My father, Charles Williams was
born in Barrow-in-Furness in
1918 and nineteen years later
enlisted in the Army at Preston,
on the 5th October 1937.
He joined as Private 872233 in
the Royal Horse Artillery, who
still operated with horse drawn
field guns as they did some 20
years previously in World War
One. In early 1940 his unit of
18 & 25lb field guns were
shipped out to Belgium with the
BEF (British Expeditionary
Force), in what was to be known
as “the Phoney War”.
The War was no longer ‘phoney’
when German Panzer Divisions
invaded of France and Belgium on
the 13th May 1940. My father was
based outside the Belgium
village of Templeuve, near
Tournai, some 22 miles from the
Channel coast. He was acting as
radio operator of a forward
observation party with a
Canadian Artillery Officer, Lt.
Ross *, when they were cut off
from the rest of their unit. The
orders to withdraw did not reach
them so they set off in their truck,
heading for the coast.
British Soldiers
on the beaches
at La Panne,
1940
When the
engine seized up they abandoned
the truck and continued on foot,
but got split up. With blistered
feet from walking in the hot
weather (and with no food or
water), my father spied some
horses in a field that the
French Cavalry had left.
Fortunately they had left their
bridles and saddles and being an
accomplished rider (courtesy of
the Royal Horse Artillery) my
father captured one of the
horses and rode to Dunkirk. What
he saw there he could only
described as “chaos” – men and
materiel everywhere; sheer
pandemonium - wounded and dazed
men, and dead bodies everywhere.
He decided to take his chances
on the beaches further up the
coast, rather than The Mole in
Dunkirk harbour. He arrived at
La Panne (now Da Panne), on the
French – Belgian border, near to
a large hospital-cum sanatorium
on the sea front. He let the
horse go and dug a slit trench
in the dunes, waiting for rescue
- along with thousands of other
British and French soldiers. A
day later he was plucked from
the sea and headed back to Dover in
a Royal Navy Destroyer.
Some 68,111 soldiers were
killed, wounded or taken
prisoner at Dunkirk.
Importantly, 338,226 were
evacuated back to Britain by the
Royal Navy and a flotilla of
“little ships” – 98,671 from the
beaches and 239,555 from Dunkirk
harbour.
Following Dunkirk my father
served in North Africa with the
8th Army (at Tobruk and El
Alamein), in Italy (where he was
wounded) and in Germany; he left
the Army in January, 1946 after
8 years and 221 days service.
I had planned to take my father
back to Dunkirk in 1990, the
50th anniversary of the
evacuation but he got stomach
cancer. Two years later (minus
quite a bit of his digestive
system) he was well enough to
make the trip - much against my
Mother’s advice.
Charles Williams
outside the
former cinema at
Templeueve in
1992.
On the 22nd June 1992, we set
off from Ramsgate on the
afternoon ferry to Dunkirk (or
Dunkerque, as the French know
it). We were based in Dunkirk
itself and the following day
headed for Templueve. It was
here, back in 1940, that my
father remembered visiting a
local cinema and watching
Charlie Chaplin films (whilst
waiting for the Germans!). We
managed to find the cinema
(courtesy of the local Police
Station) which, 52 years on, had
been converted into a DIY shop
but still bore the evidence of
its former use – you could
actually see the where the
screen had been.
Charles in front
of the former
hospital on the
sea front at La
Panne in 1992.
Whilst on our way back to
Dunkirk we stopped off at Ypres
and visited the Menin Gate. We
also visited the World War One
battlefield sites at Hill 60, Polygon
Wood, Passchendaele and Tyne Cot Cemetery on
the Ypres Salient.
The following day, the 24th
June, I took my father back to
the beaches he had left over
half a century ago – he had not
been back until then. He
wandered on the beach in front
of the hospital for about half
an hour, no doubt alone with his
thoughts. During our three day
trip he told me just five
stories of his experiences
during the War, including this
one.
Charles
Williams,
pictured in
1989.
During the late 1980s my father
applied for and was awarded his
Dunkirk medal from the town of
Dunkerque. He was pictured
wearing it when his story was
published in 1990 in a book
entitled “We remember Dunkirk –
over 100 personal accounts”
compiled by Frank & Joan Shaw
(ISBN 1 82779 00 X).
* The CWGC website lists a Lt.
George Lambert Ross of the Royal
Canadian Artillery. He died on
the 1st September, 1944, aged
36. He was the son of Helen Ross
of Ottawa and is buried in the
family plot in Ayr Cemetery in
Ontario, Canada.
