With the British Expeditionary Force in
September 1939 – May 1940
(Tales from George
Wood)
Webmaster’s Preamble
Following the end of our apprenticeship in December 1938, along with the rest of us, 569142 Sid Wood (later nicknamed George in the RAF after a certain comedian - a name which has stuck ever since) received his posting into the real world. George went to No 4 AC Squadron based at RAF Odiham. The Squadron was equipped with Hawker Hectors, later Westland Lysanders. It was, therefore, not altogether surprising that, following the declaration of war on 3rd September, 1939, No 4 Squadron was dispatched to France as a component of the British Expeditionary Force. George went with them.
In recent years George, encouraged by his daughter Sue, has written the ‘Story of his Life’. The story so far has four parts:
1. Part 1 - Growing up in a Small Devonshire Village
2. Part 2 - An aircraft apprentice at No 1 School of Technical Training, RAF Halton
3.
Part 3 - With No 4 (AC) Squadron, RAF Odiham and the BEF in
4. Part 4 - West African Tour, 1944-1945
George has sent me that portion of Part 3 which covers his arrival at Cherbourg on the morning of the 22nd September 1939 until his evacuation from the mole at Dunkirk and his return to England on a paddle steamer on 25th May 1940. It makes fascinating reading and I am amazed by George’s prodigious memory. Part 3 runs to some thirty pages and George tells me that the four parts total some 150 pages.
On leaving the RAF in 1946 George went to work in the Design Department of Vickers Armstrong’s Supermarine, followed by employment with Dowty’s Design Department in Cheltenham. George became a Director of Dowty’s and retired from the company in 1982. Since then George has been an active member of the SW Branch and until recently undertook the duties of Branch Secretary.
Regrettably, George’s life story is far too long to publish here in full, but he has agreed that I can publish excerpts from that part of the story he sent me, namely his time with the BEF. I have chosen four episodes: the first is ‘The Journey to Mons-en-Chaussee’, an account of George’s arrival in France, the second ‘The Courtship of Janine’, the third ‘The Fate of the DH Domini’, and the fourth George’s arrival at Dunkirk and return to England. Here they are.
The Journey to Mons-en-Chaussee
I admit that I have little memory of
our arrival in Cherbourg on the morning of 23rd. September. We must have been fed, perhaps when we left Odiham we were given "The unexploded portion of the
day's rations"! My first recollection is of being on the dockside with a
lot of railway wagons and I immediately thought of my dad's reference to his
journeys in the first war where the wagons were marked with the placard "6
chevaux ou 40 hommes", although I'm not sure of the numbers.
Two or three of us went into a
dockside cafe' and, whilst the others ordered beers, I asked for a cider. I didn't drink then. The cider was served up in a bowl, much to my
surprise, and it was worse than Devon scrumpy. One
was more than enough. We hadn't been
given any French money and I remember that there was an old lady on the docks
changing Sterling for Francs. She had a
board on a stand with holes cut in it and she tried all the coins to establish
their individual value; very crude but effective. I seem to remember that the official rate of
exchange at the time was 185 francs to the pound! As we found that a glass of beer was 25
centimes and a glass of rum or brandy was only 1 franc 50 we realized that we
were very well off by French army standards.
(I believe a French poilou received less than
a franc per day).
With remarkable foresight, Willie
Wiltshire and I bought some French bread, ½ Kg. of butter and some sliced
ham. I remember thinking the latter was
very expensive. Shortly after, the RTO
(Railway Transport Officer) called us to the station and we were told to board
a train of rather rickety carriages with wooden seats, but with no corridors
(an improvement on cattle trucks). In due course we were off.
I don't remember how long we spent
on that train, but the journey seemed interminable. The train rattled along at a very leisurely
pace, stopping frequently, usually in sidings, and for no apparent reason. When we stopped, there were usually one or
two poilus on guard and they often offered us a drink
from their water-bottles, which we found contained red wine! The food we had purchased was very welcome,
and we were soon making sandwiches and passing them down the outside of the
train to other compartments, for a consideration of course.
Eventually, the train pulled into a
station at a town called Peronne. We were bundled out
and into French vans (camions) and taken to the small village of Mons-en-Chaussee where we were found billets. Several of us were allocated to an old
disused farm house, and six of us, including Willie Wiltshire, Percy Parish,
Tank Shaw and myself, were given the fairly large downstairs room.
It had been intended that a convoy
of lorries, which had left Odiham 5 days before us,
should already have been there, but we learnt that, due to a number having been
dropped in the harbour when they were being unloaded by the Royal Engineers, it
would be almost another week before they would arrive. We therefore had no
option but to sleep in our uniforms, with our heads in our tin hats. This was on the bare tiled floor and there
were no black-out curtains so we couldn't have any lights.
Faced with this prospect, and to
celebrate our first day in France, we repaired to the nearest estaminet, which
was a rather dismal affair, for drinks.
I couldn't face more than one "cidre",
but one of the other lads persuaded me to try "one of the fruit
drinks", which turned out to be an Orange Curacao. I found this quite palatable and decided to
try some of the other “fruit drinks” which were on the top shelf. It shows how innocent and naive I was! The result, which you have probably already
guessed, was that I ended up very drunk indeed and decided to leave the party
and find my way back to the farm house, which I vaguely remembered, was close
to a railway level crossing. In the
pitch dark, (there were no street lights) I got hopelessly lost and,
eventually, I crept into the nearest hedge and fell asleep. I woke in the early hours of the morning with
my very first hangover. It was a
humdinger! So ended my first day in France.
The Courtship of Janine
My particular buddies, while we were
at Wagnonville, were John Russell, a Wireless
Operator Mechanic (W.O.M), and George Roke, a Fitter
II ex Brat from an earlier entry. George
and I would often walk into Douai over the icy roads
for the odd beer of an evening, about 3 km each way. We used to frequent a little restaurant, the
Cafe' de la Post, where we both developed a crush on the proprietors' daughter,
Janine I think her name was. Isn't it
funny, I remember her face very clearly, she was a very pretty brunette, but
I'm not absolutely sure about her name!
We would sit and sip our beers in the bar, often we were the only
customers, and Janine would come out of the family part of the house to join us
and we would practice our French and English.
One evening I took the cordite from a .303 cartridge and laying it on
the table spelled out her name; then lit it to burn Janine’s name into the
table.
We had a curfew and had to be out of
the town by 10.30 so, about that time, we would go into the owner's part of the
cafe' and join the family for the odd omelette and chips. About 11 or 11.30 we would prepare to go back
to the billet. Janine would open the
door and look up and down the side street to check that the coast was clear,
then beckon us out. We would tip-toe
down the back streets to the Canal La Scarpe and work
our way along the Boulevard tree by tree to the bridge.
There was an Army sentry on the bridge, but from time to time, he would
march along the Boulevard Albert to make contact with another sentry. We then
seized the opportunity and ran like hell over the bridge. We always got away with it.
One evening when we were in the
Cafe' de la Post, Janine came in and said, "I have some news, I'm getting
married to a French pilot next Saturday. Wish me luck". We were flabbergasted!
We walked home early that evening
utterly dejected.
The Fate of the DH Domini
The night was very still, but there
was some enemy activity going on at the other side of the wood bordering our
field and, from time to time, flares or star shells were being fired into the
sky. Then one member of Cpl. Martin’s wandering patrol thought he heard a noise
from the Domini and, not knowing what to do, reported
back to the Corporal in charge of the guard.
Cpl.Martin immediately turned out the other
two members of the guard and, together, they all advanced on the Domini. When they
were only a short distance away they heard a noise from the aircraft and, at
the same time, saw a flash of light from the plane (probably a reflection of
one of the flares from the perspex windows). All four
dropped to the ground and opened fire at the aeroplane until Cpl. Martin called
“Cease Fire”. There was absolute silence except for the sound of petrol pouring
from the plane. Then, the door at the back of the Domini
opened and a dim figure dropped out, wriggled under the tailplane,
and lay still.
Cpl. Martin, revolver in hand,
advanced up to the body and went to turn it over with his foot when the “body”
said, “What the b----y hell do you think
you’re doing”? And Cpl. Martin said
,”Who are you”? The body said, ”The
b----y crew, and you’ve probably shot my b----y pilot”. It appeared that the pilot and crew had been
detailed to sleep in the plane in order to make a quick getaway if the need
arose. The guard had not been told!
I Return to
We arrived at
the outskirts of
I know that when we left the harbour
and got into the open sea, I felt very vulnerable. There were a number of vessels that had been
bombed or shelled and were in various stages of sinking, some capsized and some
on fire. We were very lucky for,
although we must have been a sitting duck, we weren’t attacked at all. The further we left the coast of France
behind the safer I felt and eventually I fell off to sleep from sheer
exhaustion. I woke to find we had
entered Dover harbour and were preparing to come alongside. I’ve since tried to find the name of the ship
that brought me safely to England but this has become a bit of a mystery. According to the Operations Record Book, and
other references, it was the SS St.Hellier, but the SS
Hellier wasn’t a paddle steamer. Perhaps I shall
never know.
When we docked, I staggered up the
gang-plank from the dock side and was greeted by a number of W.V.S. ladies
standing behind a table handing out food and drink to the returning
heroes. It consisted of an aluminium
bowl of water and one sausage roll! Even
the Operation Records Book had this to say, “....everyone was told to go ashore as the
ship had a berth and a meal was being served.
When we arrived on shore, after many orders and counter- orders, we
found a very meagre meal waiting - one sausage roll, a piece of chocolate and a
drink of water. But, as the men had had
nothing to eat since leaving Dunkirk, it was welcome”.
We were marched through the docks to
the station where a (non-corridor) train was waiting for us. I remember getting
into a carriage and immediately falling fast asleep. The next I knew was being told to get out of the
train and into a collection of transport lined up outside. My vehicle was a Post Office van. After a short journey we were decanted onto a
barrack square and we learnt we were at the Army camp at Tidworth.
We really were a ragged looking
lot. Most of us had worn the same
clothes for well over a week, we were unshaven and un-washed, and were just
about asleep on our feet, having slept in hedges and the backs of lorries and
on the deck of our boat. But were we
glad to be “home”.
George looking his best in Peronne – November 1939
Webmaster’s Note
Thank you George. I thoroughly
enjoyed the tales and my only regret is that I cannot publish the whole story
here. I look forward to reading the other Parts.
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