This is an
article that appeared in his local paper, which he sent on to us.
Written by
Melanie Warman for the Daily Echo.
His diaries are
spread out on the table in front of him - a record of the past for our future.
Following his finger along the lines of typed text he recalls the horrors of
the bombs falling and the frustration at the dearth of of command and control.
The memories of the beaches filling up with dazed and exhausted soldiers will
never leave him.
Arnold Johnson volunteered
for the army in 1939, he was 22 years old. "At the end of the six weeks
training in January 1940 we had the worst weather we had had for 20 years - the
snow was three feet deep," he said. He was sent to Adlestrop where he
joined his unit - a transport unit (rasc) taking troops to the front line.
In April they
were sent to Southampton where they waited three days before boarding a ship.
During that time he visited Bournemouth. " I thought 'this is the place I
would like to live'. It was the place for me.” But right now he was going to
France.
"Once in
France nobody seemed to know what they were doing. We almost lost the war
there. Nobody knew anything or told you anything. We were flying about in these
lorries - lord knows what we were supposed to be doing."
On May 14th he
and a couple of other men walked to a nearby village for a drink. As they
walked back a German bomber flew overhead and dropped five bombs on the village
they had just left, "what was the point of bombing a little innocent village?”
The following day, news reached them that six German panzers and lorried
infantry were heading their way. That afternoon they were ordered to get their
rifles and five rounds of ammunition and disperse around the area. "I
don't know what we were going to do with a rifle against a tank," he said
flicking through the pages in front of him.
A few of them
ended up in an apple orchard. No officer came and in time the became drowsy
with the heat and dozed off. When they woke it was Albert himself who went to
see for himself just how close they were to the German tanks. Reaching the brow
of a hill he looked down and saw six of them in a field halfway down a lane
they had just walked along the previous evening.
That night as the
waited a dogfight broke out overhead and they had the grim satisfaction as the
watch four Luftwaffe planes shot down in front of them. In the early hours of
the morning they were told they were moving out and clambered aboard the
lorries, but the trucks didn't move. "The lads were getting a bit jittery
as they expected the German tanks to come up the lane at any moment." It
was to be an hour and a half before the trucks moved off.
When they reached
St Omer they saw French troops riding horses and mules, "what use were
they against the German tanks? They were still fighting the last war, then the
confidence of winning the war started to drain from me. We had hardly any food
and had had little sleep. We had become isolated. We dug a trench six feet
deep, put our greatcoats on and stood in it all day long, we were so
frightened."
The next day a
stick of ten bombs crashed down. " We laid down flat, one after another
they came down exploding at the edge of a wood, after I had counted ten
explosions, the bombers left and all was silent. I picked myself up and thanked
god they had missed."
He walked to the
edge of the wood and saw a line of craters, one was just 50 yards from where
they had been, A couple of soldiers were digging a shallow grave, a body by the
side wrapped in a blanket, it was the office clerk and Arnold help bury him,
"I knew him, it was very sad." Two days later not wishing to remain
in the trench all day he walked into the wood. However it was not long till the
bombers were back and he heard the rattle of machine gun fire so he dropped to
the ground in the undergrowth.
That evening they
received orders to move out and there spirits began to rise. However before
they could even begin to rise out of the trench squadrons of planes appeared
overhead, for the next 50 minutes 80 planes dive-bombed the edge of the wood.
"We crouched in the trench, absolutely shattered, dazed and bewildered.
The noise was unbelievable." When it finally stopped they heard the shouts
of an infantry office telling them to get out. He had lost half his battalion
and German tanks were just a quarter mile away. It was his soldiers who had
been the target.
"We had to
leave everything behind as we got to the coast, you just kept your clothes and
rifle." It was the early hours of the morning as they marched through the
streets of the Belgian seaside town of La Panne and onto the sand dunes, there
they were ordered to break up into smaller groups and walk along the beach. As
dawn broke they saw seven or eight British destroyers at anchor on the horizon.
"Daybreak
brought a German fighter which flew over the beach firing, we scattered into
the dunes." As the hours passed more and more young men arrived.
"Then we say the lifeboats being lowered from the ships. Some waded out
into the water up to their necks in the rush to escape. Equipment was scattered
left and right on the beach, they were panicking. Boats came back and forth
ferrying the troops until eventually very few were left. Then I decided to go,
I took my shoes and socks off and paddled out. I got into a lifeboat with only
wet feet. It didn’t seem real to me. I felt indifferent. It was like a
dream."
He thought they
would be ferried to the west coast of France to carry on where they left off.
"Looking back now of course we couldn't because we had no equipment. I went
up on the deck early in the afternoon and saw the white cliffs of Dover.