Dad's Memories

This is an extract from notes our Dad made after he had served in France -

Mr George Slater, 916524, 88th Field Regiment, Royal Artillery (22.02.20-30.03.04)

As a result of serving in France, dad fell in love with the country and had a lifelong affinity with all things French. As children we went back there camping and dad showed us the areas where he had been and even the families of people he had met in the war.

“ Saturday June 1, 1940 outside Dunkirk

We took our positions along the back edge of a small field with a low hedge shielding us at the rear. It was a very open position liable to air attacks. We hastily tried to counter this by putting up our much used camouflage net but it was no use as it was badly burnt and torn from the blast of the muzzle, so we made use of small branches of hawthorn which had plenty of green leaves on. No.4 gun managed to get his net up as he was more in the open. During the morning we made our cookhouse in a nearby farm which could be reached by almost having to crawl along a shallow ditch. During this time Jerry was trying to find our range by his air burst, shrapnel and smoke. The nearest he got was 18 yards behind our guns. At that time we were all safely 6 feet below ground in a ready made slit trench which held 30 of us nicely. At the front end of this trench was our command post which was having a hard time to keep contact with the forward O.P. The G.P.O.A was mentioned in dispatches for his calmness. Later on in the morning we had an air battle over our heads. One Jerry and English it wasn’t long before Jerry had one of them down, then the remaining English plane got him with a burst from his 8 machine guns, it was all soon over. First one of his two engines dropped off, then the tail and all that could be seen after was a ball of fire.

Afternoon:
We hardly stopped firing of all afternoon, only when running out of amo. Everybody was there bringing it up - drivers, cooks, batmen and gunners, in fact we had to save some for nightfall as we couldn’t find any dump anywhere all being blown up. We slackened off towards teatime. Jerry starting again with his airburst. Out in front of us was the Coldstreams who were depending on us. We could hear the rattle of their Brens and bursting of grenades. Zero hour had been set for 10-o-clock. Things got very hot so we made the slit trench our dug out. It was about 20 yards from the guns. Every time an order came down we had to crawl out and run hard to fire the guns which had been left loaded. Mostly it was 5 rounds gunfire. We did about 10 times so that in the end it was a race whose gun could be fired first. “

We feel that the above, which is written in ink on lined yellowed paper was dad reflecting. He had such a good memory. After France he was sent out to Malaya and ended the war as a Japanese Far East Prisoner of War in one of the terrible camps, but his memories were of his friends and comrades and the strength they gave him.

We miss him and hope his few words will not bring back bad memories but memories of friendship and love.

23.11.05

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