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