A series of wartime adventures, or misadventures, from World War Two, involving my dad, Thomas (Tom) Barbour McNeish.

INTRODUCTION

My heroes are all those young men who were conscripted or volunteered to stop a virus that was sweeping across Europe some eighty years or so ago. Each and every one of them knew the risk and that their chances of not surviving were considerable. While I feature my dad’s exploits, I do not do that to memorialise him more than anyone else, but through his story, to remind people what he and so many others did to rescue our freedom and more importantly, to pay tribute to the thousands who paid the ultimate sacrifice in that endeavour.

The stories that follow are from such heroes, soldiers who fought, were captured and became Prisoners of War in World War Two. They relate to their front line exploits; raw, honest and unabridged. While my main motivation springs from the experiences of my dad, Thomas Barbour McNeish, (Tom), 4th Battalion, ‘Seaforth Highlanders', I have attempted to bring a broader perspective by included stories and thoughts from two other soldiers who fought in the same war theatre as my dad and who were also captured.

The other two soldiers I refer to are; George Wedgbury (George), 1st Lothian and Border Yeomanry and Don Smith (Don), 2nd Battalian, Seaforth Highlanders.

The tales of my dad are as remembered by my younger brother and myself. The others are the written memoirs of one and the direct verbal testimony of the other.

My narrative will cover their experiences, from the beginning of their war until they arrive back home. If a snippet appears from another source, I will name that source.

I will separate their war into four sections;

From Cordwainer in Scotland to soldier in France,

Boots, Barges and Bouregh Waggons,

Existing in a Stalag,

Death March to freedom, for some.

Part one;

From Cordwainer in Scotland to soldier in France

Early Life

Tom, our dad, was born in Lesmahagow, Scotland in 1919, into a coal mining family. He had five siblings. The family moved to Denny, a small industrial town in Stirlingshire, where my paternal Grandfather sought work in the local coal mine. Tom was still a young boy. His mum, my paternal grandmother, died in 1934 aged just 45 years. My grandad married again, giving my brother and me, a step granny.

This brought about Tom’s first misadventure. His step mother seems to have ‘some issue’ with her step family, if not them all, certainly with him and his older brother Jim.

She attempted to murder both of them by putting poison in their packed lunches. Dad would have been 13 or 14 years old by then and his elder brother Jim, maybe 16 or 17 years old.

Her attempt to ‘move them on’ failed and she was incarcerated in the local Asylum, as it was called way back then, for five years.

I have no recollection of ever meeting my step gran and have only one fleeting memory of meeting my paternal grandad.

Despite this set back, Tom went on to start an apprenticeship as a shoe maker (Cordwainer). A trade he stayed in for the rest of his life. His elder brother Jim, left home not long after the incident referred to and joined the regular army.

In 1939, a few months before Tom’s 20th birthday, war with Germany was looking inevitable.

Becoming a Soldier

Not long before war was declared, Tom walked a few miles from his home in Denny to a nearby recruiting centre in Stenhousemuir and signed on the dotted line to become a soldier in the 4th Battalion, Seaforth Highlanders. One of the oldest Scottish Infantry Regiments in the British Army.

When asked years later why he chose the Army, rather than the Air Force or the Royal Navy his answer was typical of the man;

If I am a sailor and the Captain wants to win a Victoria Cross, I will have to go with him. In the Army, I can duck. Oh, and I cannot fly.

In January 1940, after a few months training at the regimental HQ, Fort George in Inverness-shire, Tom and his Seaforth colleagues, 2nd and 4th Battalions, alighted troop trains in Inverness and headed to Southampton, then by troopship to Le Havre in France, as part of the British Expeditionary Force, (BEF). Their aim was to ‘take on’ Hitler’s marauding army.

If they thought being in France would take them into balmy mild weather, they were to be sadly mistaken. The winter of 1940 in France was exceptionally cold. Water froze in their vehicle radiators, drinking water froze in the bottles and armoured vehicles froze to their transporters, requiring the use of blow lamps to free them.

Once in France they joined the other Scottish ‘line’ infantry regiments, including the Black Watch, Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders, the Gordon Highlanders and the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, supported by many other specialised units, including the Royal Horse Artillery (RHA), the 23rd Field Regiment, Signals, the 1st Lothian and Border Yeomanry and more, to form the 51st Highland Division, simply known as the 51st. They were led by Major-General V.M. Fortune.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/51st_(Highland)_Division.

In the British Army, a Division comprises two or more Brigades and typically can have as many as forty-thousand troops. The 51st was not as big as that, but it did have more than ten thousand troops.

The 51st were spread out across the north of France. Dad found himself in the Metz area, where they were positioned along France’s border with Luxenbourg and Germany to firm up the Maginot Line. (A series of concrete fortification and other obstacles built by France in the 1930’s to hinder a German invasion of France).

In these early few months, the various units were moved about a lot, dug in, waited, re-deployed, dug in, waited, re-deployed again and on and on. A period referred to as ‘the phoney war’.

After the war my dad used to say, with a touch of cynicism;
‘we had 100 bullets and a rifle, but we were Scottish so we thought we were ready to take on the might of the ‘battle hardened’ German Army’.

Then it was real.

Towards the middle of May, the German Forces invaded France through Belgium, outflanking the Maginot Line by skirting round it to the west. It was sudden and fast. The majority of the 51st were outflanked by that manoeuvre and isolated from the rest of the BEF. They were ordered to fight on, under the direct command and orders of the French High Command, specifically, the French Third Army, led by General De Gaulle. It was hoped that would encourage the French to fight on.

Some have opined that another reason to keep the 51st fighting in France, was to keep the German Army divided and, by doing so, reduce the pressure on the main bulk of British and Allied Forces who were retreating from the battlefield to get back to Britain via the French port of Dunkirk.

By the 10th June 1940, things were looking bad for the 51st. The majority of the British Expeditionary Force, some three hundred and forty thousand strong, had already fled France through Dunkirk, between 26 May and 4 June (Operation Dynamo) and were back in Britain, leaving the ten thousand or so troops of the 51st in France. Many of these troops had no idea that Dunkirk had happened. They were however aware that things were changing and not for the better. One ‘wag’ suggested that the 51st, now commanded by a French General, had become, ‘sacrificial lambs’.

They were ordered to head for the port of Le Havre, where a flotilla of naval ships and small craft would transport them back to Britain. Ironically, the same French port many had arrived at a few, disastrous, months earlier. This withdrawal went under the codename, ‘Operation Cycle’.

The British War Cabinet was kept up to date of their progress as they moved south along the Somme corridor, by means of regular ‘classified’ communiqués from senior officers in the field.

These communiqués, now declassified have been prepared for public viewing by the Historical Section of the Cabinet in a document entitled;

‘The Fighting in the Saar and South of the Somme’.

Following is a small part from that official document, dated 10 June 1940. It only covers a day or two, a minuscule part of a war that ranged over the whole of Europe and lasted the best part of five years;

“10 June - 51 Division - Beginning of Withdrawal”

‘The movement of troops began after nightfall on 9th June and continued through the hours of darkness.

The bridges over the rivers Arques and Eaulne were blown and the 1st Lothian and Border Yeomanry moved back through Arques and St Aubin to Longeuil (M. 1366) and Flainville (M. 0965). The enemy lost no time in following up the withdrawal from the east and soon made contact on the Béthune river line.

The 4th Seaforth (152 Bde) defending the rail and river crossings of the Béthune at Arques La Bataille came under heavy mortar fire about 10.30 hrs. From this time onward the Germans tried hard to effect a crossing but the stubborn resistance of the Seaforth, combined with the accurate fire of 1 R.H.A. Regt. kept them at bay. Enemy transport was set on fire and parties of motorised infantry were shelled effectively as they left their trucks. When the enemy at last succeeded in getting close to the bridges the posts of the Seaforth were withdrawn; but the R.H.A. guns were then able to open up on parties of Germans who endeavoured to repair one bridge. These were driven off after suffering many casualties. The Seaforth continued to endure mortar fire but about 18.00 hrs enemy activity died down, not only here but on the flanks of the battalion.’

Many if not all ‘official’ documents tend to be influenced by political propaganda, issues of national security and, dare I suggest, theories from some who were nowhere near the action.

Being in possession of the memoirs and hitherto, unknown stories from front line soldiers of the 51st Highland Division, who fought and suffered in the same arena and time referred to in the official narrative, it is my wish their stories may bring a reality to that period of the war in a way the typed words of an Official Documents cannot. What follows therefore is not about strategies, nor coloured by politics or theories, just actual, front line experiences.

I will start with dad.

Tom’s first introduction to real combat came on an early summer’s morning in an apple orchard close to a small stream. He and a colleague, were a Bren gun team, set up for the night in a shallow, self dug, firing pit.

In the predawn they heard some distant thumps coming from somewhere in front of their position, followed a short time later by a series of matching explosions to their rear. One of the ‘squaddies’, slang for soldiers, shouted to the sergeant, ‘that was too close for comfort Sarge’ , will you get in touch with ‘battalion’ and get them to ‘cease firing until they get their range sorted out’.

When the sergeant said,

‘I do not speak German’,

the cold realisation came over them; this was real, they were under enemy fire!

Bren Gun:

“Bren Machine Gun was a British adaptation of a Czech light machine gun. The name, Bren was an acronym from Brno, the town where the Czech gun was made and Enfield where the British version was manufactured.”

A later incident involving Tom, somewhere in the Abbeville area, showed how rules dreamt up in peacetime did not pass the ‘smell’ test of actual warfare. A few Bren guns were positioned in front of and protecting a Royal Horse Artillery (R.H.A.) battery. They were spread out along a long ridge looking down over sloping ground to a forested area, where it was suspected German troops were secreted. On command, the battery of British Bren guns along the ridge began firing into the forest. In keeping with the rules laid out in the field manual, every fifth bullet had to be a tracer round. The effect of a stream of brightly lit tracer rounds, while visually pleasing, was strategically disastrous, as the position of every Bren gun was revealed to the enemy. The response was obvious. Shortly after the Bren guns opened fire, a return cluster of heavy mortar rounds bracketed the machine gun positions. The Bren guns fell silent. After repositioning the guns, Tom and his colleagues spent the rest of the day removing all the tracer rounds from their ammunition belts.

Said field manual also contained rules for the use of mortars. It insisted that for every five mortar rounds fired, three had to be harmless smoke rounds, one had to be phosphorous and one could be high explosive. Smoke and phosphor rounds hardly intimidated the enemy. It seems the German rules of engagement came from a different field manual. They dispensed with the niceties and like serious professionals pounded dad’s section with explosive rounds only.

George Wedgbury of the 1st Lothian and Border Yeomanry, drove a Bren Gun Carrier, a light armoured tracked vehicle, commonly known as a Universal Carrier. The ‘1st Lothian’ was historically a cavalry regiment, but in WW2, a mechanised regiment. Much of his war at this time was in support of the Seaforth battalions.

I will now relate, using his actual words from small section of his typed, but unpublished memoirs, The Real Fighting Begins, about one of his encounters with the enemy, near Abbeville as they attempted to get south to Le Havre;

‘Under cover of darkness, our troop, number 4, with three carriers (Bren Gun) and nine men, moved into a small wood between the two squadrons,(‘A’ and ‘C’). Regimental Headquarters was a few miles behind us in a dense wood. During my guard duty that night I was distracted by a terrible smell. In the morning we moved forward and about fifty yards from our post and came across a crashed and burnt out German aircraft. It must have crashed a few days before because the pilot, who must have been alive for a while, had crawled some distance away from the aircraft. He was a mass of maggots, hence the smell; we buried him and put a small wooden cross at the site.

Burying a fallen enemy. Drawing by George Wedgbury of the 1st Lothian and Border Yeomanry

Just as dawn was breaking on the third morning, the silence was shattered by the sound of machine gun fire from the direction of the village where ‘C’ Squadron was. (Bray les Mareuill) I remember thinking, ‘that’s not a Bren Gun, sounds like a Tommy Gun’; the Germans were equipped with these.

The Tommy Gun was properly titled the, ‘Thomson Submachine Gun’. It was patented in 1920 by an American, John T. Thompson. It weighed almost 10 pounds (4.5 kg) empty and fired .45-calibre ammunition. The magazine was either a circular drum that held 50 or 100 rounds or a box that held 20 or 30 rounds.

After a few minutes of machine gun fire, the big guns started and we could see that ‘C’ Squadron was being attacked.

The Lieutenant ordered Sergeant Brown, gunner Sam Jones and I to take him in a carrier and find out what was happening at ‘C’ Squadron. We got to the village to find them under heavy attack. The Lieutenant said he would stay with them and ordered us to go back to the wood and join our colleagues. When we got back we found that the Germans had moved in and our troops had retreated from there and rejoined ‘A’ Squadron.

Sergeant Brown, Sam and I, had hidden our kit in the wood when we left there earlier. Now there were Germans all over the place. Sergeant Brown had married the week before the move to France and had only a few days with his bride before we sailed. Since we got to France, he received letters, almost weekly, from his wife. The letters that meant so much to him were in his kit, hidden in the wood. He told us to lie low until he got them. He was gunned down and died before he got to them.

There was nothing we could do for him. We were now in danger and our route to ‘A’ Squadron was blocked so we had no choice but to get out of there and return to ‘C’ Squadron. Bullets pinged off our carrier as we entered the village but we were not hit. We found Lieutenant Dundas and explained what had happened. Our situation was perilous, so the order was given for us to evacuate our position and head back to join ‘A’ Squadron. As we passed the spot where Sergeant Brown had been killed, we were fired on again. It was too dangerous to make an attempt to retrieve his body so we just kept moving as quickly as we could. We got through unscathed and joined ‘A’ Squadron’.

Risking all for love. Drawing by George Wedgbury of the 1st Lothian and Border Yeomanry

The German onslaught continued over the next few hours and by the time it eased off, I was the only surviver from the four who had set out together on that lovely summer day in the Bren Gun carrier. Sergeant Brown, Sam and Lieutenant Dundas were all dead.

It was a beautiful morning, not a day one should have to die, but as it turned out, quite a few did just that.

Don Smith of the 2nd Battalion, Seaforth Highlanders was also in the vicinity of Abbeville, part of a Bren gun detachment situated to the south of a densely forested area. Their role was to guard a crossroads and support troop carrying lorries making their way south to Le Havre, ahead of Rommel’s Panzer divisions, who were hell bent on cutting them off.

Don and his team had been holding that position for a few hours with little to report; What follows are his words;

“Suddenly, out of the forest came the enemy. Both on foot and in armoured vehicles, including tanks. I remember thinking,

‘The Bren gun is an accurate weapon. But it has no spread, just direct fire. It will be useless if they start firing shells at us.’

Then the German tanks opened fire. We had no chance. We were completely outgunned. My friend George (not George Wedgbury) was hit and killed. We had been friends since our schooldays and joined up together. I could do nothing for my friend and with our gun destroyed and under heavy fire from the approaching Germans and cut off from the Battalion. We did the only thing we could. We moved out. After a few hours we caught up with some of the Battalion. I had been wounded, not too bad, I was still mobile. I was taken to the field first aid station where my injuries were treated. Soon afterward I was transferred to a field ambulance and joined a group heading south.”

Target Practice:

Returning to Tom and his first close up encounter with the enemy, not far south of Abbeville, near Arques La Bataille, on the banks of the Béthune river, a few miles inland from Dieppe. His group was holding a farm building when enemy troops attacked them. As they fired their rifles and Bren guns at the on-coming German troops, the returning machine gun fire was more intense than their’s, making the tiles on the farmhouse’s roof dance and shatter with the impacts. Dad’s unit stayed firm and after a brief and intense fire fight, the Germans pulled back and dad’s platoon moved on.

A short time later Tom again saw the enemy, this time seriously ‘close up’ and personal.

The Allied troops were in lorries being moved to a position up river from Arques La Bataille. Without warning their convoy came under heavy mortar fire. They first became aware when the leading truck was blown up and landed on its side on the road, blocking the convoy’s progress. To use dad’s on words, ‘We were like ducks in a shooting gallery’.

Mortar and rifle fire rained down on them. He was in the second truck, it had crashed off the road into a ditch and was being strafed by heavy gunfire. Mortar shells were exploding all around. A lot of his colleagues were being hit. He was powerless and had lost his rifle in the confusion. He took the only course open to him and dived out into a ditch on the opposite side from the source of the gunfire. He took cover for a short while as he worked out what to do. Then he saw German soldiers advancing out of the trees on the opposite of the road and moving in on the trucks, shooting soldiers as they closed in. Dad was convinced he was going to be shot. He did not have a weapon. He scrambled out of the ditch into a wheat field that rose away from the road and over a small hill.

He crawled for a while, trying to keep hidden by the crops. With bullets hitting the ground all around he was sure it was only a matter of time before he would be shot so he decided to get up and run. As he ran, bullets continued to hit the ground about him and some ‘zinged’ past his head.

He looked round at one point and saw four or five German troops lined up in the road taking pot shots at him and laughing. It looked like they were having a bet as to which of them was the best shot as each in turn fired at him. Bullets continued to hit the ground around him and zip past him. He made it over the hill and into cover, eventually getting back to the British lines.

Dad told us that gunfire sounds different, depending on where you are as the shot is fired. It can sound like a heavy thud when at the safe end, the trigger end, of the gun. However, when on the receiving end, assuming the bullet misses you, but passes close by, it sounds like more like a loud ‘crack’ followed by a meld of ripping cloth and the angry buzzing of a giant bee.

He had no idea how he survived that day. Divine intervention he mused?

(Author’s note: I was once at the target end of the shot from a heavy calibre rifle. Dad’s description was accurate.)

Years later, as he and a couple of his wartime colleagues, chatted about their experiences over a glass of whisky in the comfort of his living room, they agreed it was not clear to them if there was a plan. To their recollections all they were doing, in their platoons or sometimes larger companies, was constantly engaging in firefight after firefight with a much larger and better equipped enemy that was quickly encircling them. That latter part was not known to many front line soldiers at the time, as they did not have the big picture, and many had no idea where they were going. They were just fighting for survival.

We rejoin Don and his colleagues of the 2nd Battalion, Seaforth Highlanders. They had been under attack since Abbeville with a large contingent of German forces, including tanks and hundreds of heavily armed Panzer Division foot soldiers hard on their heels as they moved west. Many of his colleagues perished during this phase of the war. They were on the outskirts of a small town called, Veules les Roses, some four miles or so east of St Valery en Caux when the big attack came.

To quote Don;

‘We had no chance. We were exhausted, hungry and running low on ammunition, it was hopeless, but we gave it all we could. There were tanks and everything coming across, infantry the lot. All we could do was just follow the ground, put our backs into it, get ready just to keep it’. Well, as I say; ‘shells started coming over like, you know, one of these high explosives blew up over the top of us. That's when I got that piece in the head, the piece in the back and lost part of a hand. That's what finished it off’.

‘I will give you a picture that was taken at Fort George sometime before we headed for France. All the boys in it were my friends from The Seaforth Highlanders, and we all went to war together. George the wee guy kneeling in the middle of the font row was my lifelong friend, we were school chums and joined together’.

2nd Battalion Seaforth Highlander friends during pre war training at Fort George, Inverness shire. Photograph gifted to me by Don Smith.

Everyone of my friends in the photograph was killed between Abbeville and Veules les Roses. I was the only one who survived’.

“What a pretty name for a village steeped in the blood of my friends”.

Prelude to Surrender

This last section of Part One will be in the form of various experiences and quotes from the soldiers involved. I do not attribute the content to any particular voice. Their memories and experiences were pretty similar. I will also include another ‘snippet’ from the declassified document referred to earlier.

Quotes from various sources;

‘We heard that Rommel had made it to Le Havre, we were cut off. We were told to make for St Valery en Caux’.

‘We were told that the Navy was waiting for us off the coast at St Valery and that it would protect us by firing their big guns over us into the German ranks’.

‘Rations were short. We lived off the land. We were exhausted and hungry’.

‘On reaching the outskirts of the town, we saw no sign of the promised naval barrage or of air support. We headed down into the town. It was on fire and being shelled as we moved in’.

‘We were waiting just outside St Valery late on June 11th. Sometime in the early morning of the 12th we were ordered to destroy or vehicles, firearms and ammunition. It was nearly all over for us. Then we marched toward the town, perhaps a mile or so outside, we could see it was ablaze. We passed dead French and British soldiers and dead horses and their vehicles. They were all over the place. Too many to count. I have never felt so low, so worthless, so defeated. I will never forget that night’.

‘As we entered the town it got worse, it was absolute chaos, vehicle ablaze. Ammunition trucks were exploding with bullets ripping out from them. It was dangerous. The streets were filled with soldiers, guns and transport. It reminded me of the cram as crowds piled out from a football match’.

‘We tried to get to the beach and if lucky get on a boat. The German troops in the overlooking cliffs kept up a fusillade of machine gun fire into the town’.

‘It was dark when we got to the harbour, sometime before dawn. We could see a small ship waiting offshore. A sailor told us that the harbour was shallow and we would have to wait till the tide came in. After dawn we were told that the ship had been sunk. We were stranded’.

‘We could not get away that way so we turned back into the town. Then, to add to the misery it started to rain heavily. We moved out a bit and found shelter in a stonemason’s yard. We were thinking of moving off again, hoping that maybe this time we could get on a boat. As we were leaving a German tank pulled up and so we became prisoners of war’.

‘General Fortune had been hatching a plan to attack the German held high ground, in an attempt to relieve the firing on the beaches and perhaps allow time for ships to get close to the shore, however it became obvious the French forces were not going to help. White flags were seen flying in their positions. Also, it is reported that even earlier when under attack by the 7th Panzer Division, the French panicked and, officers and men, were seen throwing away their weapons and streaming from their positions towards the beach waving makeshift white flags’.

‘The shelling bombardment eased for a while Apparently Rommel wanted to give us space to surrender. Then we were told to smash up our rifles and throw the ammunition away. Some French soldiers had already started doing that’.

‘We were then told the General Fortune had given the order to surrender and if inclined we were free to try and make our own way home’.

Tom on being captured;

We had reached the outskirts of St Valery en Caux. A lot of our guys didn’t even get there.

A German tank appeared a few hundred yards from us, heading towards our position. One of the Lieutenant’s commandeered a Bren Gun carrier and set off to intercept the tank. We could see him firing the Bren gun at it. The tank stopped and fired two or three times, hitting the carrier. I think they were all killed. Our sergeant told us to take cover and try not to get killed and he headed into town.

The tank had stopped by then and just sat at a junction in the road.

A while later the Sergeant came back and told us we were about to surrender and if any of us wanted to escape , then we were free to try. Three of us headed towards the beach, but there was no way out from there.

We joined some others and tried heading onto the high ground where we met others heading back our way. It was hopeless really. We had nothing left; no ammunition, no food, no spirit, we were done.

Another Officer saw us and told us to get into town. I remember hearing a bugle sounding somewhere and I wondered what was going on. A wee while later I was told that General Fortune had surrendered.

We were Prisoners of War.

My thoughts immediately went back home and I wondered how it had all come to this.

George on being captured;

We had fought all the way to St Valery and when we got to the outskirts we were ordered to take up defensive positions and dig in. I thought, ‘we are fighting on’. But we were not fighting on. We were ordered to get into the town.

We got there about three o’clock on the morning of the 12th June, 1940. The town was completely full of soldiers, thousands of them. It was so packed. I remember thinking, ‘its like a football crowd’. A few of us found some shelter in a stone mason’s yard. It was full of tombstones and marble slabs. I lay on one and fell asleep. I woke to the sound of machine gun fire and thought the German’s were wiping us all out. Not for an instant did the thought of being taken alive entered my head. A Sergeant Major appeared and got us to dig in and for the second time I thought we fighting to the last.

Then nothing happened. I thought it was eerily quiet, broken by the occasional sound of machine guns firing. I had no idea what was going on. Then, about ten o’clock that morning I heard the sound of a bugle. For an instant I thought it was rallying us to fight on. A few minutes later the Sergeant Major in charge of our operations told us we had surrendered and ordered us to dump all our weapons and ammunition, if we had any left.

It was June 12th 1940 and after a month of fierce fighting, in which more than half of the Bonnie Wee Lothians were killed or wounded I was a prisoner of war.

I bumped into one of my company and said, ‘We’re in a hell of a mess now Harpo!’ He replied, ‘Aye, all through the bloody Froggies.’ We were taken to a field and over the next few hours I watched thousands of men, bedraggled, tired and beaten, being marched in. We were all searched and left in the field, surrounded by armed guards.

I fell asleep in the warm sun, as did many others. We were exhausted. I, like the rest of us, had hardly more than four hours or so of unbroken sleep for weeks.

About four that afternoon we were mustered again and marched to another field about a mile away. The Germans brought us some food, sour bread and lard. There must have been about 30,000 prisoners, French and Brits. There was not enough food for us all. After a bit of shoving and wrestling, I managed to get a bit to eat. Most did not. We settled down again and three of us ‘cooried doon’ for the night under my greatcoat.

Don on being captured;

Don had received non life threatening injuries when wounded near Abbeville That incident meant he was removed from the ‘front’ to receive medical treatment. Don was being moved toward St Valery in a ‘First Aid’ marked vehicle when it was fired upon and hit, resulting in Don being wounded again, this time his wounds were more serious. He received a severe head wound and lost two fingers from his right hand.

He stumbled and crawled from that incident into St Valery and found a large house with a walled garden. He opened the gate, crawled inside and lay in the garden, an orchard, shielding from the action that was happening outside.

The young daughter of the house found Don and told her parents. Don was nursed and looked after till discovered by the Germans who removed him to a field hospital and later, due to his severe injuries to Bégin Military hospital, at Saint Mandé in the Val-de-Marne in the outskirts of Paris

Stories From World War Two - Part One; From Cordwainer in Scotland to soldier in France.

Stories From World War Two - Part Two; Boots, Barges and Bouregh Waggons.

The Rain Goose