Corporal
R A Wilson
We got back to billets to find the Company packed and on an hour’s notice to move. Kit bags and valises, the large packs, were handed in. It was battle order.
The bugle seemed to blow incessantly, the jingle which went with each call was pretty foul and for orderly officer, sergeant or corporal, worse than most - only the number of the last ‘G’s indicated which one was wanted.
Once the troops were ready, they soon became bored. They’d spent several hours the previous evening, loading magazines for the brens, arranging how the 2” Mortar ammo was to be carried, who’d take the boxes of magazines and so and so.
There was little to be seen from the farmyard for it was 100 yards away from the main street, itself no major highway, but there seemed more traffic than usual. Indeed, since there usually was none, a few cars seemed a lot. Once in a while, one turned up our lane and it always had a mattress on its roof, as well as all sorts of family goods strapped on it.
Each time I reported to the Company office in answer to the bugle call, Captain Fallowfield-Cooper asked how the men were getting on and I reported honestly, that they were restless. Then a pay parade took place and the restlessness increased. Nothing is more certain to upset a soldier’s peace of mind, than money in his pocket and no means of spending it! An absence of razor blades, soap, tooth powder, took on an immense importance and when this was mentioned to the Company Commander, he said I could let out three at a time, any others being only able go when the first ones were back. Three out of a hundred and twenty, if anything, made things worse. So then, I was told to arrange to buy some bottled beer from an estaminet, of which surprisingly for so small a village, there were three.
The O.C. lent me the money and, with a couple of volunteers, we started to carry the crates back to billets. As if by written script, the D.R. with orders to move arrived just as we’d finished, so the operation was reversed and the estaminet owners retook the beer into stock and gave me the O.C.’s money back, with every appearance of goodwill. Soon the trucks were loaded and we moved off, maybe two hundred yards and stopped once more. Too far, fortunately, for the troops to think of beer from the estaminet!
The road we’d halted on, being somewhat less minor than that where our billets stood, the traffic coming towards us was nose to tail and, if it hadn’t been for our trucks, would have taken both sides of the road. The vehicles were various and all stuffed and overflowing with families and goods. All had a mattress over the roof, not as I’d first thought, for eventual comfort, but as protection from the bullets of strafing aircraft. During our hold-up, the troops gradually climbed down from the trucks and stood in groups chatting or, more likely, bellyaching!
Then, right opposite our first truck, a car came to a halt. An ancient Minerva, the Belgian equivalent to a Rolls Royce, its radiator boiling and a back wheel locked solid. And a tail of traffic back to Brussels and beyond also came to a halt and with one motion, hooted. All the horn-blowing did, was to further fluster the young girl driving the broken-down car and the noise was appalling. My best French wasn’t really necessary, for the girl had been a nurse in St. George’s Hospital and her English was quite good.
The Company Commander said the M.T. blokes could help her, but when we were ordered to move, we’d have to go. I suppose, in her anxious state, she’d been driving with the handbrake on, for the offside rear wheel was locked solid.
Whilst the M.T. blokes hammered and the other cars honked, she told me that as soon as the Germans attacked Belgium, she’d rushed from London to get her parents, a doctor and his wife, away and back to England. The M.T. blokes had got the wheel off and were freeing the brake shoes, when we had to move off. Getting the wheel back on wouldn’t have been too big a job, but I bet none of those in the queue, free to pass her when we moved, would’ve helped. But there’d be a Samaritan somewhere, probably in the more ramshackle vehicles which followed the first flood of posh ones.
We rejoined the Battalion in the late evening, brightly lit by the moon and, after the post call, a quotable, “There’s a letter from Lousie Lou.” I was able to read my four letters without further light. One said, “I’ll bet you’re glad you’re in France and not Norway.” Norway was already one of the inevitable-seeming, early war debacles and France was about to become another.
I’d also had a green envelope. A letter censored at base, instead of at the Battalion, which I’d used and managed to get off. It said that they’d have heard the news (it was written to my parents) but that they need not worry, as it hadn’t affected me much. Nor had it, but it did the next day!
Whether tiredness caught up with me, I don’t know. But I can’t remember when we moved again, though next morning found us rolling along once more in cattle trucks.
The French cattle trucks had a set of steps at one end which led up to a small box-like shelter, used by a shunter when a truck was given a push, well down a siding by the engine and scuttered along on its own, till the shunter brought it to a halt by applying the brake. At a stop, dressed just in trousers and shirt sleeves for the weather was hot, I left the rather smelly atmosphere of the truck itself and perched in the shunter’s shelter. It was very pleasant, the country rolled by at a leisurely pace and just once every now and then, a train went by in the opposite direction, which was both noisy and smoky. The train stopped once more in a sizeable goods yard with maybe six tracks. We stood on a central track towards the edge. A train of civvies, many it seemed young men of military age, stood level with us. Then, with the usual clanking and grinding, it slowly slipped away. The sky was blue and dotted with many fluffy white clouds, which sailed very slowly towards the east. I left my little box and lay down on the truck roof. All seemed spring-like, warm and peaceful. A voice from the opened doors below said, “Christ! Look at these bleeding bombers!”
On my leave, not many weeks before embarkation, I’d seen a film, “THE LION HAS WINGS”. In it, the R.A.F. chased German planes from the skies until the Jerry turned tail at the mere sight of a Spitfire or Hurricane. “Achtung Spitfeuer!” was their favourite expression it appeared, whereupon they about-turned and rushed for home.
So I opened my eyes, with the sure knowledge that the planes would be ours and seeing them, closed them again. Of course they were ours. Then aircraft recognition stirred and my eyes opened wide, the first three bombs were already on the way down, aimed from just the right place. They had hit us alright! I went from the top of the train to underneath between the wheels, without touching anything on the trip and easily beat the bombs. They fell nearby, as had seemed certain.
Behind the engine and tender was one civvy passenger coach, wherein were the officers, and ours was the first cattle truck behind it. The engine was derailed and 8 platoon’s officer killed. Captain Fallowfield-Cooper, braving bombs and machine gun bullets, walked down the train urging everyone to remain in cover.
He was soon hit in the back and evacuated, eventually losing a kidney. But our loss was great, for we had much need of him in the next days. During a respite in the bombing, I dived back into the truck to get my tin hat, though pretty useless, their absence made one feel very chill and unprotected. A couple more of the men also came in and we decided to mount a bren on its tripod for A.A. firing. One, whose name I can’t remember, actually set up the tripod and the other was tilting the gun forward as one had to, when clipping it on. I was just near the door with a couple of boxes of magazines, when a series of holes punctured the truck roof and a bomb burst nearby. The gun and the two mounting it were knocked over, I landed on the opposite side of the truck, though of course we couldn’t hear, all of us later agreed we’d said, “Sod the gun!” and dived for cover once more. Then the scream of bombs and of the whistlers on Stuka wings to make a vast noise, the roar of aircraft motors and the distant banging of A.A. shells ceased and we left cover. The engine was on its side, with a spurt of water flowing from a bullet hole in its water tank. There was dust and smoke and the distinctive smell of cordite. There were bomb craters and a French railwayman running, blood streaming from a serious-looking wound in his cheek, and yelling that he wasn’t paid to be in situations like this! And I had time to think that I supposed I was, but wasn’t much consoled by it!
Soon we were in good order, going down the tracks away from the town, until we were stopped and my band ordered to go back, clean up and retrieve arms etc. and help the stretcher bearers. It wasn’t a job we much cared for.
I didn’t remember passing it on the way out but, on going back, came to what had been the last truck of the train. It had been filled with R.E.s and had had an almost direct hit. The truck itself was still upright but had been lifted off the rails before dropping, from what height we couldn’t tell, but its wheels had landed on many of those who’d been taking cover under it. Probably, they were already dead. There was blood and small bits of meat everywhere, covering rifles, groundsheets, gas capes - everything. Indeed, all the things we’d been sent back to retrieve. Nearest, was a gore-covered rifle, which I looked at with horror but said to the chap behind me, “Pick that up.” He looked with horror too and said, “What me?” “Sure,” I said, “It’s only blood!”
We didn’t do much of our gruesome work before the planes were back and someone, whose authority I took for granted, called out, “Everyone clear off!” And we, with our meagre haul, needed no further ordering.
By the time we located the Battalion, it was in a wood with ‘A’ Company posted around as a screen. Our area had a few bushes, a bank and some rabbit holes and soon we’d tied in with our flanks, eight and nine platoons of course, and were thinking of settling down. I’d found a patch of briars, which with a bit of prodding and greatcoat thrown on, seemed likely to be a comfortable-enough bed.
Just as I was about to test it, there was an upset on our left and through the bushes, apparently in a state of near-collapse, appeared a soldier.
“We’re surrounded!” he gasped. “We’ve got to have help or we can’t hold out.” Nearly everyone looked upon the chap with astonishment, for there’d been no sound of firing at all and I’d only a few minutes before, come from there when we’d been agreeing our fields of fire. Of course the poor chap had gone off his head and was soon taken away.
Next, C.Q.M.S. Cunningham, who, in the absence of the C.S.M. had been Acting Sergeant Major, came saying, “Did you see a pump down the road?” I had, and together we walked away to get a wash. Before we’d reached it, the Stukas were back and there being a large manhole ring nearby we dived for it, resting knees under chin within it in relative comfort, till the Jerries had gone.
At the pump, we stripped to the waist, he pumped as I washed and I as he did, then we looked into our small packs for a towel.
It was good to feel clean and both of us were cheerful. My companion opened out his folded towel to give himself a vigorous rubbing and his expression changed abruptly, not surprisingly, the towel was in tatters. Looking into his pack after recovering from the shock, we found a bit of shrapnel in his mess tins, they’d stopped it from going into his back. Nevertheless, we’d not been long back when the rations turned up. Bully beef and hard tack biscuits. It was for the third time and I remembered the rabbit holes, for I used one to shove the biscuits and bully into.
Darkness soon fell and apart from the distant fires and an indescribable rustling noise, peace came with it.
Suddenly from nearby, there was an almost inaudible muttering, anxious ears strained to identify it, and then a weird howling, suddenly cut off, to be followed just when quiet seemed finally to have arrived, by more muttering and a further breath-long howl.
“What the bleedin’ hell’s that?” several voices whispered.
And no-one knew and peace returned, when once again, just as all were settled and the ears of listening sentries were straining to hear and the others were shut off not to, the whole routine was repeated.
“I’ll bloody soon see about whatever it is!” I said to soothe the others and myself, went quickly in the direction of the noise, saw a soldier on his knees, head bowed to the ground and hands cupped round his forehead and watched. The muttering started almost a whisper, “Oh God, get me out of here! Oh God! Oh God, don’t let the Germans shoot me!” Then rising and rising to the unearthly bay, “Oh God! Oooh, oooh God!”
“Shut up!” I said, “Be bloody quiet!”
He started to sob, “Don’t let the Germans shoot me!”
“Don’t worry about the Germans,” I said. “Because if you keep up that row,
I will!”
And he whimpered and another figure appeared in the moonlight, a figure of authority, “I’ll take him with me.”
They went and we were all glad and two days later, they both died and in peace and tranquility they lie with the others and maybe I was the only one to survive.