DUNKIRK
“The first eventful date in my army career was the eve of the final evacuation from Dunkirk, when I was sent to the O.P. at Galley Hill to help the cook. I had only been in the Army twenty-four hours when it happened. Each news bulletin from BBC told an increasingly depressing story.
Things were indeed very grave. For days previously we could hear the distant sound of explosions and heavy gunfire from across the Channel. Sitting in a crude wood O.P. heaped with earth at two in the morning with a Ross Rifle with only five rounds made you feel so bloody useless in relation to what was going on the other side. Five rounds of ammo, and that was between the whole O.P.
The day of the actual Dunkirk evacuation the Channel was like a piece of polished steel. I’d never seen a sea so calm. One would say it was miraculous. I presume that something like this had happened to create the “Angel of Mons” legend.
That afternoon Bombardier Andrews and I went down for a swim. It would appear we were the only two people on the south coast having one. With the distant booms, the still sea, and just two figures on the landscape, it all seemed very very strange. We swam in silence. Occasionally, a squadron of Spitfires or Hurricanes headed out towards France.
I remember so clearly, Bombardier Andrews standing up in the water, putting his hands on his hips, and gazing towards where the B.E.F. was fighting for its life. It was the first time I’d seen genuine concern on a British soldier’s face; “I can’t see how they’re going to get ’em out,” he said.
We sat in the warm water for a while. We felt so helpless.
Next day the news of the “small armada” came through on the afternoon news. As the immensity of the defeat became apparent, somehow the evacuation turned it into a strange victory. I don’t think the nation ever reached such a feeling of solidarity as in that week at any other time during the war.
Three weeks afterwards, a Bombardier Kean, who had survived the evacuation, was posted to us. “What was it like,” I asked him.
“Like son? It was a fuck up, a highly successful fuck up.”
******
In the months to come we enlivened many a lonely military camp. We saw life. In Upper Dicker, we played for a dance-cum-orgy. Couples were disappearing into the tall grass having it off and then coming back to the dance. God knows how many Coitus Interrupti the Hesitation Waltz caused, but we heard screams from behind the trees.
Music has strange effects on drunks : one lunatic ripped open his battle-dress, pointed to a scar on his chest, and shouted “Dunkirk! You bloody coward.” He had a face made from red plasticine by a child of three, that or his parachute didn’t open. “Do you hear me, you bloody coward. Dunkirk …” he kept saying. I’ve no idea what he meant. I confused him by giving him the ladies’ spot prize.
A fight broke out with the Canadians. They were all massive. “How do you get such huge men?” I asked one.
“We go in the forest, shake the trees and they fall out,” he said.
A worried officer rushed up.
“Can you play ‘The Maple Leaf Forever’?”
“No sir, after an hour I get tired.”
“You’re under arrest,” he said.
In despair we played The King, shouted ‘Everyone back to their own beds’, and departed.
