, I feel sure, genuine mutual sorrow at our departure. Our new base was Fouguieres, a hamlet outside Bethume. We were here on May 10th, and crowded into the fields at four-o-clock that morning to watch German bombers at work on our RAF aerodrome at Bruay. We thought it great fun, ... then, much as we should have regarded a free view of the Crystal Palace fireworks in days gone by.
At this time, I had just returned with three other ambulances, from a detachment. We had been away from the unit for eight or nine days, working with a field ambulance unit at Amentieres, then at Gievecoeur-le-grand, south-west of Amiens, evacuating sick, and accident cases to a base hospital at Le Frepost, on the coast. It had been a comfortable job, plenty of driving, to a pretty little coast town fifty miles each way, through an almost English countryside.
While we were attached to this unit, we experienced many night calls and long drives to destinations given solely by map references, sometimes in thick fog, a type of obstacle we often encountered near to the coast. One incident, which now seems to be trivial, and humorous, in comparison with later events, occurred as follows.
We slept on boards in the loft of a high barn, with the vehicles parked below. Three of these barns and a farmhouse surrounded a square, full of pigs, fowls, straw and a mixture of mud and well..etc. The night in question was Friday, therefore a pay night, and a proportion of the camp had returned to the billets in a decidedly merry state. About midnight a yell awoke us, followed by general shouting, an officer’s whistle, and a call for an ambulance. Apparently one of the unit’s drivers had descended from the loft by the ladder provided and had dropped a cigarette end into a recently emptied petrol can. The petrol vapour remaining had exploded, burnt his hand, and removed from his face any necessity for shaving in the near future. Quite naturally, I think, he yelled, and his mate, waking with a start, jumped from his bed, and ran to see what was wrong. He forgot that he was billeted in a loft, and stepped into thin air. He landed wrong end up in the above mentioned mixture of mud, etc, and became a ‘shock’ case with slight concussion, right away. I drove the pair to the base hospital that night. They both recovered satisfactorily in a day or two. Visits to the hospital were very favourite trips for both the driver and his orderly. Food was plentiful there, of an extremely high standard, and a night spent in one’s ambulance, on the cliffs of Le Frepost, looking across the channel was a night of comparative luxury.
When I was recalled from this detachment, and returned to Fouguieres and the 7th M.A.C., it was May 9th. On the journey we visited Villers Bocage again, and spent a happy hour or so revisiting old friends, mostly cafe proprietors, but not forgetting M. and Mme Bauchy, whom I have mentioned in previous letters. We were very cordially received, and I regret to say that our four vehicles left the village and proceeded on the Doullens, St.Pol road with a trace of wobble steering, wheel wobble, I should say.
May 10th. At four a.m. we were hauled from our beds, our billets, or our vehicles as the case might be, by the wail of our siren, hand operated, outside the guardroom. We stood in the open field, blinking, rubbing our eyes, and adjusting steel helmets, lacing up boots and so on. Then we heard the planes, then a couple of machine guns sent a string of tracer bullets towards the sky, firstly little red lights chasing each other in a line towards the clouds, and then the harsher noise of anti-aircraft guns, and the thud of a pom-pom in Bethume.
Several bombers appeared, and two flew so low over our heads that we could distinguish the occupants. They barely cleared the roof of our chateau and made their way to the aerodrome outside Bruay, where they replied to some ack-ack fire (anti-aircraft) with their own machine-guns. The ‘fun’ continued for over an hour, and when they departed one plane was pouring black smoke from the fuselage, quite obviously on fire. There were no RAF planes in our piece of sky that morning, and the hit must have been due to ack-ack fire, an exception, I am sorry to say. The usual way to spot a nazi plane is to follow the line of ack-ack shell bursts in the sky, and you will find the bomber some way in front of the last shell burst. After the display, we returned to bed for an hour, and at reveille we learned that jerry had invaded Holland and Belgium. The rest of our morning was hectic-last minute loading of petrol, rations and ammunition; last minute instructions to approximately forty of us leaving for pre-arranged detachments in Belgium. The main road past our vehicle park was vibrating with the traffic passing, a whole brigade of over 1000 vehicles was moving up. First, light tanks, then bren-gun carriers, troop carriers, field artillery, and heavier guns, supply columns, petrol convoys, and the innumerable vehicles, of all descriptions thrust forward to meet the enemy advance.
I was detailed to take three other ambulances, and proceed once again to Aimentieres, for attachment to the 125th Field Ambulance Company. As I drove out of our park my Sergeant shook hands, and when the shock had left me, I realised the significance of his act-I called out that I’d soon be back to worry him again- ‘only the good die young’. We proceeded to Annizen, near Bethume, picked up a load of stretchers, blankets and other equipment, then proceeded onwards to St.Andree, near Lille, dropped our burden at the No 10 C.C.S., (casualty clearing station) a huge civil hospital, and ‘Great war’ C.C.S. Then onwards to Aimentieres, on the Franco-Belgian frontier. On the way w halted at a roadside cafe, ate some rations, bought some cafe au-lait, and again noted the significance of having all payment refused by the cafe propriators. So this is the real thing, we thought-the people believe we are going to our ends-they had that certain look in their eyes, when you bade them ‘au revoir’.
However, the detachment was interesting, but comparatively uneventful in the face of what followed later. Our work was to evacuate wounded from the field ambulance dressing station to the No 10 CCS at St.Andree, a drive of about eleven miles each way, and, as we had four ambulances, and took it in turn to stand-by for night calls, our days were orderly, and not over strenuous. Many air raid warnings occurred here, but no bombs were dropped - I remember clearly , an evening when the raid siren screamed while I was having a haircut, and the woman barber - most of them were women - hustled me, and two other customers into a narrow little cellar under the shop.
Towards the end of this detachment week, refugees began to increase in numbers, and the roads, to be congested day and night. Thousands slept in fields, on pavements, under railway arches - shops became empty of food, and still the inhabitants of Aimentieres remained calm. ‘The jerries will never reach here’ they said, reassuring each other in the calm way they uttered this confident statement.
Our loads of wounded increased daily, though, and we became surprisingly indifferent to the nature of our patients injuries. the hospital guard would ask ‘what have you on board’ and one would reply, ‘two skulls, one femur, and a nearly stiff’, implying two cases of head fractures, a wounded thigh case, and a poor chap nearly dead, through perhaps a variety of wounds.
On a Friday, the unit to which we were attached, moved back, and we accompanied their advance party at night. The journey was slow, roughly five miles covered in an hour, and we stopped for the night at a small town on the Bethume road, I forget the name, now, and it was here that I heard bombs falling on Bethume, and for the first time experienced the eerie sensation caused by the sound of a bomb whistling to earth, then the dull ‘lumph’ and the shudder of the ground. At four-o-clock in the morning, it was not yet dawn, the day being cloudy, I was aroused and told to return to the main body at Aimentieres again, with one other ambulance and driver, Jock Gowan and I had an uneasy journey, because we continually heard planes in the sky, and the sudden ‘move-back’ of the unit aroused suspicions in our minds of the proximity of the front-line. Still, we returned safely and slept till noon, the following day. Then, we returned to our 7th MAC, now stationed at St.Andree.
One night we rested at base and I was out again on another, most eventful detachment, under Cpl Vale, to a field ambulance unit at Quatre Cheres, about two miles from Journai. We travelled at dusk, and our spirits fell as we sped along the road from Lille, through Helliemes, and Sin, and, approaching our destination, we passed lines of infantry moving up to Journai in Indian file. As we passed over a rise in the road we saw the horizon in front ablaze with flames, as far as eye could see, on either hand, and the roar of planes, the crack of field artillery, rattle of machine-guns made an unearthly discord of sound. We wondered what kind of a detachment this could be, and when we reached our new station, a chateau in a hollow, a mile from the main road, hidden by trees, we guessed we were in for some work.
Our men were holding Journai, we learned. Twice they had repelled the Germans, twice they in turn had been pushed back again, the town was a raging inferno, bombed night and day, held by infantry, fighting from house to house, or rather, ruin to ruin.
Behind us only two or three hundred yards away, was a battery of field guns, and they were commencing a twenty-four hour barrage. Our chateau rocked all day and night, the windows lasted only an hour or two, after which we boarded up the spaces. The ambulances we parked in the grounds, but sleep was impossible, with the noise about us, and the whine of shells overhead; not now and then, but all the time, incessant, a never ending scream through the air, and the flashing and ear splitting crack of the guns. In the morning, a long range, naval type gun was brought up into position behind us, and this bombarded given targets, sixteen miles behind the enemy lines. It only fired twice an hour, but when it did - if you were standing, well, you sat, and your clothes wrapped themselves tightly around you with the terrific blast that followed. Once when this chap went off, I was filling my tanks with petrol and I landed squarely on my back, drenched through with the stuff, and the can empty.
The days were busy here, all the twenty-four hours and I drove constantly, as did the other three drivers, backwards and forwards to St.Andree ccs, with as many as sixteen wounded in the ambulance each time; four stretcher cases, and the rest packed in on the floor of the vehicle, in the driving cab, every foot of space held a human body. The Worcestershires had gone into position on a hill near Journai, and a jerry plane had seen them, with the result that their position had been given away, and the nazi artillery had shelled them to blazes. Every barn, outhouse, cowshed, on the estate was crammed with casualties and I had the experience of travelling twice to the regimental aid post (r.a.p.) to assist the already overworked field ambulances in removing casualties to the dressing station at Quatre Cheres. At the r.a.p. one had to crawl behind walls, along dug outs, in houses keep away from the windows in view of the German line, and under shell fire all the time. This was where my friend Kieshy, one of our other drivers, suddenly cracked up, and became ‘silly’ with shell shock. I had to take him back to St.Andree with the patients and bring out a spare driver from the base for Kieshy’s ambulance. Kieshy soon recovered, however, proving his case to be mainly one of over strung nerves, rather than shell shock proper.
Some of our night trips to St.Andree, via Lille were nightmarish, indeed, and I dreaded the return journeys to Quatre Cheres, always fearing that the enemy might have broken through. I knew the road fairly well and remembered several places from piece time, I had driven through part of the country then, if you remember I was in Normandy when war was declared. The C.O. of the unit to which we were attached, was a real ‘fire-eater’, an old Indian army man, and one could never do right. If a driver sat in his cabin, he should be at the ambulance steps, assisting the orderlies - if he was assisting the orderlies he ought to be in his cab, ready to drive away. This man should have been in a combatant unit, not in the medical corps, he actually expressed disappointment, when the unit was ordered to retire - it was too close to the line, all along, for a medical dressing station.
After a few days, I was sent one evening to St.Andree, with my usual load of wounded, and on the road through Sin, I noticed three German bombers, ‘hedge-hopping’ across the countryside. They passed low, over the road behind me, then climbed into the distance. A few minutes later I observed bombing on a distant hillside - the columns of smoke, which tell-tale, even if the noise is unheard. Then the planes appeared, travelling quite low, and at high speed. They dropped bombs behind me at Sin, turned and passing overhead, bombed the road in front. One blast rocked my vehicle and I drew into a wood nearby, and waited until the raiders had gone. I had been speeding up till then, in the hope of reaching Lille before they reached the main Journai-Lille road, but speed is upsetting to casualties, in a loaded ambulance, and I could not keep it up for their sakes.
When I reached the ccs at St.Andree, I was informed that they were full up, and I was ordered to proceed to Hazelrule. I did so, via Aimentieres, and Bailleuil, but found that Hazelrule had received a terrific bombing the previous day, and the ccs had removed elsewhere. I was directed to a railhead some miles away, where a hospital train was due at midnight. I found this rendezvous eventually, a small station called Stiemanche, and parked with ambulances from all parts. Black out was very bad here, lights, matches, torches, shining everywhere, while nazi reconnaissance planes droned high above. I was glad to see my patients aboard and after a beer and a coffee (and cognac) purchased nearby - it was one in the morning - I departed. I felt dead-tired and rather weary, the bomb which rocked Dinah earlier in the evening at Sin still left its effect on me, and I dreaded the long run to Journai. I drove to St.Andree, parked my bus with some of the others still at the 7MAC base, and had about four hours sleep. My orderly, from the field ambulance unit, was still with me, and we breakfasted, and proceeded to return to Quatre Chains.
Past Lille, and Helliennes, our journey was uneventful, except that Lille was by now extremely deserted. Hellienes had been bombed overnight, and looked the worse for it. At the Belgian frontier, I observed newly-dug trenches, and hurriedly-built fortifications. The Maginot Line was a myth, you must remember, as far as the Belgian frontier was concerned. I wondered at this, and could not see reason for a second line here, unless the front line at Journai was in danger. When I reached Quatre Chains, about 10 a.m., my fears were realised. The Field Ambulance Dressing Station had retired to Ruchin, South of Lille, and I was in front of even the advanced dressing stations of that unit. A man had been left at Quatre Chains to direct traffic, and he supplied this information, telling me that the troops were being withdrawn from Journai - I had noticed mechanised troops retiring in Lille, but thought it merely a flank movement, or a relief.
On reaching Ruchin, I had dinner, a short rest. Dinner was posh, an unusual savoury, but the unit’s cook had been exploring a deserted farm, nearby, and found a pig that did not go to market. About tea-time, enemy planes appeared, and bombed and machine-gunned neighbouring hamlets. It was not a restful evening, by any means, and I was thankful when detailed to leave, with one other ambulance, a no.1 M.A.C. vehicle, appropriated complete with driver, by the Field Ambulance Unit. Routes were haphazard and no-one knew safe roads or where to find a C.C.S., so all ambulances were directed to report to a M.A.C. control post, at a given map reference. We found the map reference, but the control post had gone, and after enquiring at a cafe, I was lead to the billets of a Colonel from where I begged information. He had heard of the control post, but did not know where they had gone, he had no large scale maps of the district, and could not suggest any available C.C.S. for our casualties. We left, and I suggested Hazelsuche again - I knew the road, and hoped that the rail-head which I had previously visited, might have a hospital train in during the night. The journey was long and tedious, but I did not have to go as far as Hazelsuche, because I found that a civilian hospital, at Baileuil was accepting casualties. A lovely building, in vast grounds, built in the shape of a three-sided ‘rectangle’, with a lawn on which rested a forty foot red cross, in canvas. I unloaded my friend also, and we returned to Ruchin. Arrived at breakfast, and spent a day and night resting as much as possible. Early next morning, we again loaded and left for Baileuil. I have not mentioned that Cpl Vale, and Harrison had not returned from a trip to the C.C.S., and I worried as to the reason. Had they met trouble, or returned to base?
I reached Baileuil, via Aimentieres, about noon. Aimentieres was evacuating, a disturbing night - I wondered what was happening to my friends there, of whom I had several. Two French families and one English. (A man who had returned to Mademoiselle, after the Great War, married, set up home and a business.)
From Aimentieres to Baileuil, there was evidence of last night’s bombing, and when I reached Baileuil, the C.C.S. was full, expecting orders to move, and refusing casualties. We proceeded to Hazelsuche, and the road was now packed with French troops, heavy ‘last war type’ guns and thousands of refugees. Every bend in the road was a ‘block’ - machine-guns, barb wire, and such obstacles as steam-rollers, farm carts, wheels smashed in order to form a hindrance to Jerry’s anticipated advance.
In Hazelsuche, traffic was awful - bridges had been bombed, others blown up by the R.E.s and only one temporary structure remained for all transport. I proceeded to the local G.H.Q, and eventually was granted an interview with the town major. This officer was elated at two ambulances, complete with drivers and orderlies, falling into his grasp; he instructed me to go to a civvy hospital, gave me a letter of introduction , and off we went. After unloading our patients, we were awaiting return of stretchers, blankets etc, when I commenced chatting with the French doorkeeper, or whatever they call him. My French certainly was useful. He had read the letter of introduction which I had given him on arrival, and told me that the town major intended to ‘impress us’, for service locally, and would be driving to the hospital at any moment. This did not suit me at all - I was anxious to rejoin the 7.M.A.C., or even the Field Ambulance at Ruchin, but stay in Hazelsuche, a town that simply breathed ‘impending disaster’, no. We did not wait any longer for our stretchers and blankets, but made off at great speed, on a more Southerly route for Baileuil. Here we stopped at the C.C.S., it was early evening, begged a meal, and a night’s sleep in the vehicle park. We received both and felt both safe and comfortable, in our ambulances, parked beneath the trees on one of the avenues of approach to the hospital.
However, with the dawn, the C.C.S. received orders to move. We were commandeered, about one hundred vehicles were packed, lock stock and barrel, and the convoy moved off. Only very serious cases were left behind, with a small medical staff. I received equipment and not casualties this time, also my companion. We all moved at highest possible speed, across cart tracks, through fields, up very poor roads, to a village perched on a hill-top, namely (space).
We arrived about ten a.m., but only remained two hours. No breakfast, just a few pieces of bitter chocolate bought nearby, and water from our bottles, and throughout the two hours, enemy planes circled above, and bombed farms, woods, all around. I expected things to happen to us at any moment, but they did not. About noon we had some soup, from a field kitchen hastily set up in a stable nearby, and afterwards, the whole convoy streaked along the road to Aimentieres, and then back to Baileuil. In the village we had visited for a short time, life was proceeding very normally, in spite of all, and I understand that, in the bombardment from the air, which it received the following day, the casualties were very numerous. Our run back to Baileuil was a ghastly trip, though it lasted little more than forty minutes. The roads were congested with refugees, and French artillery, travelling in opposite directions. Our convoy maintained a high speed, averaging over thirty miles per hour for the run, and this necessitated constant horn blowing, hard braking, and equally hard acceleration; cutting in and out of the congestion all the time. I first experienced the sight of enemy planes machine-gunning refugees, on this run. Not on the road we were travelling, but on a lane crossing the main road, winding up into the hills. I first noticed the refugees running for the fields and ditches, and as my vehicle topped the next rise, I saw a large German bomber flying only a few feet above the road, its rear gunner using his machine-gun to horrible advantage, on the panic stricken human beings massed behind.
When my companion and I reached Baileuil, we heard that the no. 7 M.A.C. was at Vlamerterighe, on the road between Ypres and Poperingle. We decided to miss any chance of dinner at the hospital, tired and hungry as we were, and to give the C.C.S. the slip, and rejoin my unit. I told my friend to bring his ambulance and orderly, too - I knew we could probably do with an extra driver and vehicle. When the convoy entered the C.C.S. drive, we drove on, up the main Ypres road, a really fine concrete artery, and through Ypres, to find Vlamerterighe, a tiny village, about two miles further. Ypres looked surprisingly clean, a small town, but obviously rebuilt entirely since the Great War.
It was very good indeed, to see a friend of mine on sentry-go at the entrance to an estate, and to drive into the grounds of a really lovely chateau, now the 7 M.A.C.’s head quarters. Two thirds of the unit was there, the vehicles parked alongside fish ponds, and under the trees bordering a stream which ran through the grounds. I handed in a brief report to m. Athens, and after tea, at about 4 p.m. - ovaltine to be precise, I went down the road half a mile, to the barn used by our workshops section, for oil and petrol for ‘Dinah’.
This refill of petrol took longer than anticipated - enemy planes flew over constantly, bombing at random, any spot that might conceal Allied forces, (why we were missed still amazes me.) necessitating continual runs for cover. Just as I was returning through the gates of the car park again, I saw everyone go flat on the ground, and a large plane flew so low over us, that I thought for a moment, that the undercarriage must strike the roof of my ambulance. At the chateau, our shelter was a cellar beneath the mansion, a veritable death trap in my opinion, though safe from blast, and six to nine inches deep in water.
Mr Atkins told us to get some sleep, as the unit was off at nine p.m. I settled down for three hours, but after about twenty minutes I was aroused. We were off to evacuate a hospital at Ypres. My section officer was profuse in apologies, we were half dead with loss of sleep, but it had to be. I have not mentioned it but both Ypres and Poperingle had been bombed mercilessly about three-thirty that afternoon, shortly after we had driven through the former town, and that the place was littered with civilian dead.
We reached Ypres after a very long detour- the main roads were now filled with bomb craters, and Jerry was still at work, dropping explosives on main roads in the distance, as we could see by the columns of smoke rising at more or less regular intervals, across the plain. On our way to the hospital, we stopped several times, only a portion of A section had been detailed for this job, about fourteen vehicles, and I contrived a basin of coffee and some cake from a cottage during one of these halts, while our leader was consulting his map, presumably. The old Frenchman and his wife chatted to me at the door, while I ate, and he said that France was in peril of her life, this time, that we were cut off, and that with luck I should soon be back in England. He was really French, born in Rouen, but his wife was Belgian. His son was somewhere in the Maginot - Line. It was another week before I realised the wisdom of his words, or the truth of his prophecy, as the case may be. Anyway, we were not needed at Ypres hospital, when we arrived, another unit had arrived before us, and we returned to Vlamerterighe to find the 7th M.A.C. in the act of departing. We followed them.
All night we drove, at least, until an hour before dawn; I had a couple of hours sleep inside my vehicle, while a relief driver took over, Ivor Lloyd from workshops section. I was dozing at the wheel, and asked for him of necessity. A long night run, no lights, continual halts, at very low speed, does not help to keep an over-tired driver alert. Finally we parked our ambulances in and around a farmyard at a place called Borre, and we all went to sleep. At five a.m. after about an hour’s sleep, the S.M. personally roused us, and we were off again. On waking I heard shells screaming overhead, and all the noise of a barrage once again - I doubt if it would have awakened me in itself though.
The whole unit was now destined for Baileiul, to evacuate the Casualty Clearing Station that I had been with, only twenty-four hours earlier. But, when we arrived, a very different sight confronted me. Not a window intact, one wing in ruins, and the walls covered with dirt and shrapnel marks. The grounds full of bomb craters. Most of the serious cases were in the cellar beneath the hospital chapel, away from the main building. We lined up our ambulances beneath the trees which lined the drive and two vehicles at a time proceeded to the chapel steps to load up. Medical officers, English nurses, all worked at top speed, but we felt that more trouble was in store.
We had been there about half an hour, when a solitary fighter appeared overhead. He departed, after circling, leaving a large circle in the sky, similar to an O left by a sky signwriter. Then, after a few minutes, the bombers appeared, and I had just loaded Dinah. Soon bombs were whistling down on Baileuil, and the ground shuddering with concussions. All the wounded who could move at all, threw themselves from their stretchers, assisted each other, helped by drivers and orderlies who could not hope to restrain them, and leaving the vehicles, crawled into ditches, underneath bushes, anywhere close to the ground, seeking safety from the horror above. Several bombs fell in the hospital grounds, only one damaging the building again, and showers of earth and stones rained on us all. When the raid was over, reloading was done, wounds examined, some redressed, and the continual demand for water for the casualties was obeyed. This whole performance was repeated thrice times, before our convoy left Baileuil, for the railhead at Steenonde, a few miles away. A skeleton staff remained at the C.C.S. with patients to ill to be moved.
At the railhead, a hospital train was waiting, and we stopped all our ambulances along the roads nearby, allowing about fifty yards between vehicles, in case of air attack. We learned that the train could only proceed in one direction as the line had been bombed, which meant that it would have to make a long detour to reach the coast. However, before loading had been half completed, it was known that the line had been bombed to the east, also, and the train would not be able to leave at all. Those ambulances that had been unloaded, were loaded again, and we waited for nightfall. The word passed around that we were going to Dunkirk, to meet a hospital ship, and we were delighted at the prospect of a ‘safe retreat’ and probably some sleep and food at last. Surely a post like Dunkirk was adequately defended, and fairly secure from air attack! At Steenonde, we had no food worthy of the name, only beer and coffee with cognac from cafes around. A few army biscuits helped to ‘fill up’. All this time, Jerry circled above, and drew his ‘circles’ over hamlets around, to be dive - bombed a little later. The countryside seemed crowded with fires, and smoke columns, but still he left us alone. Perhaps our red crosses were dirty, and not clearly visible from the air. The forty foot red cross of canvas in the grounds of Baileuil had been his first hit. The bomb had torn it to shreds.
It was about seven in the evening when we filed off on our forty - five mile run to the coast, and I was in the section lead by Cpl Saunders, in Cpl Vale’s sub - section. It was soon quite dark, and we seemed to travel in a zig - zag fashion, up one lane, down the next, along cart tracks, anywhere off the main arteries, where bomb craters added to the danger of air attack. The roads were blocked at every junction, with troops and mechanised units, and every road block was a trial to negotiate in the darkness. Near to Vlamerterighe, our old base, the convoy was held up, passing another convoy, by one of the leading ambulances running into a ditch, blocking the road, or rather our half of it, until a workshops lorry could get there, and haul it out. This hold up was a tiring and nerve straining business - drivers kept flashing lights, against instructions, patients were calling for water, and asking about the delay; another convoy was endeavouring to pass us, and meanwhile, Jerry was dropping parachute flares all over the countryside, little pin - points of light at first, that grew as they descended, and eventually lit up large tracts of land. Every moment we thought that they would spot our vehicles, and the tension was unbearable. When we did start off again, the convoy split up, and about twenty of us, under Cpl Saunders, proceeded to get lost up a cul - de - sac. The lane finished at a farm, we halted, and the business of reversing each ambulance about a quarter of a mile, to a space wide enough to turn in, commenced. About fifteen drivers fell flat asleep, immediately we halted, and each in turn had to be aroused, and guided back. Then, all in line once more, we set off for Dunkirk, the dawn just braking. A matter of ten miles from the port, a large enemy bomber flew low over the road, going in the opposite direction to us, but he ignored our little convoy, fortunately. Then, as we reached the town, and speeded along a road, running parallel the canal, we saw shell - bursts in the sky, heard AA gunfire, and realised that our dream of a secure haven was entirely false. A huge cloud, dense black, hung low over the town and sea, swirling and eddying, the smoke from the huge oil storage drums on the quayside, bombed a day previous. Soon, we could see and hear the roaring flames, too, and the nightmare welcomed us.
We drove through a town that was already showing signs of a severe bombing, and straight onto the quayside. Here we managed to scrounge a drink of tea - our breakfast. The quayside was busy with vehicles, all army ones, naturally, and we soon learned that a hospital ship was not due until the evening. We returned in small sections to the town, and parked along streets leading to the square, and, at intervals, around the latter. We had barely finished parking, before the sirens sounded and enemy raiders returned. They dive - bombed the town, and though their attack seemed concentrated on the docks and the oil storage drums alongside, several bombs fell in the town and shrapnel and pieces of debris set up a ‘hailstorm’ for a short time. When this raid had passed, most of the casualties carried by the vehicles around me left the ambulances, and sought shelter in the cellars of the shops and cafes. We were ravenous, but the very few restaurants remaining open had nothing to sell except cognac, lemonade, and dry bread. One had just time for a quick drink before the sirens sounded again, and this time we decided to remain in the cafe. A corporal from an artillery unit sat down and played a derelict looking piano, but he had only played half - way through ‘There will always be an England’ before a bomb dropped nearby and shook us in both senses of that expression. We hoped the song was true, but doubted if the title included Dunkirk, and bolted to the cellar. A Frenchman and family were already there and appeared to resent our intrusion. They all, apparently, were obsessed with the idea that the presence of troops would attract the bombs to their particular shelter. After a while, however, they grew more friendly, and withdrew some coffee, bread and jam, from a hiding place, and shared it among us. This sort of thing went on all day, with very short intervals between the raids, never more than fifteen minutes.
About six ‘o’ clock we were ordered to return to the quay, and having assisted the wounded aboard the ambulances, with one exception - a poor chap who had died that afternoon from wounds and shock - we drove to the waterfront. Here, a scene which I’ll never forget, met our eyes. The quayside, approach, and all the converging roads were packed with ambulances - there must have been several hundred, and the jam was four and even six abreast in places. The progress was about six yards in an equal number of minutes, and followed by five minutes at a standstill. All the time we’re fretting and fuming, and watching the sky for raiders. In the distance, that is, overhead it was dark with the smoke from the oil drums. We could tell that unloading onto a ship was proceeding rapidly, by the number of ambulances passing empty, on the way to various rendezvous outside the town. The lucky ones were those in front, by the time I had reached the dock the ship was fully loaded and had sailed away, leaving about thirty or forty vehicles, full of casualties, behind. Jerry was bombing the town itself now, and it was rapidly growing dark, somewhere around nine-thirty, I suppose. On the quayside general confusion reigned. Crowds of soldiers, of all units and corps, were crowding around - their idea that they were bound for England for reforming. The few drivers, including myself, could find no-one in authority, except our three remaining lance - corporals, and the average man approached had a kind of stunned complex. You spoke to him, he showed signs of hearing you, but would walk away without replying. In some cases, officers too.
We recalled that our Sergeant was waiting at the entrance to the docks, to inform us of our rendezvous, where we should rejoin the rest of the M.A.C. after unloading, so three of us, leaving the ambulances and remaining drivers on the quay, walked to this spot. We could find no trace of any member of our unit, and assumed that we were temporarily forsaken. After a long argument, we decided to park our seven ambulances, ignoring other ambulances of other units, whose drivers would not budge, outside a public shelter on the waterfront, and to carry our wounded below for the night; also, have some sleep ourselves. We were outside the shelter arranging our buses, when a corporal of the 7th M.A.C. drove up on a motor - cycle, and ordered us to join a procession of ambulances leaving the portside. Apparently, an officer had taken charge of the various vehicles standing about, and was proceeding to escort them to a more or less safe park, for the night. We went about three miles to the West end of the town, and parked under some trees alongside a canal. Here, we spent a few hours in sleep, rolled in groundsheets underneath our ambulances.
I awoke with the dawn to a series of whistles, recalled where I was and crawled further under the engine. Two of my casualties were now alongside me, and the other two, with the orderly, were lying on the canal bank. When the raid had passed, we got up, and looked around. The oil tanks were blazing still, we could hear the roar of the flames, and half the town appeared on fire. Though the sun would soon be up, the dense black smoke clouds were still reflecting the light of the flames below, and while we gazed a German reconnaissance plane was drawing white smoke circles over a village West of the town - victim of the next bombardment.
At the end of our line of vehicles was a deserted farmhouse, and a sandbagged shed, which would shelter a dozen, tightly packed. We had no food but the water supply was alright at the farm, and we were able to appease our casualties never - ceasing demand for water. Several were now delirious, and these with two severe shell - shock cases, set up a diabolical clamour in the two ambulances in which we had segregated them.
We decided to scrounge food by hook or by crook, and tried three shacks adjoining the canal - side, which glorified themselves with the words Cafe-Byssh, over the doors. These had been deserted, and looked so empty that we did not bother to break down the padlocked doors. Then, one of us found an abandoned lorry about a quarter of a mile away. The truck had broken down and the personnel had deserted. We ‘rushed’ it. In the back we found biscuits, several tins of milk, corned beef, boiled bacon, and some tea. I had about five pounds of sugar in Dinah’s tool - box, so had other drivers, so we were very fortunate. Rejoicing, we filed back to the car park. An officer arrived ‘out of the blue’, made a fuss and accused us of looting. After a pretty heated argument, he left us and we proceeded to make breakfast. We returned to the lorry for some m.o.v. tins, meat and vegetable ration that is. It is a type of Irish stew, cooked and canned, requiring re-heating to make it palatable.
We drank tea, ate snacks, fed our patients, slept, took cover, all day, the following night, and the next day. The raids continued and seemed to increase in ferocity, if possible, and the second day was a ghastly experience. The bombs were falling on the town’s outskirts and very near to us now. We alternated between the canal bank and the sandbagged shed, slept between raids, and felt pretty shaken each time the bombers passed. The smoke rings were close now, and each time the planes returned we expected to be hit. Jerry was systematically ‘blitzing’ Dunkirk, and not missing much. Along the canal bank, both days and nights, soldiers were marching, dirty, bandaged, worn - looking, in single-file, towards the docks, and we realised this was no strategic retirement but a decided withdrawal from Northern France and Belgium. We heard tales of abandoned vehicles, abandoned stores, petrol dumps, forced marches, outnumbered forces, etc. Everywhere Jerry was advancing, and had drawn a line from coast to coast, round the diminishing sector that held the B.E.F. Meanwhile, our officer, who had been away all day returned, with a Major, and informed us that we were to return to the quayside, one ambulance at a time, at three minute intervals, commencing at five - fifteen. A hospital ship was due and air protection would be given.
We left the canal bank at the time ordered, and drove through the shambles that was a town but a few days before. The roads were strewn with debris, bricks, masonry, girders; full of craters, here a dead horse, there an overturned ambulance, a couple of lorries blazing fiercely. Houses were blazing, walls tottering, a small band of men doing impossibilities with fire hoses, and drowning all, the roar of the blazing oil depot, whose smoke and flames could be seen at night from the English coast. As we crossed the canal bridge, men were opening the sluice gates, and the embankment had been blown up in one place. Here the water was pouring into the fields and ditches outside the town - we guessed Jerry was near if they were flooding the country.
When we reached the quay, and drove onto the huge concrete jetty, now holed with craters, and jagged at the sides, where bombs had torn away sections of the concrete, no ship was waiting. We turned off our motors, and proceeded to wait - for the ship or the bombers. We guessed who would arrive first, as we now heard that our ship would not arrive until nine ‘o’ clock. After about twenty minutes, it seemed hours, had passed, about thirty planes appeared high in the sky, from seaward - we thought they were our own at first, then, when they dived, we knew that the promised air protection was merely a ‘nerve-tonic’. There was a stampede for shelter, the two remaining sandbagged dug-outs on the quay could hold very few, and the majority, wounded and sound men alike, ran across planks, or jumped, onto the decks of the barges, and small steam freighters in the harbour. I landed on a coal boat, with a man whose leg was in splints. My two patients with arm and head wounds managed easily, but my orderly half carried the other casualty, whose leg was in a St. Thomas splint. It seemed safer on the boats somehow, while bullets and shrapnel rained on the decks and quayside, and the earth and sea alike vibrated with the concussion of the bombs. The planes were dive bombing, and the scream of their engines, then the whistle of the bombs, would be followed by the noise of the anti-aircraft guns which opened up after the planes flattened-out after their dive. In the middle of this raid the drivers were recalled to move up the ambulances on the jetty. A blazing warehouse at the beginning of the quay was liable to collapse. It did so, but all the vehicles except one were in safe positions, when the walls fell out.
The above raid over, the quay became crowded again, but within ten minutes, another squadron appeared, and the above performance was repeated. This time I found shelter among bales of blankets stacked farther along the jetty - if one could hide one’s head, one felt secure. If only one could be the size of an ant, instead of an elephant - there always seemed a part of one’s body that one could not squeeze in, however one contracted.
The above happened more times than I can remember clearly, but about eight-thirty, a destroyer appeared outside the harbour, swung through the mouth, and anchored on the far side, guns blazing at the skies. The feeling of confidence that the appearance of the Navy created, I cannot explain - everyone cheered up so visibly, and when a hospital ship drew alongside a little later, we felt really safe. The ambulances were driven, pushed, towed, to the gangways, and the neatest, swiftest, handling of stretchers that I have yet seen, followed. Within three quarters of an hour, we were all aboard, ambulances pushed over the quayside, and kit abandoned. All the majority took on board was rifles and small kit. Some fellow had about thirty gold rings on a string. He had been near a jewellers shop when a bomb had blown the shop front out; another chap had a revolver; another a marble lounge clock, the face studded with gems, of what value I do not know. Privates were wearing officer’s greatcoats, and vice-versa, some men were laden with souvenirs of all descriptions. A Sergeant in an infantry unit went up to a ‘Captain’, and saluted, - the ‘Captain’ replied, ‘Don’t salute me, I am only a b....y driver’.
Below decks we drank tea, there was gallons of hot tea aboard, and then I slept, and remembered little more until we reached Dover. I do recall a shudder, and heavy concussion, just as we left Dunkirk, but though we first thought the ship had been hit, it was learned that an enemy plane had been brought down, to crash on the end of the jetty, with its bombs still on their racks.
We left Dover by train, and reached Redhill station just as the business crowds thronged the platforms for city trains. Everyone seemed hilarious - you would imagine that the evacuation of France, still proceeding, spelt victory, not defeat. I suppose, that in many ways, it did. Soldiers were flinging French coins from the carriage windows, and the business crowds were scrambling for them.
Before midday, we arrived at Aldershot, had a meal, handed in ammunition, and had a roll call of names, numbers, and units. We were fourteen, of the old 7th M.A.C. and we wondered who, and how many, would get back. After a day we were sent to Blackdown Camp, and for two or three days, fed well and slept. Then we went to Mouton-in-the-Marsh, spent about a week lying in the fields, sun-bathing, eating, attached to a troop-carrying unit, but doing no work whatsoever. We slept on palisades in a loft over a barn, and enjoyed the absence of authority.
From Mouton-in-the-Marsh we went to Marlborough Camp, and here received three days leave - our first since we returned. After leave, we returned to Marlborough, then to Swindon, where the 7th M.A.C. was reuniting; and more leave. About two thirds of the original complement was here, and the unit left for Pwllheli, N.Wales after about a week. From there onwards I think you know most of the news.
The second half of this letter has been written on board the ship that is conveying the 7th M.A.C., with its new strength, abroad again, and I apologise for my bad writing, and some nearly illegible passages. There is neither room nor comfort for writing, on-board, and I was anxious to complete this long promised story. I have endeavoured to keep the details as accurate as possible, from memory, but I have had to omit the names of some towns, because I have forgotten them. Others, I know are spelt incorrectly, but diaries are forbidden on active service, and I have no map with which to check.
I am sending this to Beryl, firstly, but I have asked her to forward it to mother, aunt Bis, aunt Hilda, in the hope that it will fill some of the long gaps in my correspondence with them,

With love and best wishes to all

Arthur

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