For Five Shillings a Day: Personal Histories of World War II

Then, later that evening, we were on the train travelling south or south-east. Anyway the train took us as far as Laval, fortunately a proper train, not the sort the French soldiers travelled in, with was it 40 men or 8 horses? The train took us to Laval, and at Laval we met our own vehicles which took us on to the small village of St Jean sur Mayenne – Mayenne is a tributary of the Loire. It was a beautiful spot. It was at that little village that I had my first experience of champagne and Camembert cheese – one I liked and the other I couldn’t eat. We stayed there only one night and we then set off on a three-day journey up north where we eventually arrived at a little village of Chaemy in the Pas de Calais in the old First World War battlegrounds.

Once we’d settled into billets – it was a small village, we were scattered in all sorts of places, small cottages, and men were even billeted in the morgue – our first job after that was to dig gun pits on the Belgium frontier, a small place called Ask. So that was 5am reveille, our task digging gun pits and Command Post, back at 7 and next morning up again at 5.30. Our guns were 6-inch howitzers, which are pretty big things and take big holes, so it was some time before we got that job finished. When it had finished, we were in the middle of a very cold winter and life was a bit hard, but not to be compared with trenches in the First World War.

William John Campion

Our little cottage had an outside pump where the ice had to be broken off every morning, and also two cesspits, but our time in Chaemy, again, was made up with training. We had one special day when we were taken to see the Vimy Ridge Battlefield and Memorial. I don’t know whether this was to give us an idea of what to expect particularly; we found it most interesting, but we were young and had plenty of optimism, so it really didn’t teach us much about war.

The nearest town to Chaemy was Lille, a big industrial town. We were only allowed there once a fortnight, and in Lille there was very little in the way of entertainment for troops. I can’t remember seeing a canteen – we used the estaminets and cafes for a meal – but there was one other place which always struck me as being very interesting. For one thing being so unlike the English people’s conception of such a place. France, as everyone knows, had what, I think, were called “maisons de tolerance”. They were illegal really, but the French Government just turned a blind eye. These were the brothels, and the ones I’m thinking of weren’t “mucky” places. They were big houses, and when you went in there was a big room. There would be a bar and a small band, a three-piece band. The girls there would dance with any man who wanted her, and if the men didn’t want anything else that was fine, but it would help to occupy an hour quite well, and Madame, who ran the place, was a disciplinarian who insisted on the highest standard of conduct, so you see we didn’t always misbehave ourselves. We stayed in Chaemy until February, then we moved up to a suburb of Lille and were billeted in a girls’ school and we just kept on the everlasting training.’

Meanwhile Lance Bombardier Seeney tells of a shooting accident that resulted in what must have been one of the first British casualties of the war.

‘On this particular evening, it was New Year’s Eve as a matter of fact, there was a party going on. The boys were drinking in one of the huts and one of the men left the hut, obviously to go and relieve himself, and the guard, he just pointed his rifle at this chap and pressed the trigger. The silly so and so had a round there, pressed the trigger and shot this poor chap straight through the head – killed him stone dead immediately.

The following day after this tragedy I had to go with one of the drivers into Epernay to collect a coffin. In Epernay we picked up this coffin and a Union Jack and then we were told to go to a convent which had been turned into a hospital for when the casualties would be coming into that area. Anyway, this other fellow and myself, we wandered to a shed, which we’d decided must be the mortuary, and by this time the Battery MO turned up. We dragged the coffin in and we just stood by. This poor chap was lying on a table, dead with his boots still on, and the doctor told us to get him into the box, and this was the first time that I had handled a dead body. This other chap and myself, we picked up this poor fellow and put him in the box, and of course the box was too small, and if you can imagine in this eerie light – no electricity, just an oil lamp – pushing this poor chap, just as well as we could, into this box and then getting the lid on and screwing it down, and the following day the poor chap was buried. And I might add he was buried where we were. It’s understandable why the French, in that area anyhow, were very anti-war – it was just one huge cemetery after another from the First World War, thousands of crosses in all directions, and this began the new cemetery with this Number One, with this poor chap who had been killed in such tragic circumstances.

The “Phoney War” continued and, like all soldiers, we settled down to making the best of what was available. The way of living became quite easy; the spring came along, the weather became pleasant and we settled down to a nice easy war; we also had a few days leave back in the UK and the war generally was almost forgotten. But all the time those people in their recce planes above were busy day in, day out.’

The assault, when it came on 10 May 1940, involved simultaneous and overwhelming attacks from the air, with German forces advancing through Holland and Belgium. British and French forces deployed into Belgium but were soon forced to withdraw. In the meantime a major and unexpected attack by German armoured panzer divisions, advancing through the Ardennes, overcame troops guarding that sector, disgorged into France and soon reached the Channel coast behind the British lines. This, and the surrender of the Belgians on 27 May, resulted in the evacuation of the bulk of the British army from Dunkirk, completed by 4 June. France signed an armistice, on German terms, effective as from 25 June.

Lance Bombardier Seeney awoke to the fact that the war was on:

‘. . .and we were getting an awful drubbing. It was fairly evident that the Germans were very much aware of where we were, and that’s not surprising – I mentioned the recce planes – and we were very severely damaged at that time. There were quite a few casualties, but that was the way it was – it was war, and also, what was so astonishing, almost immediately the roads were chock-a-block with farmers and people coming in from the war areas and retreating towards Rheims, Epernay and the south. It was the audacity of these German aeroplanes – there was little opposition, and also remember that at that time a gaggle of 50 bombers seemed enormous. I know it was nothing like the enormous numbers towards the end of the war, but 50 bombers on the way to bomb. . . And you must remember that, as far as I was concerned, they were coming to me, little Willie. Obviously they were covering an area and they seemed to move towards the south-east, towards Rheims, and there was bombing all the way round there. And then they would come back and they would do this hedge-hopping, coming very low, and the rear gunners on these bombers having a grand old time just shooting up everything in sight. Once again it included me, and I wasn’t a very good soldier – I was quite happy to keep my head down.

Unfortunately, because of the easy way we’d been living, we’d been a bit careless and one of the bombs destroyed all our GTVs – that’s Gun Towing Vehicles – all in one swipe. We had no way of moving our guns. Also, an interesting part about this question of transport was, because of the very heavy winter that we’d passed through – and remember we weren’t accustomed to such things as freeze-ups in big motor vehicles – many were damaged with iced-up engine blocks and so on. They’d been sent back to the Service Corps people for repairs so that at that time there was a huge shortage of vehicles available to move people and things about – they were still being repaired – and I was told that this was a general situation throughout the BEF. In our case we were just one troop of four guns, and we lost their mobility in one swipe. Once again it was panic stations; nobody knew just exactly what was happening. We had certain targets at which we fired, but it was all a bit half-hearted; I suppose it was just a show of strength. After two or three days of this odd situation, news came around that we were going to retreat, we were going to retreat south of the River Aisne, which was in our area. That was fair enough; we seemed to think that would be a good idea, soldiers being what we were – we weren’t all that good. But, unfortunately, we couldn’t take our guns with us, so we just took the blocks and ammunition that was available, we blew that and off we went. We left fairly early in the day, crossed the river and continued till the evening, and there we stopped and there we were, a half battery of the Royal Artillery with no guns. We were a bit stupid.

This is rather an interesting one. They issued us with Boys rifles, and whenever I mention Boys rifles people just simply don’t know there was such a thing, but these things were called Boys rifles. I don’t mean “boys and girls” – it was just the initials of this particular rifle and it fired a .5 bullet. In other words it wasn’t like an ordinary rifle and the recoil was pretty severe, so it was necessary to get on your stomach and use it in that way. These Boys rifles were considered to be anti-tank and, when you think about it, the whole thing was once again, at that particular time of the war, pretty pathetic.

We were given a silhouette of these various German tanks and there were crosses marked on them to tell us that was the place to fire at to put them out of action. There was no question of destroying them, but we could stop them – but you needed to be a brave man. Well I know that the very thought of just waiting around for a tank to turn up so you could get a shot at it didn’t appeal to us very much. We were split up into small groups and we were told to lie around and destroy these tanks when they arrived, which they didn’t, which was just as well.

As I mentioned early on, in the first stage of retreat, we stopped and bivouacked and got ourselves comfortable and then somebody suggested – the other half of the Battery were in the area – we should borrow their GTVs and get back and retrieve these guns. Well, of course, that seemed to be a very good, bright, very dashing thing to do, and then of course the question was volunteers – “You, you and you”, the usual drill – and I found myself one of the people on the way back to where we’d just come from.

By this time, when we re-crossed the Aisne towards Guinecourt, the French had moved in with anti-tank weapons on the south side of the Aisne and were waiting for the Germans, who were close by, to arrive at the river. So our Officer decided we couldn’t hope to pick up the guns, so we backtracked and eventually rejoined our unit.’

For John Campion, manning the guns outside Lille, events following the abrupt ending of the ‘Phoney War’ were equally memorable:

‘Then on 10 May the Germans invaded the Low Countries and all was feverish activity. Infantry, light tanks were ordered up immediately to beyond the frontier. We didn’t move until three days later when we were ordered up to a place overlooking Louvain. It was intended to be part of the defensive line of the River Dyle. We got the guns into position but immediately we were ordered back; we kept going backwards with various stops until we reached the town of Templeuve, just outside Lille, so we were practically back in our old country.

There was one little incident which interested me when we were moving back from Louvain to Templeuve. We were passing through Brussels and saw a most unlikely sight: there were cavalrymen, like our own Horse Guards, but with blue cloaks, blue uniforms, plumed helmets and with beautiful black horses, and not a flicker of emotion on their faces. I couldn’t decide whether they were waiting to surrender to the Germans or just waiting to see what would happen, but anyway we carried on and eventually reached our next gun position in Templeuve. It was there we had our first casualties, not very severe, but it reminded us that this was a war. We had our Command Post in what should have been a wonderful place – it was a winery with a well-stocked cellar with all of the shelves filled with all kinds of drinks, but, not being much of a drinker, I wasn’t able to take much advantage of it.

During our three days in Templeuve, I think we managed to at least frighten the Germans. From the LP [look-out post] Germans were seen digging what appeared to be gun pits. Because of the situation, ammunition was rationed and we had to get permission to fire on the Germans, but when we did we couldn’t tell whether we killed or injured any, but we do know we sent them flying.

We stayed only a few days and then we had to start moving again. This time we moved to Flers, which, again, was only a short distance from Lille. After leaving Flers we started meeting the refugees. We also benefited from two factories which had been completely abandoned and full of cigarettes and chocolate, which we didn’t feel too guilty about taking. It was on this move that the refugees and the Army were hopelessly mixed, and a British ambulance driver stopped us to find out if we could tell him where the nearest aid post was because he had a load of wounded. We couldn’t, so he just had to drive on.

We pressed on and eventually went into “harbour” [rest and recuperation] for a day, and then later that day our CO was given orders to destroy the guns and vehicles and send the men down to the beach. He was a Territorial Army Officer and not a Regular, so he had no hesitation in refusing. So he took himself off to Headquarters, probably Corps Headquarters, and said, “I’ve got a good regiment, well trained and good morale – give me something to do.” So he was ordered to take a position on the defensive line around Dunkirk, so we were ordered back to Dunkirk and eventually arrived. There again it was complete pandemonium – soldiers, some officers, French and Belgian, who had no further interest in the war, looting our vehicles; one of them stole my trousers, which had my personal diary in the pocket.

Eventually we got our orders and dug our guns in, did the necessary survey, set up the Command Post and then we just had to sit and wait, but the few days that were left had a certain interest. A French colonial cavalry troop had decided to abandon their horses in a field next to our guns. They took all their bridles, etc, unsaddled them and went off on foot. Soon as our chaps saw this, as many as could grabbed a horse, re-saddled them and rode up and down the village going to collect their meals, etc. However, I couldn’t get a horse so I got someone to teach me to ride an abandoned motorcycle. We’d been living on preserved rations until then, then our cooks found some pigs on a farm, with no farmer around, so the next two or three days we were living on pork, which was done with fresh vegetables.

There were four light tanks which had been abandoned by the French Army, so we looked inside and found that from their ammunition racks only one shell was missing; it was hard to believe it had been fired. Our position was on the rearguard, which we expected would result in our being taken prisoner, because Churchill, at the time, had said that it wouldn’t be possible to get everybody out. In many ways we were better off than the men who had been rushed down to the beach and to the port to be taken off as best they could. The road past the guns was one of the main routes down to the coast, and as time went by the troops leaving that way thinned out until they were just mostly British infantry marching down in proper military order. We also used them to give us an idea where the Germans were so that we could pick our targets.

In fact, life became quite quiet for a little while, but then the Germans found our gun position. We’d seen a plane flying overhead and after a while it went away, and then the shells started coming. It was getting a bit hot, in the dangerous sense, so we surveyed an alternative position about 300 yards away, moved the guns and started firing again. When we fired, the Germans fired back on our old position. When they did that we stopped firing and, fortunately, we were able to keep them fooled until we actually left that place. In our alternative position we found a concrete pillbox, and that housed our Command Post. We had taken in a young mother with her baby, who was in a state of hysteria every time a shell exploded, but fortunately her father was there who kept an eye on her. Her cottage had been hit by a shell, and the three of them had got away safely, but our concrete pillbox was really the only safe place for them, for which they were extremely grateful.

This went on till 1 June when orders were given from BEF Headquarters for the whole BEF to cease fire and move off down to the beach to be taken off. The orders were, artillery would cease fire at 10pm, infantry at 11pm, and between 11 and 12 there would be a small mobile force just keeping a watch. So we destroyed our guns by smashing the breech blocks with heavy hammers. That was the best we could manage, but they would have been useless after that.

Then we started making our way down to the beach carrying the guns’ dial sights – that was the other essential, not to let a dial sight from the guns fall into the Germans’ hands. As we marched down, all gunners – we were more like staggering – we heard infantry marching, marching to a light infantry pace, and it was the Guards, probably a platoon of Guards. One passed us like a shot out of a gun. As I told myself at the time, they had the energy but they hadn’t been throwing around 100-pound shells for a few days.

We got down to the beach and the sailors started coming in with lifeboats. I had to go into the water almost up to my shoulders, and I suddenly found somebody holding on to my hand. It was our signal sergeant; he was rather short and if he’d tried to stand on the seabed he would most certainly have gone right under. He couldn’t reach high enough to get hold of the gunwale of the boat, but he had some strong sailors there to lift him in. I was half in and half out when an officer decided to play the hero and ordered everybody out simply because he’d heard a big cry of “Take shelter!” from the opposite side of the boat. Actually the sailors were very rude to him and continued hauling people in on my side. That is just by the way. We got out with very little interference, shells occasionally falling on the beach, but otherwise there was little danger.

We got away on I think it must have been a minesweeper, an old ferry boat which used to operate between South Wales and Dorset; it was called the Glendower, the name of a Welsh patriot way back. The sailors hauled us aboard and put us in a room. I was in with half a dozen other men, just in what looked like an alcove with a curtain across it. Bread was handed out to everybody and then, a few minutes later, a bottle of rum was passed round. So we got away and without any unpleasant incidents, and then we landed in Harwich. The wounded were taken off first and then we were all given a good feed on the dockside.’

Meanwhile Lance Bombardier Seeney had been hopelessly cut off from the main British Expeditionary Force. He recalled that:

‘We had no idea really what was going on and we got on our trucks and wandered off towards St Nazaire and, after a few days, we eventually arrived there.

What we weren’t aware of at that time, Dunkirk had happened and it was all over and the French had already asked for an Armistice, and for two days we’d been wandering around in France, the northern parts of which the Germans really had control, but the French themselves were in such a muddle, they weren’t in a position to stop us. We continued on – where we got the petrol from I’ll never know – but we did and we eventually arrived at St Nazaire, and that had been heavily bombed early on in the piece. Much to our surprise, there was a boat pulled up in the harbour by the quay and it turned out to be the Phillip N, God bless it, a collier which was actually on its way, of all places, to Gibraltar. However, it had been stopped and turned back and asked to go into St Nazaire to pick up the remains of some British troops.

Well, I suppose there were about 100 to 150 of us. There were men from the Air Force, Army, you name it, there we were on the deck of the Phillip N, a collier, and we took off. Fortunately the weather was beautiful and, of course, once again I remember the full moon and thought, gosh, all these U-boats hanging around and there’d be the odd bomber. . . But, for some reason or another, which is so difficult to explain, this one little boat with all these men on board, with no real self-defence – except we did have some Bren guns with us and we tied them to the railings – and we did this, that and the other thing to give ourselves some sort of cover, which might have helped, but I doubt if it would have been a lot of good. However, it gave us something to do.

There was the problem of food, and somebody had the sense to toss in crates of tinned food, but mostly it was apricots; we had stewed apricots for a day or two but the biggest problem was water. One must remember it was only a small boat, probably with a crew of five or six, and it really became a problem. By the time we arrived into the Bristol Channel, they were aware that we were in trouble with the lack of water and the barrier was opened, the anti-submarine barrier, and it was opened and allowed us to continue up the Channel and we eventually arrived at Swansea late one evening. It must have been three days later – goodness knows, it was a long time.’

Pilot Officer James Hayter saw it all from the air. He remembered:

‘When the Blitz started we were doing low-level flying, low-level bombing on mainly the bridges of the River Meuse and convoys. We had big losses, we lost most of our aircraft. At the end of the collapse in France several of us were told to go to various airfields where our armament boys were, pick up our bombs and they’d re-arm us. We were told by the Adjutant, because all our senior officers had gone back to England, we were told to pick our own targets, which we did. We finished up at Nantes and I’d lost all my tail part except for the steering elevators and the rudder, which were damaged, and we asked for petrol from the French, which they refused to give us, so we took off and, as my engine cut out, we landed at Manston. We were tired and hungry and I remember saying that we thought our senior officers had let us down, and I received a ticking-off, which I felt ill-deserved.’

James Chilton Francis Hayter

Bernard Brown was another Royal Air Force pilot involved in operations over France during those fateful days:

‘During the evacuation of Dunkirk I was a Pilot Officer and I was detailed, on one occasion, to go out to Ghent in Belgium to try and find the British Army because they didn’t know where they were. So I knew about the British Army, how extremely dangerous they were, and it was necessary always to fly at least 3,000 feet above the Army, because they would like as not give one a pannier of 303 and you’d see the shells coming up and curling down behind the aeroplane – they were very bad shots. But anyway, I did find the British Army and I found the Germans too, and they were busy riding along quite happily in their trucks and they didn’t fire a shot. So that was that little episode.

Then while the Dunkirk operation was progressing, they discovered that there was a German artillery unit in a chalk pit in Calais firing at the British Army, so they decided that we should go along and drop some bombs on them. So the Squadron – I think there were about nine of us – we left from Manston in things called Hectors, that they used to use on the North West Frontier of India to keep the people there in order. Anyway we had two bombs loaded underneath the wings and on the way over across the sea I thought I’d better try the guns, which fired through the prop. I did all the necessary bits and pressed the button and there was a mighty bang, and the next moment there was petrol in my face. I had actually ruptured the main fuel tank. I released the bombs and turned what I thought was back to England – I could barely see because the petrol was burning my face. Fortunately I had my goggles on and I flew in a general westerly direction.