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This story was told to me by my father - Charles Winter -just 10 years ago when I began researching our family history. He was then 74. Charles Winter was born in London in 1919 and grew up in the East End. (Some details have been changed after speaking to an older brother.)

"I joined the Territorial Army as a teenager as Dad [our Grandpa] was a (regimental?)Sargeant Major in the Royal engineers. so when war was declared in September 1939 I immediately joined up and began basic training. By December 1939 I was in France as a 'sapper'". Charles Winter was just 20.

He told us almost nothing about what it was like only that he had been billeted with a french family and showed us the photo of 'Madam's' daughter.
However:-
"Once I was driving my truck, filled with large bottles of an extremely volatile liquid, past a hospital when the German dive bombers came over to bomb it. One exploded quite close and picked my truck up and flung it quite a way up the road. We landed right side up on all four wheels and the bottles stayed intact. I just put my foot down hard on the pedal and drove the hell out of there"

"During May 1940 when the army was in retreat, my unit was stationed at Rouen which is about 22 miles from Dieppe and a long way from Dunkirk. We made our way to dunkirk driving our trucks. There were thousands of soldiers there. We drove our trucks into the sea to make jetties so that the soldiers could get out to the ships. It became evident that we were not going to get on a boat and some of us decided to head back into town. About 6 of us, decided to travel westwards towards Brest on the far west coast of France. We saw some Germans at the end of a road and we ran the other way. So did they! perhaps they did not see us. We got out of town by truck and later caught a train, travelling mostly with the French refugees. We tended to travel by night and hid up during the days. The french people sometimes gave us food and water. It took us quite some time.

When we arrived in Brest there were hundred of other soldiers all waiting for ships to take us all home. We were tired, dirty and hungry, but all we could do was line up on the quay with all the others.

The ship we were waiting to board was HMS Lancastria. As we stood waiting a small Dutch boat - the Koenigan Emma - came along side us and asked if we wanted to go with him. Lots of us immediately jumped down and when the boat was full the skipper pulled out into the harbour to wait to join the convoy.

Just then the Stukas came over again and bombed the Lancastria which sank killing many soldiers who had hoped they were safe. Our skipper asked us if we wanted to 'get the hell out' or wait for the convoy. We agreed with him and he immediately set sail for England on his own.

We landed safely in Cornwall [Plymouth ?] on June 19th and I phoned your mother, it was her birthday, to tell her that I was safe. Rosa (Rosina Richardson)worked for the ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ and was given the day off to meet me at the station in London, still dirty from all that travelling. We were married one month later and even then I had to get special permission to take an extra day of leave as I had been recalled that morning".

After this Dad spent some time in Wales at the MOD site in Pendine, also in Belfast, before travelling to Gibralter and then India via Malta and the Suez canal. Dad was stationed in Northern India as support for 'Wingate's Chindits' and did not come home till February/March 1946.

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