ĂŰŃż´ŤĂ˝

My name is Tom Burns. I am 84 years old. I now live in Brighton, on the South Coast of England, but I grew up in Glasgow.

I was called up in 1939 when I was 20 years old. I had to attend the local Labour Exchange and I was asked which branch of the Forces I preferred. I said, “The Navy or the Air Force, anything but the infantry”. I got my papers about three weeks later — The Highland Light Infantry!

So I joined the Army on 18th January 1940. We were sent to Galashiels on the borders of England and Scotland. It was a little bit of a wrench, being away from home. But anyway, I enjoyed it. I had very good company, nice friends, men in the same boat as I was.

But one thing especially happened. There was an influx of new recruits and one of them was a man called Ian Halley. We called him Holly. He was unusual because he had this strange English accent. He was born in Glasgow, but educated in a college in England. He was an odd man out because of his strange accent.

I don’t know how it happened but we got together, Holly and I, and became great friends, but he was still the odd man out. Holly loved the girls. He used to go out at night and come back at two or three in the morning and climb back in through the window to get into his bunk. There was this particular man called McDaid, who was the company bully. He used to fix up Holly’s bed for when he came back so that it collapsed when he got into the bed. So anyway, Holly knew it was McDaid who’d done this and the next morning he challenged McDaid to a fight in the ring. We had a boxing ring there and he fought this McDaid, who was a big strong man, and Holly knocked him out in the first round! Holly had actually been a champion boxer at his college in England. So he got a degree of respect after that, and of course it reflected on me, because I was his friend. We got on very well together.

Anyway, we were transferred to Thornford in Dorset, near Yeovil. We had a great time there, apart from drinking this very strong cider, which we weren’t used to. We were used to beer. The first night we got there we all went to the local pub and we started drinking this cider and of course we all got drunk. The result was a big punch-up in the pub, someone stole the collection box for the blind from the counter and we were barred from the pub for the rest of our stay!

So Holly and I still got on all right. We used to go dancing at Yeovil, which had the nearest dance hall. I remember we had a punch-up in the toilets for no particular reason! He blacked my eye, I cut his lip - it was the cider again. But we got over it; it was OK.

Then in June 1940 we were told that we were going to be transferred to Tidworth Park Camp in Hampshire. We wondered why we were being transferred because we knew at this time that the evacuation from Dunkirk had been going on. So we got to Tidworth Park Camp and we found that the wounded and rescued from Dunkirk were being moved into the camp. So that seemed very unusual to us. The rumour got round that we were going to France. So we thought “How could we be going to France when it’s obviously all over? They’re bringing them all back!”

But the rumour was true and we were shipped to Cherbourg. We were in the 157th Brigade, which included the King’s Own Scottish Borderers, the Cameronians and the 5th Battalion of the Highland Light Infantry, which was my lot. I was in ‘A’ Company.

So we went to Cherbourg on a ship called the Viking. Being educated in England, Holly was fluent in French and he was made the Company Commander’s ‘runner’. He had to run between Companies and Sections etc. He knew more about what was happening in France than the officers.

So we got to this defensive position, I think about 20 miles west of Paris, a little village called Conches. The Company dug in the trenches. My mate Jimmy McCrimmon and I had a 2” mortar and he carried the bombs. We weren’t allowed to dig a trench because we had to fire the mortar from flat ground. But our section was immediately in front of us in trenches and we’d never fired this mortar before. We’d had no practice at all with it. We knew the rudiments of how it worked. You had to drop the bomb in the funnel. Take the primer off the cap first and drop it in the funnel.

So there we were, Jimmy and I, in this long grass and these German bullets were flying all around us. Also the Germans were firing 6” mortars which were much more powerful than our 2” mortars! We started firing the mortar, but not being used to it, the bombs were dropping short, almost dropping in our Company’s trenches a few hundred yards in front of us! So the men in the trenches were shouting, “Stop them silly bastards firing that mortar! They’re gonna kill us!” So of course we up ranged the mortar and started firing into the woods where the Germans were. It sounds funny now but it wasn’t funny at the time.

Anyway this went on for about two or three hours. Things were getting very dodgy. My mate Jimmy McCrimmon was very nervous, even more nervous than I was. He dropped this bomb, or tried to drop it, down the funnel of the 2” mortar the wrong way round, with the head first instead of the tail first. I just caught it before it went down the barrel of the funnel, otherwise it would’ve blown us both up, as it had been primed, we’d removed the cap! That was lucky.

Then all of a sudden, we got this terrible thump coming from the German lines. It was one of the German 6” mortars and it landed about a yard from us! But it was a dud; it didn’t go off! We were very fortunate that we weren’t killed.

So we escaped death three ways that day. From the German bullets that were swishing all through the long grass next to us. From Jimmy McCrimmon’s silly mistake, dropping the bomb the wrong way round, which I managed to catch. And from the German dud 6” mortar bomb falling about a yard away from us. Had it been a ‘good’ bomb, it would have killed us both.

Our platoon commander was a 2nd Lieutenant called Nimmo-Smith. He was a young 19 year old Scotsman, Edinburgh born, and he was the bravest man I ever saw. He kept contacting us between the trenches and our mortar and he seemed to have no fear whatsoever. He was a very, very brave man.

Anyway things got very, very desperate and the Company Commander, Captain Davies, gave a very unusual order for the British Army. I’ll always remember it, he said “Every man for himself”. That meant you had to make the best of your position and run, because we were almost surrounded by the Germans. So we ran, we ran for our lives. Very, very frightening. But we managed to get in troop carriers, these big troop carriers, and we raced back to try to get to Cherbourg.

Meanwhile, my friend, Holly knew more about what was going on than the Commander. He came to me and said “Tom, you’re not going to get back to Cherbourg” he said, “Stay with me. We’ll stay behind”. In other words we’ll desert. “I can speak the lingo, and we’ll stay in France cause no way are you going to get back to Cherbourg”. And I thought hard about this for a long time — “ Oh God, what shall I do?” Anyway I decided to stay with the boys and try to get back to Cherbourg. Ian said, “Well, that’s it. I’m staying in France because I don’t think you’re going to make it” And he stayed in France, all though the war. He stayed with a girl, as I said, Holly liked the girls. And we got back to Cherbourg by a miracle.

Before we left Cherbourg we had a confrontation with the local people because they maintained that we were deserting them — which we were! We got the order from the officer to fire our rifles over their heads, to stop them throwing stones at us.

We got on the boat back to Southampton and were dive-bombed by German Stukas. I didn’t know anything about it, as I was asleep on the deck, exhausted. But I was told afterwards that we very nearly got bombed by the Stukas. We anchored off Southampton for about three or four hours and the rumour went round that we weren’t going to land at Southampton but were going to be shipped out to the Middle East, to the Mediterranean. As you can imagine, that caused a lot of panic. There were dozens of us ready to jump overboard to swim to Southampton rather than go to the Mediterranean, cause we’d had enough in France. Anyway it was only a rumour. It didn’t happen.

We were landed in Southampton and we were all de-loused as we were filthy with fleas and dirt. I had a lot of interviews with the Education section of the Army. They used to call me in and interview me about Holly. They maintained that he was spy, because of his knowledge of everything that was going on in France. ‘Why did he desert? Was it because he was on the German side?’ And they kept pursuing me for a long time afterwards in meetings. They used to call it ‘Current Events’. But they suspected that he was a spy, which he wasn’t. Holly wasn’t a spy.

In these Current Events lectures after we got back from France, we were told that we ‘d been sent over to France as a ‘gesture’ to the French people — the 157th Brigade. We’d been automatically written-off as casualties because we weren’t expected to get back. I remembered before we went to France, every man had to make out his Will, leaving whatever he had, which wasn’t a lot, to his Mum and Dad and family. I still have my pay book which has my Will in it, made out in 1940, before we went to France. Afterwards in these interviews in England, the Current Events officers told us that we were never expected back again. That we were all struck off as casualties so it was very surprising to them that we had got back to England. Of course we did lose half of the Company, including prisoners or wounded.

I thought this story might be interesting because it is a little bit unusual. This was going on after Dunkirk. We were told later we’d been thrown in as a gesture to the French people. Crazy! Make what you will of it, but believe me it’s true. I have the pay book to prove it.

Š Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.