Adventures at Dunkirk

Before the Dunkirk evacuation, we had captured a lot of German soldiers, and imprisoned them in a school ground. The school ground had high walls — perfect so they couldn’t escape. However, a German plane, a stuka bomber, flew over, saw a crowd of soldiers, and bombed them. The bomber had killed many of his own soldiers.

I was in La Panne, Northern France, with the British Expeditionary Force. We were trying to find Dunkirk. We were guarding 2 lorries at the time. There was no ‘Front line’ — everywhere was totally disorganised and in chaos. In the distance we saw several people dressed in ‘strange’ uniform. The word ran out “Let’s get out of here!” I was driving one lorry and I had seven mates on board. We took off heading off God knows in what direction when we finally came to a road junction. Which way was the coast road? I decided to turn south. Down the road we can across a military policeman in the middle of the road — he seemed to be directing non-existent traffic. He wasn’t very happy. We asked him, a Geordie, what he was doing there? He replied, “Waiting to be picked up by a United Bus!”

We finally made it to Dunkirk and it seemed like everyone else did as well. Just outside Dunkirk we set ourselves up on a beach. We spent a day on that beach waiting to get off. The story was going around that the best place to stand was on the sand, because unless you took a direct hit, all you got was a shower of sand. Troops were being ferried to the bigger boats by rowing boats, and volunteers were requested to do the rowing. I volunteered, but before I got in the first boat, it was riddled with bullet holes and sank. We soon found another. While I was rowing people to the boats, one of our destroyers, I think it was called the Gracie Fields, took a direct hit and sank with many lives lost.

I made 4 trips on that rowing boat. I eventually got on a paddle steamer — The Sandown — which took me to Folkestone.

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.