Fathers Escape from Dunkirk

Copied from handwritten letter, time of writing unknown but it had been kept for I reckon 60-70 y since it was written

It starts abruptly, like a sudden impulsive decision, maybe

I was Brigade Signal Officer, 12th Infantry Brigade and we were holding the eastern approaches to Dunkirk .

In the sand dunes behind Nieuwport, I had heard ,on an old portable radio, the BBC announce the successful completion of the  evacuation.

It was an odd feeling, like reading one’s own obituary.

Now, a final attempt was  to be made to take off the rearguard.

 .

At midnight, the main body of the three battalions  withdrew and  moved off in trucks  followed by Brigade Headquarters.

I was left with four men of my Signals section with one 8.cwt truck and the brigade’s surviving Bren carriers with orders to collect the rearguards of the three battalions who were to continue firing until 2. am

This reduced my personal chances literally to zero because by the time this task was completed, there would remain barely an hour of darkness,

We ate bully beef, dug from  the tin with the point   of a jack-knife ,and a bottle of champagne removed from a French cellar “to  prevent it’s falling into the hands of the enemy” while the guns covered the empty road and the Germans fired the white signal flares in the darkness beyond.

The rear guards came at last In small groups. Walking silently on the roadside verge  and speaking in whispers the last twenty men of the Royal Fusiliers arrived led by their  Colonel, no less, who had elected to stay with his own rear guard until the last. An entire brigade had disengaged in the darkness, without the enemy, discovering  what was afoot . In the circumstances, it was a remarkable achievement

Now speed mattered more  than caution. The clatter of the tracked carriers as they moved off was alone sufficient to give the game away. My responsibilities were reduced to five men and one 8.cwt truck. We drove as fast as darkness, shell-holes and festoons of fallen telephone wires would permit but at La Panne we could go no further. The single street was blocked with burning vehicles; houses too were on fire and German shells were falling in the village. We moved down to the beach. Seaward in the darkness an Aldiss lamp was blinking “Move West” and for perhaps half an hour we tramped westward through the sand while daylight came.

Now our situation appeared desperate . Exposed in the daylight on the open beach, still miles from such shelter as Dunkirk might afford, I knew that some way out of the situation had to be found. Opportunity presented itself in the shape of an abandoned pontoon, a clumsy punt perhaps 20 feet by 8 feet, square-ended. It was half buried in sand near the high water mark and it had a hole in the bottom about  six inches in diameter. It was too heavy for the five of us to move but at that juncture there appeared a party of about twelve Coldstream Guards, under a sergeant and with the addition of this new strength we soon had the pontoon emptied, the hole plugged with a rolled up waterproof cape and the pontoon precariously launched.

We had no oars but rifle butts served as paddles. The craft leaked abominably but steel helmets made efficient balers. Worse we were grossly overloaded and freeboard was a matter of inches but the sea was flat calm, without a ripple and we were able to make perhaps half a mile offshore.

By this time the Stukas were overhead and we attracted a burst of machine gun fire but the aim was poor.

A naval motor launch took us in tow, almost swamping us in the process and soon we  were scrambling up the side of a destroyer, HMS Ivanhoe while her multiple pom-poms fought off the Stukas ,cascades of brass cartridge cases pouring on to the steel decks.

Perhaps half an hour later three things happened in quick succession. A bomb exploded in  the ship’s engine room, all the lights went out below decks and the Coldstream Guards stole my water bottle. This might have been less serious if the water bottle had  contained water. It was filled in contravention of regulation, with brandy.

I missed it quite badly during the next hour while the Luftwaffe booted a second ship, the HMS Havant out from under my feet and made several concerted attempts to do the same with a third..

I found this hand-written account of my father’s escape from Dunkirk, just the other day .. I think it is notable more for what it leaves out than what it describes.

He eventually got back to England forty eight hours or more after the news had been announced that the evacuation was completed. His father, who was a Fleet Street journalist had already been to see my mother to inform her that her husband was “missing presumed dead”  so it was a great surprise for her to get a four word telegram the next day, “HOME SAFE, LOVE GORDON”

He was able to get leave shortly thereafter and returned to London to recuperate in their Bedford Park basement flat. My mother told me he suffered from terrifying nightmares, every night, which were principally full of images of men screaming as they floundered in a burning sea. It is interesting how he avoids, in this account, any reference to the times he spent in the sea when one and then another destroyer was hit by bombs from dive bombing Stukas.

I think it is very likely that he suffered post-traumatic stress and this coloured his life indelibly, including contributing to his death by 58 years, from cardiovascular disease. He never talked about the  war with me…but then, I knew not to ask..I think .

It makes the boy’s own adventure tone of what he did choose to record, especially ..poignant,,