At the H.Q. officers’ dug-out, amidst all the pandemonium of dive-bombing and shelling, a couple of Jersey boys proved good pals as well as interpreters. They asked for news of the war and the day of the week, since the hurried retreat had meant the loss of all sense of time and place. I supplied what information I could without disclosing that I thought they hadn’t much chance of getting out of the offensive circle put up by the Germans.
They in turn told me that they were moving into Dunkirk that afternoon and would take me with them. I was anxious to get cracking but had to wait meanwhile, getting my first meal of the day in the form of horse-flesh and unsettled French wine.
Well, in due course one of the Jersey chaps took me to the French H.Q. in Dunkirk in an Austin 8 which they had retrieved from the ditch.
Chaos ruled everywhere. Hundreds of vehicles of war graced both sides of the road, where they had been abandoned as a hindrance by previous owners and drivers. Cattle and a few horses stampeded about the field, littered with decaying bodies of their contemporaries who had been hit by shrapnel or blast. Here and there one saw a car ditched, riddled with bullet holes, and now and again a body of a refugee who had been “caught-up with.” A sordid journey from start to finish, and considering my movements the previous 24 hours it all seemed a dream.
After further questioning at the French G.H.Q. I was conveyed to the British G.H.Q. at a site nearer the docks. Here were heavy guns of the dock’s defence belching forth, more often than not, premature explosions. Ruin and desolation faced me at every turn, but negotiating wrecked buildings I was eventually deposited amongst a most comforting sight, the first British people I had seen that day. At the G.H.Q., to my surprise, I met none other than Jock who had also been shot down and wounded slightly too. That I should meet a fellow pilot was no end of a tonic. We alternately sat and lay flat in a semi-underground shelter for the next few hours, until we were told to make our way to the mole under our own steam. This was a painfully slow business for Jock, and we had to shelter two or three times under vehicles whilst the mole was subjected to continuous shelling and dive-bombing. On one side of the road were blazing railway trucks, goods yards, and shipyards, whilst away on the right was the huge cloud of black smoke rising from the oil tanks in the distance on the other side of the mole.
Once after sheltering in a “casualty station,” we looked out to find a lorry which had sheltered us two minutes before now a mass of twisted wreckage spread over an area five times its normal size. All in the day’s work to the Army boys, but a sensational “birthday” for us.
Eventually the docks were reached and we were greeted by a very cheery bunch of Tars, who seemed to have established permanent residence amongst a pile of sandbags. Another revolting sight was unfolded when some French soldiers began shooting all the stray dogs, insisting they were message-carriers. They did it in the painful way, with about four shots, afterwards dropping the tormented things into the water. I suspected that more than one of the Tommies would willingly have set to on the French had it not been for the futility of it all in the circumstances.
At about 8.30, after about 12 hours or more on French soil, Admiral W——W——instructed Jock and myself to jump aboard a launch which had moored alongside some 50 yards farther down the quay. Not being master mariners and with Jock wounded, the game of descending 30 feet or so to water-level proved quite a problem, but once aboard, the Senior Service made us extremely comfortable. We went to sleep in luxurious bunks (for a weapon of war). An hour later we were awakened and transferred to a destroyer which with two more of its kind had come alongside to take off what was the rear party of the British evacuation. Even the G.H.Q. was finishing, and after that night Dunkirk would be totally French. So 12 hours later would have even more seriously curtailed our chances of rescue had we baled-out the next day.
The five-hour journey to Dover wasn’t entirely without incident. Twice the ship’s guns blazed at an aircraft, probably laying mines in our path, besides which some curious chap on the deck above had tried the trigger of his rifle, with rather disastrous results for a second-lieutenant who sat in the chair of the mess-room below, which the officers and wounded were sharing. I myself had given up the chair only a bare fifteen minutes earlier. Another of those miracles of fate which in these troubled times seem an everyday occurrence.
2 a.m. saw us back on English soil and given every help by a bunch of hard-working civilians and service folk.
Some sandwiches, tea and then to the Lord W. Hotel, where we communicated the news of our return from the dead to a very sleepy controller at our parent base. After that in brilliant moonlight we made our way to a rest centre for a few hours’ sleep after a day crammed full of excitement and suspense. Truly a “Channel packet.”
Durex is really a most extraordinary character. On the whole his appearance is pretty tidy – shortish, and slicks his hair, but he has got one of those comic faces that looks as if it was made of rubber, with a large mouth and broken nose – not what one would call handsome according to Grecian standards, or any other standards for that matter. He is the clown of the squadron, a man who imitates every noise, from an underground train pulling in and out of a station to the recochetting of a rifle bullet (American movie style). No matter where we were, no matter what was happening, there was a constant barrage of backchat coming from Durex with intermittent ricochetting bullets. Even at dawn readiness you never got rid of this constant burble. You would see him walking down the tarmac all by himself, his mouth working feverishly, and as he approached you would hear all sorts of extraordinary sounds. He could take-off a cockney to perfection and simply delighted in “poking Charlie” at any stray workmen on the aerodrome. I was always surprised that the workmen didn’t resent some of the things he said to them, but they took it in fun.
As a pilot one could hardly class him as being exceptional, but he had plenty of guts, and was always flat-out to have a crack at something, the only trouble about this being, of course, that he very seldom shot anything down himself – he invariably got shot up. I don’t remember a single occasion on which we made contact with the enemy and Durex got home without at least one bullet hole in his machine.
He was a good party type and could keep people amused on the ride home better than anybody I have ever come across, but there is no doubt about it, a little of Durex went a long way.
Durex’s Story
“O.K. I’ve got her,” and round we would go again. These are the words that I remember the most in my whole flying career.
When I first learned to fly and tried landing a “kite,” I never seemed to be able to keep the thing on the ground. Round and round the aerodrome I would go and still I hadn’t gone solo. I would go home at night, feeling thoroughly fed-up with life. It was in peace-time, and I was learning to fly with the V.R.s.
My folks at home gave me great encouragement, and one morning just before lunch I made it——