Preamble
Normally when writing about a battle in WW2, we concentrate on the Generals and Senior Officers. That is a bit unfair—what about the ordinary soldiers, seamen and the RAF AC2’s. They have stories to tell and they have opinions about how the battle should be fought. This week we are concentrating on a Private Soldier who has joined up because he was out of work and the only jobs available were in the army. This was before war was declared and it is typical of many thousands of men and women at that time. It was obvious then that if you didn’t join the forces or get a job in what were called Reserved Occupations, you would be shunned by friends and family. The old White Feather system was back in use, although many were misused because if a man was in civilian clothes you couldn’t tell what work he was doing.
So it was in this war climate that Fred Tomkins felt obliged to sign on the line, get the King’s shilling, get kitted out with a uniform and rifle and become a private soldier. However, his hopes of fame and glory were dashed on the beaches of Northern France.
Now we can continue with the story of Private Fred Tomkins of the Yorkshire Regiment.
Fred
My name is Fred Tomkins and in the summer of 1939 I was looking for work in Yorkshire. It wasn’t easy since Britain was not long out of a recession. From what the papers said after Neville Chamberlain came back to Croydon Airport waving a piece of paper bearing Hitler’s signature and saying “Peace in out time”, the question on everybody’s lips was “Could Hitler be trusted?” It was obvious that war was imminent between Britain and France on one side and Germany on the other. Hitler had taken over Czechoslovakia by force as well as the French Province of Alsace Lorraine. It was just a matter of who was next. Germany’s population was growing and there wasn’t enough food for them all.
In this War Climate the only jobs available were in the Army so I went into a Recruiting Office, signed on and got the King’s shilling. Within 4 weeks I was called up and had to report to the West Yorkshire Regiment based in Catterick Camp in Yorkshire. After being “kitted out” with uniform etc and allocated a “bed space”, I met all the other ‘squaddies’ and our training corporal. The weeks became months and so we formed a great friendship within our barracks as we trained to be real soldiers. By September of 1939 Hitler had invaded Poland and he refused to retreat back to Germany, Britain and France declared war and prepared to mobilise their armies against Hitler.
By this time our training was finished and we were told to be ready for embarkation overseas as part of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) which was soon to be in France and Belgium. We travelled by train down to Portsmouth on the South Coast, all keyed up and ready for a fight across the Channel. Lord Gort was the overall Commander of the BEF and in all he was in control of almost 400,000 British soldiers. Plans had been made for us to stop the Germans near the Belgian border with the French army holding the Maginot Line facing the Germans.
Then, for almost 9 months there was little or no fighting and this period was called ‘the phoney war’. The suddenly, in May 1940 the Germans gave the Belgians and the Dutch ultimatums and, although fighting initially, the Belgians surrendered to Hitler, quickly followed by the Dutch. The two countries Royal Families were transferred to Britain by the Royal Navy. That situation left the BEF’s flank wide open and unguarded. This was a great danger to Lord Gort’s army and urgent plans were made to retreat into France.
As mere soldiers we knew nothing of these plans. We only knew we had dug in on the border with Belgium, then we had to abandon our trenches and dig new ones a few miles further back. We began to lose a few of our men to German artillery and Snipers. Our military hospitals began to fill up with casualties. The Battle of France had begun and many mistakes were made. There was poor liaison from France’s Prime Minister, Paul Reynaud. Churchill made frequent flying visits to Paris but it was obvious that France was falling apart with many French soldiers throwing down their weapons and deserting, going back home. Seeing the chaos all around them unnerved a number of British troops but our Officers were able to keep them together and we fell back like playing leapfrog, usually in 10 mile hops. Not only did I lose friends but we lost equipment too. If a tank or lorry developed a fault and it could not be repaired ‘on the move’, it was abandoned and sand was mixed with the fuel so the engine failed permanently making it useless to an enemy. While retreating we were harassed by Stuka 87 dive bombers that attacked our columns. This was made worse by not seeing any of our RAF planes defending us.
The RAF planes however were busy attacking German aerodromes further inland, not near the coast. Daily the net was drawing tighter and we were losing more and more equipment. The Stukas aimed for out tanks and the BEF lost a lot of them; 184 cruiser tanks, 23 Matilda Mark 2 tanks, 77 Matilda Mark 1 tanks, 331 Mark V1 Light tanks plus Artillery, 704 x 25 pounders, 216 x 18 pounders, 96 x 4.5 inch Howitzers, 221 x 6 inch Howitzers. We also lost 76,000 tons of ammunition, 400,000 tons of supplies plus 64,000 vehicles which were abandoned. Fortunately, the tanks were semi-obsolete. By the time that we reached the outskirts of Dunkirk on foot we only had our rifles and Bren guns which were no use against the German armour. We simply had to get back to Britain in order to re-arm. Dunkirk is a small city/port near the borders between Belgium and France facing the English Channel. The evacuation of British and French troops began on 26th May 1940 and lasted 9 days. The operation took 8/9 days during which time we had very little food. Morale was low and getting worse. Even our natural functions were out of sync and our latrines were simply dug in sandy beaches.
Initially the West Yorkshire Regiment was given a sector of the Dunkirk perimeter to defend so that other Regiments could escape on Royal Navy ships via the harbour. However so many ships were sunk within the harbour that all the moles and jetty’s had to be used. Back in Britain Churchill could see that things in Dunkirk were getting worse daily. He urgently appointed an Admiral, Ramsey, to organise hundreds of small boats to go across the Channel and get the men from the jetty’s onto the larger Royal Navy Destroyers etc. Once on board the Royal Navy ships, they set off at full speed for Dover. It became too dangerous during daylight hours even for the small boats so the operation was switched to night time. Men even queued up to their necks in the sea so that they could climb onto a boat. During this period the Germans bombed a clearly marked Hospital Ship and sank it just off Dunkirk. As counted in Dover the number of men evacuated from 26th May to 4th June 1940 was 390,000 including 130,000 French troops. Most ships made multiple trips to Dunkirk and back to Dover with Royal Navy Destroyers bringing back large numbers of men but even the small boats brought men back.
Among the Royal Navy ships was a Destroyer named HMS Winchelsea which was an elderly veteran built in 1918. She made no less than 6 trips and recovered over 4,000 men. She was the last ship to leave Dunkirk and I WAS ON IT ! The ship’s Commander was Lt. Commander Frank Hawkins DSC. He was magnificent and we owe a lot to men like that. After landing in Dover I was put on a train back to where I started in Catterick. With all our Heavy Equipment lost in France it took months to re-arm us. It was late summer before we could call ourselves ‘Battle Ready’ to defend Britain but even then we were not at our best. It would take another 4 years before we could take on the might of Germany and a further year before they were finally defeated in 1945.
The action at Dunkirk taught us a huge lesson. The Germans were desperate for food and basic raw materials for their growing population. They could only get these items by stealing more and more land from weaker nations which in turn made their problem even worse. Even before WW2 America had imposed sanctions and blockades on the Japanese Empire which was badly needing huge extra quantities of Oil. As their army grew in size, the Japanese consumed more oil for their war machine. The Pearl Harbour attack was the culmination of Japan’s frustration of not having enough oil. They knew that they could not win a war against America but they thought that they could at least take over a number of oilfields in order to survive. They had seen Germany take over countries that were too weak to fight and the Japanese followed suit, hoping that the spoils of war would provide them with enough oil. However, they thought that the Americans would not want a fight. The US politicians had watched Germany’s progress in the early 1940’s and they certainly didn’t want to lose lives fighting the Japanese but the large losses at Peral Harbour changed their mind. One of the Japanese Admirals said “We have awakened a sleeping giant and we will reap the terrible results”.
I have done and seen many things in wartime and I do not want to see them again, but when your whole life is at risk from a tyrant, what else can you do but fight.
