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Old 10-02-04, 06:13
Norm Cromie (RIP) Norm Cromie (RIP) is offline
48th Highlander
 
Join Date: Sep 2003
Location: S. Calif.USA
Posts: 182
Default France 1940

Here is a bit from my personel experience in the dash to France in 1940

Word came that we were finally going to see action and we were ordered to Plymouth to board the SS LL Monsour. While waiting to board, rumor spread through the ranks that Lady Astor was standing at the gangplank and removing all soldiers whom she felt were too young to see action. Having lied about my age to join up I thought, oh my God they are going to pull me off and send me back to Canada, fortunately for me with great relief I never got to see the Lady. Finally we sailed into the port of Brest where we were quickly loaded on to a French train and headed inland. As we moved into the interior we began to see some of the poor victims of the early war. There were women pushing baby’s in carriages and loaded with clothes and all their worldly belongings with smaller children tagging along behind. Also to my surprise, small groups of French, Belgium and British troops all headed in the opposite direction, but the British troops were marching in an orderly single file, still with their rifles, it was a contrast to the armless other soldiers. The fields and fields of beautiful poppies that were there amazed me. We were put on rail sidings on several occasions and on one of these times a group of women in strange white uniforms and with odd looking hats carrying large white porcelain jugs offering refreshments to the troops. I was stunned to find out that they contained wine, as I did not drink alcohol. I was not one of those chaps that suddenly became over jovial. Somewhere at one of our stops someone had written in chalk on our coach in big letters Viva la Canada. Finally we rolled into Rennes. The station was in total chaos there were many bicycles neatly lined up in rows, there were men women and children standing around looking dazed and bewildered. While sitting waiting for something to happen they reversed our engine to head back in the opposite direction. Somehow they must have known that France was capitulating.
At this time a lone Frenchman walked up to our coach, took off his beret, held it to his chest and with tears streaming down his face he sang the French national anthem. Then in a clear voice in English said France is finished. Being a dumb teenager I found it hard to understand a grown man crying but as I matured later in life I realized that humans could have a strong emotional love for family, art, music and country.
The fiasco with the railroad engineers is spelled out more clearly in the book Dileas. We now know in hindsight the world was about to plunge into a carnage of death and destruction for the next four years God know how many of those poor souls at that station ended up in the death camps and how many of my buddies would take their long sleep a long way from home.
PS: When the engineer realized France was surrendering he said France is finished, I’m finished. One of the officers showed him a Tommy gun and told him he was going to take a trip back to Brest like it or not, but unfortunately the C.O. let him go home for lunch and he never came back. The train was scoured for anyone who understood steam and if I remember right we designated a P.S.M. who had ran a steam hoist in northern Canada. The switch master told us he was going to put us on the tracks to Brest but he lied and we wound up in St. Malo.
In 1977 my wife and I backpacked my old sites, what a change the station was from 1940 to 1977.
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