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a Jcovtns

on the
other hand

seer eneeriatintrsnemmeet

Doug Collins is on holiday,
and the News is running
excerpts fi ont bis book PO.W,
A suldier’s story of his 10 escapes

ont Nawi prison CAINS.

A sergeant with the Ind
Battalion Gloucestershire
Regiment, Collins is a holder of
the Military Medal, which is
awarded “for bravery in the

eld.” This first excerpt
describes his capture near
BS Dunkirk in 1940,

THE battalion | moves -
out of Cassel at 9:30
p.m, May 29, silently ©
land on foot because the
c ngineers have blown

p the transport; 270
" ay left owt of 600. We
don’t understand that
the campaign is nearly
over..,;

A, "Northwest toward the
cast. At. dawn the Germans
lose in..Confusion; the heat
and crack of blazing cottages;
he clatter and whisie of
seen tanks behind high
edges. Com mpany Sergeant: ©
Major Jack
up and down a road that is
pt by. fire. The 'test of us

ompany takes refuge in a
Barge wood, the Bois St.
aire,

© The sun is up now and the
rees be

bursts of
nortar bombs. A lull, and the
ermans: turn on loutdspeak-, ,

“Conte out, Tommy. You. b,

© surrounded. a

KIDS FOLLOW THE

obbs walks calm- -

_ party. When he

The brassy voice tloats
mockingly on the sitakes
laden air and is follawed by
silence, Captain EAH, Lyni
Allen sends for platoon com:
manders, The captain is called
Splob because of his smashed-

trp nose, acelic from the

rugby field. He grins us if life

is enjoyable, You do not grin

back. There is nothing to grin
about.

“Jerry has a ring of
machine guns out there,” says
Splob, “and after dark we are
going to break through.

The company lies in the
dirt at the edge of the wood.
Flat, open fi fields stretch to the
front with 500 yards to go for
the first cover. That is where
the Germans are but they are
invisible. It is as if both sides’
are waiting for a signal and

- suddenly, far to the right,
_there is a burat of fire, 1

It is time to start and the
platoon edges forward on
ces and elbows. The distant

firing has stirred the Germans -

to nervousness and three flares
pierce the black sky and fall

. slowly like great white wound-

ed birds, Before they are
down, streams of tracer fiow
toward the wood in golden
arcs, and the English hug the
furrows.

There are supposed to be

four heavy machine gun posts,

but that’s only a guess and as

» the Germans search the

ground with fire it seems that
there are forty, And now a:
plane over Dunkirk is drop:
ping parachute flares that illu-
minate the whole battlefield.
One hundred and fifty

". yards to go. Word from Spieb
gower in a ditch,..[Later], the

that he is leading a grenade
lows his
whistle, shout and rum like
hell and in with the bayonet.”
Christ, a few miles over the
Channel they're turning in for
the night. Better to be one of

~ those in England now a-bed
' than stuck here in this French
field with your bum in the aiz

Don't be dafh ‘f Mow. They'll
are us down ik be corn, Tt rn
round while there's still tine!

There po the grenades,
thunderous and orange in the
night, And Splob’s signal, The
line rises as if pulled by a
string and everyone dashes
forward over the flirrows,
yelling for sheer fright. A
machine-gun pit appears,
three figures sprawled around
it in the attitudes of death, A
fourth stares upward, hands in
the air, “I'ma friend,” he
babbles i in English. “I'ma
friend.”

A corporal named Ponting
draws back his bayonet to
make an end of him. You put
out a preventing hand.
Deprived, Ponting rushes off
into the gloom. Two shots,
and he comes back with a pair
of shoulder tags that bear reg-
imental numbers. Those are
the orders. Get the numbers.
Brigade Intelligence can use
them. There is no Brigade
Intelligence but Ponting has
the shoulder tags. He shows
them to Splob, proud as an
Indian showing scalps, Splob -
laugtis and turns to me.

“Who’s this!”

“A Jerry prisoner, Says he’s
from Hamburg g

“Well, he’s yours. See that
he behaves himself.”

-Otfinto the night.
German vehicles loorn in. ©
farmyards like sleeping mon-
sters but we go quierly and
unchallenged, Eighteen men
are now left in‘C’ company
and we struggle across the wet
grass in a shivering line, the
Jerry never more than three
fect away from me and afraid
of Ponting.

Dawn is trails of mist fight-
ing the new day. Three hun-
dred yards to the right a fig-
ure in a square helmet peers
fiom the gate ofa farm and
raises a shout. Someone fires
at him. From the front there
are answering shots and -the
chatter of a machine gun.

German troops pour from
buildings, We dive to the
ground but the field is as that
as a table and there is no place
to hide. ‘Two yards behind me
a ntin sighs as he is riddled
and now a mortar adds its
voice to the din, Splob orders
a surrender,

“Stand up and wave your
arms,” you say to the man
next to you,

“Stand up and Wave your
own sodding arms,” he
replies, digging, his face closer
to the earth.

You stand up and wave
and shout, Your Jerry stands
up too and then the firing
stops.

It is now not difficult to
find Germans, They charge
across the field in a human
tide, A ginger-haired infantry-
man dances up, He is frothing
with excitement.

He thrusts his tis into
your Bren pouch because he
thinks it full of ammunition or
grenades, It is not. [ Nearly all
our ammunition had gone.] It
is full of loose, soggy corned
beef and he howls with dis-
gust.

You grin nervously and it
is nearly your last grin, but
your Jerry jumps forward and
stops froth-moth from shoot-
ing you down. The friend is
paying his debts...

A few miles away, the mira-
cle or the Dunkirk beaches
was being enacted. On that
day, 68,000 men were lifted
om,

It was the greatest effort of

the evacuation, Bur the battal-
ions who had held the wider
perimeter were outside the
magic circle and hardly knew
that it existed,

HAALEPSY HOCIETY

Wednesday, August 13, 1997 -- North Shore News -- 7

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