Charles Waite - Survivor of the Long March

We tried to get off the road but all that happened was our trucks dropped down the gully and stayed there. The convoy was now caught in the middle of this mass of enemy troops. Terrifying. Pony said, ‘Grab your helmet and rifle and get out.’ The first and only time I had heard him give an order. I did what he said, put on my steel helmet, grabbed my rifle and, edging the door open, stepped down on to the road.

I was so scared that I dropped my rifle and it went under the truck. No bloody use anyway as I had no ammunition. I knew I couldn’t fire back in self defence against this lot even if I had had any ammunition. Hopeless. And then all hell broke out as the Germans opened fire. I threw myself down on my stomach on the side of the road, half under the front of my truck, half in the gully. I lay there absolutely still with my face in the dirt of the road.

I lay there for five or ten minutes, or maybe it was only a matter of seconds. Yet it felt like a lifetime as I blocked out the noise and the fear by thinking of anything else but this horror. I thought of Mum checking the blackout curtains in the shop; Lily sewing buttons on a new blouse; Alfred mending a broken chair at his bench in the shed; Elsie cooking up some nice chops for Joe’s tea; and Ronnie joking with his army mates in a bar somewhere safe behind enemy lines. God, what would happen when they read the words ‘Killed in action’? All I could hear was the rat-tat-tatting of machine gun fire and the screams. It was a terrible sound, the sound of men yelling out, crying in pain, gasping for breath and dying.

There were Germans firing at us from the other side of the road, lying on top of field ambulances. I turned my head slightly to the side and saw the nearest man to me, only a few feet away. He looked as though he had been cut in half by a machine gun. Shocking sight, all ripped open. Bloody bits of flesh and guts spilling out on the road. He was lying with his head looking towards me, eyes staring blankly and his face was white as though covered in flour. No longer a human being, just some bit of rubbish a butcher had thrown away.

Then it went very quiet. I almost stopped breathing, listening for a sound. Waiting for something to happen. Nothing. And I just lay there, my forehead pressing deeper into the rough stony surface. It was obvious to me that this was our day, our time had come.

So I had it in my mind to get it over and done with quick. Take my helmet off and sit up then they could get a good view of me. They couldn’t miss me and I would be shot in the head. That was what I wanted. A nice clean shot through the head. So I lifted my head up and strained an inch or two to get a look. I could see more bodies around and I thought I was the only one left alive. I turned round on my stomach to face the Germans and took my steel helmet off to get it over with and closed my eyes.

A voice called me from somewhere, ‘Chas, Chas, are you all right?’ It was the Sergeant.

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I think I’m OK.’

‘Get rid of your side arms,’ he said, meaning my bayonet. We still had on our overcoats even though it was summer, so I edged myself up slowly onto my knees and then into a squatting position, unbuttoned my coat a bit and undid the webbing which held my bayonet, drew it out and dropped it beside me.

‘Now just wait. We’ll have to just wait,’ he said.

I could see a German officer a couple of hundred feet away, a huge man, flanked by two more gorillas. Anything could happen now, I thought. What will they do to us? The scariest feeling in the world, knowing what these men were capable of and not knowing what they were they going to do. I wished that I had something in my hand, a loaded weapon, preferably. I would have felt better. It would have made me feel like a proper soldier, able to defend myself instead of just being a sitting target. I was lucky to be still alive though. I felt sorry for the others, particularly those I could hear groaning in pain. God knows what injuries they had and how they would be treated. Then the fear hit me again. What was going to happen next?

At first when I had got out of the truck I thought it would be all right. There’s somebody in charge up ahead. We will be OK, they will know what to do. Then I realised I was on my own. I asked myself, ‘Why didn’t the Germans just blow us all up?’ Me, my truck and hundreds of gallons of petrol, it would have all gone off like a bomb and taken us with it. It would have all been over and done with in a second. No fear or no worry. The end. No more. And my last thoughts were for those I was going to leave behind. What would my mother do when she got the news? What would happen to Lily?

The German officer came up the road towards us shouting, ‘ Hände hoch! Hände hoch !’ – hands up, and ‘Up, Tommy, Hände hoch !’ I was frightened to get up on my own but when I saw the Sergeant move, I grabbed my helmet and stood up. We walked towards the officer with our arms raised high in surrender. Two others of our unit appeared and I was pleased to see one was Pony Moore. As he walked towards them with his hands up, some of the German soldiers started calling out and making gestures. Pony was a short, thickset chap and the Germans were making fun of his appearance shouting ‘ Komm Churchill.’

We got up on the road and started walking towards the officer. When he addressed us he spoke quite good English, ‘You will proceed,’ and pointed. He was a big man, with a square jaw and a ruddy complexion and seemed very excitable. He was drunk. I could smell his breath even from where I was standing.

‘Carry on up the road and you will meet my company up there,’ he ordered. So we started to walk, three up front, with me and Pony hanging back because he couldn’t keep up.

Suddenly there was the crack of a pistol and some bullets whizzed past us. Pony screamed, ‘Chas, Chas, help!’ I turned and saw the drunken officer waving his pistol around and Pony clutching his hand with blood pouring down his arm. ‘Wait, wait! Don’t leave me!’ I saw what looked like the top half of his thumb hanging off by a piece of skin. I could actually see the bone underneath and the amount of blood was frightening. Poor chap was in awful pain, crying out and clutching his bloody hand.

‘I can’t leave him,’ I said to the Sergeant, so I stopped and turned back to help Pony. ‘Hold it up there,’ I said, putting his hand in the air, ‘I’ll get a bandage.’ Fortunately, my field dressing pack was where it was meant to be, in my trouser leg pocket. It was easy enough to find but a struggle to open and then to get the dressing out. ‘Here, Pony, you’ll have to help me,’ and he held a corner with his good hand while I ripped the pack open with my teeth and took out the pad and bandage. I did my best to stop the bleeding with the pad and unwound the bandage round and round his thumb.

‘It’ll be OK,’ trying to make light of it. ‘We’ll have you playing the spoons again.’ I used the whole bandage, wrapping it tighter and tighter until I got to the end and tied it off. The blood was seeping through but it was the best I could do. We carried on walking. I don’t think the officer intended shooting anyone. He was drunk and waving his gun around, just showing off. Pony happened to be in the way.

We carried on walking for about half a mile while the tanks and troops gradually passed through and on down the road. Now they were going the right way to Dunkirk.

It went quiet again except for the phut, phut of distant gunfire. Pony had his arm on my shoulder and I was guiding him along as he was still in a state of shock. We came to the outskirts of a small village and were ordered to stop, ‘ Halt! ’ We were outside a stone building set back from the road, surrounded by a low wall with iron railings on top. The word gendarmerie was carved in the lintel above the door. There were people everywhere, obviously casualties of the fighting and those trying to help. Stretcher bearers with wounded soldiers, men sitting and lying on the ground, people coming and going. Noise and confusion.