From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] While my uncle was with the retreating BEF in northern France, my father was reading about Dunkirk in the French newspapers in a pavement cafe in the south of France - the BEF put their forces ashore in all the Atlantic coastal ports of France to avoid German air attack losses. My father's Colonel had a bit of an obsession about blowing up the trucks and guns to stop them getting into enemy hands, so my father phoned my uncle and asked for suggestions. My uncle recommended he talk to the ship captains in the local port and offer alternatives to the Colonel. My father did this and was told, Gallically - insert your own accent and shoulder-shrugging, by various Captains that they would do whatever they were told to, and that blowing up the breeches and engines of the regiment's equipment INSIDE the ships holds would not necessarily cause the ships to sink, if done in moderation, so to speak! My father, then a sergeant and backed up by two other sergeants, could not get his Colonel to consider alternatives. Back in said cafe he was discussing the matter and it was commented to him by a Frenchman that his Colonel was working for the Boche. The way of it with the French troops had been that the men would be ordered in one direction, where they were defeated for lack of artillery, and the artillery would be ordered in another direction, where they would be captured for lack of infantry. Eventually my father and his two fellow sergeants had an all-out shouting match with his red-faced Colonel, eventually calling him a traitor. In the end "the RSM's goon-squad prevailed" as my father put it and they were marched in chains to the boats, past the ruins of the regiment's guns and trucks, charged with mutiny. Back in Blighty, my father punched a guard on the jaw, his two mates linked hands and he was thrown up to the top of the wall and escaped. Contacting my mother, who at the time was one of about 400 on Churchill's staff, he was advised to see Beaverbrook at the Express, who had Churchill's ear. My father got to see Churchill in Beaverbrook's company and the clincher of the whole matter was that when the regiment's guns were blown up there wasn't a German within 350 miles. Regards Norman Bassett drakenfels.org -------[Cybershooters contacts]-------- Editor: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Website & subscription info: www.cybershooters.org
