When his unit reached Dunkirk, Ted Chambers could see there were already thousands of men on the beach. “They were forming up in long queues, and some were getting machine gunned or shelled,” he said.
“We were camped in woods about a mile and a half away and made three attempts to get onto the beach. But there were just too many men there.”
Ted joined up in 1933 and had served in Palestine and Egypt before the outbreak of the Second World War. He had been living in Strood for many years by the time I met him.
“On the 29th September 1939 we crossed to France aboard the Tynwald, an Isle of Man package steamer,” he said. “We sailed up the Loire from St Nazaire and berthed alongside some sulphur mills. The fumes gave us all sore throats.
“I was a driver. We were very poorly equipped. Our company vehicle was an old furniture van, and the accoutrements vehicle was a coal truck. Our job was to sort out billets for the fighting troops who would be coming behind. We travelled inland until we reached the Maginot Line. At Metz I broke my ankle by falling down a tank trap. I finished up in the local hospital.
“Later we moved forward to Grindorff, a village in North-Eastern France. There was a cow in the village which we had to milk every day. We didn’t get any milk, the sergeants’ mess had it all.
“As we moved into the village our platoon sergeant was killed. Machine gun bullets went right across his stomach. I helped pick him up and get his kit off him. He was a married man with three children. The snow was about three feet deep at that stage.
“Next, we moved up to the Belgian border and our section was building blockhouses, because after the Maginot line there were no defences until you got to the coast. But the cement wasn’t very good, so that when the guns fired, the blockhouses collapsed.
“When the Germans broke through, we went back to Amiens. We were told to take as many men towards Dunkirk as we possibly could. About 20 miles from the coast, we had to disable our vehicles by punching holes in the fuel tanks and destroying the batteries. They were later bombed by the RAF. Then we marched to La Panne.”
After three attempts to get onto the beach, Ted’s unit was eventually successful. But they were then attacked with machine gun and shell fire. Ted suffered leg wounds, and said pieces of shrapnel were still coming out of him for many years afterwards.
They did at last manage to board a minesweeper, which was loaded with more than 800 men. It carried them across to Sheerness, where they were more than happy to be given a mug of tea and a sandwich. “We had been three days without food and without sleep,” he said.