An Ordinary Man

The following excerpt comes from “An Ordinary Man” written by Edward Mitchell, and is part two of three sections that tell his story in his own words.

After training as a Military Police Officer, Edmund ‘Mitch’ Mitchell was stationed in Regent Park Barracks, London at the beginning of September 1939. ‘Mitch’ finds himself stationed in Europe, miles from his beloved Peg and facing the build-up to D-Day.

All our letters were censured and I couldn’t tell Peg where I was, only somewhere in France, and I was very concerned about how she was getting on in London, because the Germans had made several air raids on London. In one of her letters to me, she said she had left the BHS and got a job in a milk dairy, which paid more money but was much harder work. I didn’t like this and wondered if I popped the question to Peg, when I got home on leave, how she would take it, and thought if she went to live in Norfolk while the war was on, she would be much safer. But of course that didn’t turn out quite right as Jerry made several heavy daylight and night attacks on the City of Norwich, anyway I decided to wait for my seven days leave and see how things panned out.

1939 — 1940 was a very bad winter in Northern France. Bitterly cold and deep snow. Most of our Brigade was employed in digging a great tank trap at the end of the Maginot Line, all along the Belgium border to the sea, and the RE’s were filling in with concrete to make gun placements, and as things turned out this was a bloody great waste of time and materials, as it didn’t stop the Germans one second. More brilliant planning by our officers!

Christmas came and I didn’t get leave, preference was given to married men with children, still we had a good time, plenty to eat, but we were still sleeping on boards. We now had a straw palliasse but still some of the AA men were wearing their AA uniforms. Proves how unready the British Army was to go to war. I got five days leave just after Christmas, and away I went by train to Dieppe and New Haven and on to London.

It was lovely to be with Peg again and when I suggested we get engaged and she move to Norwich and live with Mum, to my amazement, she agreed. I thought hell fire; I’ve got a cheek — an unpaid L/Cpl, what prospects, but we were both young and didn’t think too far ahead. So we left London to stay the rest of my leave with Mum and Dad and make arrangements for Peg to move to Norwich.

Dad had got a job as a reserve Policeman and did duty with the regular PC’s. Joe was still driving the buses and Nancy had been drafted into an ammunitions factory. It was soon time to return to France and Peg travelled back to London with me, and I said I would buy an engagement ring and bring it home on my next leave. It was hard saying goodbye to Peg as things were all up in the air. Rationing food, clothes, etc had begun, and life in Britain wasn’t too grand.

Soon after arriving back at Lille, I was made a paid L/Cpl. Big deal, I thought, I got 9d a day extra. I still did the same duties but as the spring came I was moved to another Section and given another stripe which made me a Corporal and a bit more money and different duties. The Section was stationed at Criusel La Rouge, halfway between Tourcoring and Lille. The Sgt in charge was about as much use as an Army blanket with the corners cut off. He’d come out of some Line Regiment into the CMP and had had very little Police training (good man to make up to Sgt).

As the weather improved, the war was given the name of The Phoney War, as nothing had happened. We just sat on our backsides in France and Jerry sat on his all along the Dutch, Belgium and French frontiers. On one of my days off, I went into Lille and entered a small jewellers shop to get Peg an engagement ring. I could speak a little French as our Gendarme had given us lessons most evenings and I attended most of them. I got the asking price knocked down and proudly put the ring in its box in my pocket.

We had an exciting night in April. An RE S/Sgt Cole was supposed to be flogging petrol to the French from a big petrol dump near Lille, all the section was involved. At dusk we surrounded the dump and waited for the Frogs to roll up with their trucks and vans. I was at the rear of the dump and around midnight heard plenty of engines revving up and shouting in English and French, then silence, and at about 3 am we were ‘stood down’ and returned to our section billets. Later on, the DAPM congratulated the Company on a very good job. The RE Sgt was in our ‘nick’, also a Corporal. The French Police carted away all the civvies. Our nick was some disused stables and was manned by some real old ‘sweats’ with 14-18 ribbons up, and the fly RE Sgt got friendly with them and scarpered. Well, out we all went on foot patrol and motorcycle patrol, but he’d gone. Sometime later, our RSM was down in Lens in a French barbers, when in walked the RE Sgt. Well he was promptly nicked and brought back to our ‘nick’, but he got out again by removing light fittings between the stable walls. The APM (Assistant Provost Marshal) didn’t believe a man could get through such a small hole, and said if any man could he’d be more lenient on the old sweats. One L/Cpl said he could and stripped off to his underpants; put his clothes through the hole and got through. We never saw the Sgt again and a rumour went round he was a Jerry and had been planted in the RE well before the war. He certainly looked like one — blonde hair, blue eyes and bloody crafty.

I got five more days leave in early April, and rushed off home by the leave route and presented the ring to Peg. I think she liked it and so now we were engaged to be married. We spent a lovely few days leave in Norwich, went on bike rides to the small villages, also I took Peg to Chedgrave and showed her around the old home town. All too soon the leave was over and back I had to go to France. I knew peg was fairly safe with mum and dad in Norwich.

The end of April came and there were rumours going round that Jerry was on the move and we were told if he attacked Belgium, we would have to go to the Southern frontier, then on through Belgium. Very early in May we had a false alarm.

We packed the truck with all G.1098, (cooking kit) filling up all the petrol tanks on the motorcycles, proceeded to the frontier and sat there for 24 hours, then returned to our billets and resumed normal duties. On the night of the 9th/10th of May 1940 away we went, hell for leather through the frontier posts, into Brussels and on to Louvaime, about 30 — 40 miles east of Brussels, I got the section a billet in a bakers’ shop and some out-houses.

Our section that was supposed to be attached to the 11th Infantry Brigade was now being run by me. The Sgt would go to the Brigade or Division for routes to be marked and policed and give me these instructions and I would put them into operation. We’d only been in Louvaime about a couple of days when, to our surprise, we got orders to pull back. We thought we should be going forward to hang out our washing on the Siegfried Line in Germany. We were told that we should soon be advancing again; little did we know that it was a planned withdrawal again little did we know that the fifth column in the French Army and Government, had let the German tanks and motorised infantry over bridges that should have been blown up, and that the British Expeditionary Forces was now cut off. Nobody said anything about that and we got back through Brussels marching routes, sleeping and eating what we could.

Rations and petrol dumps began to get fewer and fewer. We withdrew right back to Tourcoring and one evening I nipped into a house where an elderly French lady lived with her husband. She used to do some washing for our section. They were still there but said everyone had gone who could, gone to the south; they were too old to go. The old chap was wild, he said, “This didn’t happen in the last war. We stood and fought.” I gave them some bread and milk. I was still in the dark — what was really happening? I’d never dreamt when we started to withdraw northwards; we were due to be evacuated. I couldn’t realise the French, Belgian and British Armies could fold up so quickly.

All the time roads were getting choked up with Belgian and French evacuees, some in cars, some with horse drawn carts and some pushing barrows with a few household things on. As we pushed northwards, I began to see hundreds of vehicles just driven into ditches, guns, stores and trucks, and it made me go wild to see our BEF in a mess like this, and thought it could only be the leadership that had caused it. Most of the time, day and night we were being bombed and machine gunned by the Jerry Air Force and I saw very little of the RAF. At one Map Reference (MR) a farm, the APM told us that we were making for the beaches around Dunkirk, where in turn we would be evacuated to England, but now we were to rest and feed then move on later that day. I got into one of the beds on the farm, as it had been left, everything just as the people had walked out. I was soon sound asleep when Sid when Sid woke me and said the APM wanted me. I cursed as I’d only had about two hours kip. He said he was sorry but three Sections had failed to turn up at the MR and three Despatch Riders (DR) had to go out to search for them — one from each of the remaining Sections was to go, and had I a good man? I detailed Dyson, an AA man, but a good DR and map reader. I gave him an area to cover and to bring back any MP he saw, but not to get caught by the Jerry. Away they went. I told Sid to get some grub cracking as there was plenty around the farm, as some RE unit had been there and left plenty of tinned stuff. I got almost another two hours kip and went to see what was doing in the Section. The DR’s were back but didn’t contact the missing three Sections. The APM was furious; he was Major McNally a good peace-time officer. This was 50% of our strength gone and we still had lots of work to cover before reaching the beaches. We moved in convoy about 5pm and went into some woods but got bombarded and machine-gunned so bad that we moved out of the woods, round the edges of some fields, and when night came Jerry left us alone for a while. All night we could see tracer bullets in the sky and small arms fire.

Next morning my Section was given a route to Mark and Police, I was told to make for a MR east of La Pane at 4pm, or when the last of the 11th Infantry Brigade (Bde) had passed through. I made our small HQ in a vacated small farm and posted men in the small town of Poperinge and (I think) Frenes. I also signed the routes with the remainder of the signs we had left, I then returned to the small farm and Sid the truck driver rustled up some tea, beans and bread. I remember it was a beautiful sunny day and everywhere was deadly quiet — no planes, no small arms or artillery fire. I thought that perhaps the war was over and I hoped we had not surrendered. At about 11.30am I thought I’d take the man on point duty some tea and a bean sandwich. I got about halfway to Poperinge, where I saw the Staff Captain of the 11th Infantry Brigade, Captain Hill. Of course he asked what I was doing and I said seeing your Brigade through. He said, “You’ll have a job, they have gone and I hope by now are somewhere near the beach”. He said he was just going to withdraw an Anti-Tank gun then go hell-for-leather to the La Pane area, and I’d better do the same, but I said I’d orders to stay until 4pm and I had two men 5 — 7 miles away in Poperinge and Fernes. He said, “Get them out quick and rendezvous (RV) with Division. So off I went in the truck, past the Anti-Tank gun. There was nobody around — soldier, enemy or civilian. I got the L/Cpl in Poperinge and started up and went full throttle to pick up the remaining chaps. At the farm they were brewing tea on the stove. I shouted, “Start up!” kicked the tea and stove over and drove out, I wanted to get near to the beach as quickly as possible, when I looked behind they were all there, no need to tell chaps to get a move on in those circumstances.

We headed for the MR near La Pane but had a hell of a job getting passed ditched vehicles. We were about ten miles from La Pane, when a S/Sgt from RE’s with revolver drawn, stopped us and ordered us to drive into a field and ditch our truck and motorcycles for blowing up. I said, drawing my own revolver, “No bloody fear, I have orders to report with all our vehicles to La Pane, where we still have work to do, so get out of the bloody way!”. He replied, “Well if you get passed me, you won’t get passed the Major further up the road”. I thought I can’t shoot a Major, so I about-turned with the view of by-passing those idiots. Boy! You should have seen the look on the faces of the Section, Ha!, they thought I was heading for the Bag (POW). We took byroads, and gradually got near our RV. At one place there was a Medical Aid station, with badly wounded chaps who were waiting for the enemy and the POW camp. I had a word with them, and a cup of tea, and took two chaps in the back of the truck. They were walking wounded and said they could make it if they got to the beaches, so the MO OK’d it, and away we went. This time we got through, and I reported to the APM, who wasn’t surprised to see us, as I think he knew the 11th Infantry Brigade had gone hours before we policed that route, anyway, he then said, “Cpl Mitchell, I’ve got one last thing I’d like you to do before you bed down”. He had heard, who the hell from I don’t know, that our three missing Sections, or a lot of MP’s were around Dunkirk, would I go and see if I could contact them, and bring them back. Boy! I was very tired and hungry, but of course I said I’d go. He gave me a map of the area, and I whistled up Sid, and away we went through La Pane and on to Dunkirk. There were plenty of BEF men about — all seemed lost, and nearer Dunkirk we saw clouds of smoke from fires in the town. It was almost impossible to drive into the town, as every street was blocked with bombed houses and holes in the road. I reached the centre by leaving Sid with the truck and walking and shouting, “Any 4th Div MP’s about?” There was no answer, the place was deserted, no civilians or soldiers in that town. I returned to the truck and Sid was very relieved to see me. We found a bombed out baker’s shop, so we took a few loaves of bread and pots of jam, then went hell for leather back to the Div Prov HQ and reported to the APM. “No luck?” he said, “Damn! OK get your head down”. I found a concrete post and lay down with my back to where I thought the bullets might come from, and went sound asleep.

This story concludes in Part Three.

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