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The war memories of Mr H.G. Allpress, added to the website by Epping Forest District Museum.

I was almost 21 years old when war was declared and had already been medically examined for military service. On the 16th of September 1939 I reported to Winchester barracks as ordered and was enlisted into the Rifle Brigade.

For many years I had been a keen cyclist and swimmer and found out that I was much fitter then many of the lads who had been called up with me. After about two months initial training we were drafted to Tidworth Motor Training Centre stationed on the edge of Salisbury Plain. We were trained to drive and maintain motorcycles, small trucks and bren gun carriers. Towards the end of March 1940 a contingent of us were posted to the 8th Northumberland Fusiliers stationed in Newcastle. Unfortunately I was the only one posted to A company. I had to learn the Geordie accent fast. The 8th was a territiorial battalion and was in no way fully equipped as a motor cycle reconnaissance unit.

Sometime in early April we traveled by train to Southampton and at night across to Cherbourg in Normandy. We had no sleep on the boat but on landing we were marched to a tented camp, given a meal and told to rest up that day and we would be moving again in the evening. As it got dark we were marched to a railway siding and boarded onto cattle trucks. We had another uncomfortable night. Early the next morning we trundled into a railway siding and were let into a large warehouse type building and given a meal of porridge, bacon, bread and hot tea. We were told to clean up and be ready to parade at six pm. That evening we paraded in the street, watched by a number of children and old men. A major whose name I can't remember and a Sgt. Major whose name I don't want to remember inspected us. We were told we would be helping an engineering company who would be building an airstrip nearby so that the RAF could operate and that we were in a mining village named Bethune. We had been given; I think it was 10 francs each but there were no shops in the vilage but a small cafe. We soon learned to say 'deux oeuf a frites, s'il vouls plait', two eggs and chips please.

The following day about 30 of us were taken by truck to a railway siding and unloaded sacks of cement and took them to a dump some 30 yards away. It was a warm day and the work was hard going, but we did manage with a mighty effort to push the truck nearer to the dump. We had stripped to the waist and were covered in cement by the time we had finished and were taken to the pithead baths of a mine to shower. It was housed in a large hall with probably 60 showerheads on the 3 sides and benches on the other side where we left our clothes. The miners came up from the mine while we were showering and stood waiting to use the showers. We wondered why they were all standing giggling until we realized they were all women. Of course the regular miners had been called up for service in the forces.

Several days passed and I was promoted to lance corporal given stripes to put on my jacket and I was now in charge of a section of ten men. Two or three days later my section was to provide ack ack guard on the airstrip that the engineers were building. I took 6 men to man a bren gun mounted on a tripod in a small dugout alongside the airstrip. Nothing happened during our 24-hour duty.

A week or so later we were ordered to pack kit quickly as we were moving into action and would be picked up in 15 minutes. A truck picked us up and took us some 20 miles or so and my section were posted on the outskirts of a village, given four spades and a bren gun and ammunition and ordered to dig in and cover the open ground to the right of the village. The ground was hard and stony, but we did manage to cut out two trenches, mount the bren gun and lay ready with rifles. Nothing happended, we had no food and only water in our water bottles.
In the mid afternoon a truck came to pick us up and we were given some chocolate bars and biscuites and were told we had to take up a new position. We were dropped at a crossroads in a town, that I found out later was Arras and told to cover the road that led up to a railway about 200 yards away. We lay for about 2 hours and again nothing happened. We were then moved to a house overlooking a bridge over the railway cutting, that the Welsh Guard were holding and we took over their position. They had removed slates from the attic roof and had a Lewis gun mounted on a tripod. None of my section apart from me had ever seen a Lewis gun before. We were given some more chocolate and biscuits and I was told these had come from a NAFI canteen that had been in the town and that we would have a meal sent to us as soon as our cooks had established a cookhouse nearby.

I formed my section into 3 shifts to man other positions we had made by removing more slates from the roof. The bridge had been made impassable for road traffic with old machinery of some kind.

I think it was on the third day in this position that a German motorcycle combination appeared on the far side of the bridge and all hell was let loose. The soldiers crawled away and left the cycle. There was no other German troop movement and that night a small party of men crossed the bridge and set fire to the cycle combination. The next day we were dive bombed with screaming bombs, terrifying noise but little damage.

Early the following morning about 4am a dispatch rider came and told us to move as quickly as possible, take as much equipment as we could carry move back into the town and follow the troops who were leaving.
We were out of the house in 2 minutes and walking into the town and followed the line of troops until we got to another railway bridge. It had been blown up and collapsed onto the line. A low mist hung over the whole area. A sergeant told us to cross in parties of about 25 or 30 and at the field on the other side of the lane we would be under fire. Thank goodness the morning mist was holding. I was carrying an anti-tank rifle as well as my own equipment, and at the first burst of fire I dived to the ground and the ATR landed in the mud of the ploughed field. When the firing stopped I ran and didn't stop to pick it up. I think it took about three or four dives to the ground before I got to the other side of the field. It was terrifying laying flat on the ground with bullets ricocheting just a foot or so from your head. On the far side of the field I dropped into a shallow depression with about 30 others. We continued across fields until we reached a road and saw 2 French trucks full of soldiers, which gave us the direction we should be heading. We walked in small groups of 2 or 4 on each side of the road wondering what was to come. We had been given no instructions of any kind we just felt we were walking away from German action. We had only water bottles full of water and a few biscuits and chocolate bars we had been able to put in our pocket.

We lost all count of time as we slogged along the long straight road ahead. Some time during the afternoon a sergeant stopped us and said we had to take up a defensive position ready for a rear guard action. He told a number of us to spread out on the fields each side of the road ready to face I don't know what. Nothing happened, after a time I moved over to my pal Ted and we discovered all the other chaps had left and we were the only 2 remaining. We soon got moving along the road again. Fortunately a French truck came along and slowed down so that we could jump on to the footboard at the back and get a lift. We caught up with the rest of the party and walked on until it was getting dark. We had been walking for about 14 hours. What distance we had covered I had no idea. We were stopeed by a sergeant near some farm buildings, given a mug of tea and some hard tack biscuits and a tin of corned beef to share between six of us. We slept that night in the farm stable with the horses, not at all concerned about the smell, we were too exhausted.

I lost count of the days we trudged on I think it was 4 or 5 days. Eventually we reached the coast at Du Pann on the Belgium French border. There were hundreds of troops on the beach and a sergeant was handing out tins of corned beef and hard tack biscuits, he said 1 tin of beef between 6 men. He also told us we could use our emergency rations if we did not get food the next day. Over the next 3 or 4 days we several times moved along the beach towards Dunkirk and were sometimes bombed and machine-gunned by German planes. We could hear the noise of the battle and it got louder as we reached the outskirts of Dunkirk. A sergeant came asking for volunteers to carry stretcher cases and I put myself forward to help. Four of us carried a chap with head wounds who was unconscious across wooden planks spanning a large gap in the jetty on to a small steamer. It was several hours before we set sail and eventually landed at Folkstone that night and the wounded were taken ashore but we stayed on board overnight. It was June 2nd 1940. We were packed on trains at the station and handed out sandwiches and mugs of tea by the ladies of the WVRS and there were many people on the platform waving and shouting 'good luck'. the train eventually pulled into Ludlow Shropshire and after 2 days I got a warrant for a week's leave. I rejoined by regiment who were regrouping at Launceton in Devon.

Continued in PART II : D-Day and beyond

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