“(Before the war) I worked on a farm...(age seventeen) I was summoned with several others to go and have medical checks. I had a broken arm at the time, because I’d fell of a push bike...I was graded A1 and I had a broken arm! This was the 15th July 1939, two months before the war started.
“Just before Christmas 1939 we landed at Cherbourg...we were put on a French train and sent to the countryside...We had to do guard duty walking around the fields at night...Several of the lads heard this rustling in the hedge...You’d be surprised how many cattle got shot... “We were pushed back from Lille...it was all chaos. We were given maps, we were divided up into (groups of) about a dozen...We couldn’t keep to the road, because they were strafing us, the Gerries, from the air...The roads were flushed with people, absolutely full up, prams, kiddies. Pitiful to see the Gerries coming along gunning them all down. Us troops were kept to the fields...To be honest with you, we prayed. We didn’t think we’d make it. Eventually we got to the outskirts of Dunkirk which was surrounded by Frenchmen. They wouldn’t let us through, they threatened to shoot us on sight. They called us cowards, they called us everything under the sun, in English. Some of our lads managed to crawl round behind them...and shot them...that’s how I got to Dunkirk. “We got on the Dunkirk dunes, thousands of troops...the Stukas, they were always in threes, dive bombers. They were going up and down the beach machine gunning...Our ships were coming in ‘full up, no more taken’. I went out into the water two or three times...Somehow or other I got hauled out of the sea and the next thing I knew, I was up,the side of a boat with a rope round my shoulders...we were overloaded. Stukas tried to bomb us, (but) I did get back to Dover...I was suffering from exposure...I had no feelings, as far as I was concerned, I was dead... “...We went on D3...I landed on Juno beach...when we got near the coast, down came the door...the fear was we were going to run over mines...That bren carrier saved my life because the bullets would not pierce the armour...you’d the hear pings, but you’re down below looking through a visor...we got up on land...you kept going, you daren’t stop... “(The carrier) it’s a mobile machine gun unit. You went ahead of the troops...you had two bren guns clearing the way for troops on foot to come through ...the NCO, he was a spotter...he was the vulnerable one, we lost several of those... “Being a driver you were forced to stop...and there were bodies...you just pushed them into ditches. The smell was terrible...you’d get up, pick up these bodies, put them into ditches, chuck a bit of soil over them...animals as well... “We got within about half a mile of the Brandenburg Gate. We were really hoping to be first there, but we were halted...The Russians were coming in the other way and they wanted to conquer Berlin...” |