gallons of petrol in tins. They were all packed tight into crates and strapped securely into the back of my truck. I looked at all this fuel in the back as I was loading it, thinking what my father, Alf and Reg wouldn’t have done to get hold of a gallon or two for the delivery vans.
The evening of 19 May, we got back into camp and an officer came out and told us not to unload our vehicles but to park and leave them overnight as they were. I thought it was a bit odd until I heard from the other lads later that we were off to Dunkirk in the morning. So our trucks were fully loaded when we left early the next day to do whatever was expected of us, to do our bit in the fight against Germany.
This was the day that sealed my fate for the rest of the war. ‘Home by Christmas,’ we were told as we left England. But nobody said which Christmas it would be.
Early morning of 20 May. It was a warm bright day with a light mist just touching the tops of the trees as we drove out from the camp. We could hear a constant low rumbling noise that had gone on all night. I hadn’t slept well, listening to the distant sound of fighting and worrying about how close it all was. We didn’t know what was going on except that the Germans were closing in on the whole area and we could be caught in the middle. How near I didn’t know.
As a member of the transport corps, I knew that my job was to keep the supply chain moving and all I had to do was to follow orders. Nothing very complicated. You didn’t have to think for yourself or use your initiative. All it came down to in the end, as my commanding officer said during training – ‘Never leave your f------- vehicle!’
It was the driving I loved most, getting out on the road, breezing along with the window down, enjoying the empty roads and open spaces. It was good to have a laugh and a smoke with the fellows in the depot. The last thing I, or anybody else, was thinking about was meeting the enemy face to face and having to defend ourselves. The last time I had fired a gun had been about eight months before on Salisbury Plain. Nobody in charge of my unit there in France had thought of preparing us. Nobody had thought of saying, ‘OK, lads, you’re out on the road, enemy round the next corner. What are you going to do? You got to be ready for anything. Let’s do a bit of target practice. Run through some drills. Check your kit and weapons. Be prepared for any emergency.’
There we were driving all over the French countryside, loading and unloading ammunition for everyone else but nobody had bothered to see if the Lee Enfield rifles we carried were even loaded. I was based at this particular camp and expected to return there at the end of the day. I was dressed as usual in my standard issue uniform, helmet and greatcoat, with a few personal possessions stuffed in the assortment of pockets about me and that was it. That’s what I had when I was captured; that’s pretty much what I had when I returned five years later.
We were driving in our usual convoy of seven vehicles, water tanker at the rear and me at number 6 with my truck full of petrol tins. I was following the chap in front who was carrying tinned food, including a load of prunes. I remember him joking, ‘It’s my job to help keep the regulars regular.’ The others carried equipment, bedding and, of course, ammunition. As we were about to leave, I saw a young officer rush across towards us and jump in the passenger side of the first truck. Pony Moore was settled in my passenger seat, still half asleep, and I followed the vehicle in front slowly out onto the road, worried about jolting the vehicle too much. Precious cargo – and dangerous too.
We were heading towards Dunkirk on the small country roads through familiar countryside opening up either side. We passed stone farm houses and ramshackle barns dotted about. We came to a halt at a crossroads. There were two cottages, their shutters closed and no sign of life except a couple of chickens scratching around on the verge. I could do with an egg or two, I thought. I only had time to grab a mug of coffee before leaving. Maybe the Sergeant at the depot would let us get a bit of breakfast.
Instead of turning left, as I thought we would, we turned right, the opposite direction back towards Abbeville. Pony wound down the window and poked his head out. ‘Lieutenant’s waving us on.’ You just follow don’t you, don’t question what you’re told to do. It didn’t matter to me if we were going another way, I was in no hurry. I assumed the officer knew what he was doing so we dutifully followed.
We left behind the few signs of civilisation there were and came into open countryside with ploughed fields one side and pasture land the other. There were few landmarks except a church spire above a ridge of trees on the horizon. We were driving quite slowly and I kept my eyes on the road, which was higher than the fields, checking for pot holes and making sure the wheels of the truck didn’t stray over the edge and down into the gully.
After a few miles we started to slow down, almost coming to a halt again. I wound down my window this time, stuck my head out and shading my eyes, strained to see what was going on up the road ahead. I’m a nosy parker, always wanting to know what’s going on and impatient to keep moving. And that’s when I saw it – a line of armed vehicles with half a dozen tanks coming towards us down the road.
My first I thought was that this was a bit of luck. They are French, and all we have to do is pull over to one side and let them pass. But then I saw the Black Cross symbols on the sides and I thought that looked like trouble. When I glanced to the right, I saw this dark grey mass of figures like a swarm of ants advancing towards us across the fields. Three or four hundred German soldiers, it must have been. I was scared. I had never even seen a German, let alone hundreds of them armed to the teeth and coming towards me. And that’s when I knew we were in a terrible mess.
Everything was wrong. Alone on this road, we had no ammunition, no troops with us. We had no proper firearms, no anti-tank rifles; we had nothing. There was nobody to help us; nobody to tell us what to do. Our officer, who was 2nd Lieutenant and a territorial (and I’m not sure what he knew about anything) was the only armed person with us. He disappeared. What happened to him I don’t know; but we were left to face our fate alone.
We tried to get off the road but all that happened was our trucks dropped down the gully and stayed there. The convoy was now caught in the middle of this mass of enemy troops. Terrifying. Pony said, ‘Grab your helmet and rifle and get out.’ The first and only time I had heard him give an order. I did what he said, put on my steel helmet, grabbed my rifle and, edging the door open, stepped down on to the road.
I was so scared that I dropped my rifle and it went under the truck. No bloody use anyway as I had no ammunition. I knew I couldn’t fire back in self defence against this lot even if I had had any ammunition. Hopeless. And then all hell broke out as the Germans opened fire. I threw myself down on my stomach on the side of the road, half under the front of my truck, half in the gully. I lay there absolutely still with my face in the dirt of the road.
I lay there for five or ten minutes, or maybe it was only a matter of seconds. Yet it felt like a lifetime as I blocked out the noise and the fear by thinking of anything else but this horror. I thought of Mum checking the blackout curtains in the shop; Lily sewing buttons on a new blouse; Alfred mending a broken chair at his bench in the shed; Elsie cooking up some nice chops for Joe’s tea; and Ronnie joking with his army mates in a bar somewhere safe behind enemy lines. God, what would happen when they read the words ‘Killed in action’? All I could hear was the rat-tat-tatting of machine gun fire and the screams. It was a terrible sound, the sound of men yelling out, crying in pain, gasping for breath and dying.
There were Germans firing at us from the other side of the road, lying on top of field ambulances. I turned my head slightly to the side and saw the nearest man to me, only a few feet away. He looked as though he had been cut in half by a machine gun. Shocking sight, all ripped open. Bloody bits of flesh and guts spilling out on the road. He was lying with his head looking towards me, eyes staring blankly and his face was white as though covered in flour. No longer a human being, just some bit of rubbish a butcher had thrown away.
Then it went very quiet. I almost stopped breathing, listening for a sound. Waiting for something to happen. Nothing. And I just lay there, my forehead pressing deeper into the rough stony surface. It was obvious to me that this was our day, our time had come.
So I had it in my mind to get it over and done with quick. Take my helmet off and sit up then they could get a good view of me. They couldn’t miss me and I would be shot in the head. That was what I wanted. A nice clean shot through the head. So I lifted my head up and strained an inch or two to get a look. I could see more bodies around and I thought I was the only one left alive. I turned round on my stomach to face the Germans and took my steel helmet off to get it over with and closed my eyes.
A voice called me from somewhere, ‘Chas, Chas, are you all right?’ It was the Sergeant.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I think I’m OK.’
