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General => Armed Forces => World War Two => Topic started by: ElRow on Friday 13 November 20 23:02 GMT (UK)
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Hi all
Can someone tell me what happened to the soldiers who returned to Ramsgate from Dunkirk. I know that there were trains waiting for them when they disembarked but where did they go in those trains? It would be nice to think that they were allowed home to recover.
Thank you
ElRow
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I would think for the purposes of keeping track of the returned soldiers they would be mustered somewhere.
Those not accounted for ,their families would need to know.
I can’t think they would just be left to make their way home ,no money etc and long distances.Wounds needing attention etc.
It is an interesting question ,I suspect they were patched up and many would go back in the DDay landings!
Viktoria.
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It's something I never thought to ask about - I just recall uniformed uncles appearing, then disappearing then reappearing again in my life. There's an outline of the Demobilisation that was taken by the British Ministry of Defence ( Ministry of War) at the time:-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demobilisation_of_the_British_Armed_Forces_after_the_Second_World_War
Hopefull somebody with specific knowledge will come along.
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Thanks both. During Lockdown I've been writing the stories of my parents' lives. My father survived Dunkirk so going systematically through it I wondered whether he'd have been allowed home. Thanks for those tips Viktoria. It is feasable that they would have to muster.
Eleri
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You must be very proud of your Dad,anyone who knows about Dunkirk ,and any part of either war is proud of all who took part.
We owe them such a lot.
Best wishes with your research.
Viktoria.
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Thank you Viktoria. I am proud of him. He didn't want to talk about it though. Just like many many others.
Eleri
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I don't know of any official records or first-hand accounts available online, although there are photographs online of soldiers resting in Queens College Cambridge, Victoria Park Leicester, and other places soon after the evacuation of Dunkirk.
Piecing together second-hand and third-hand stories (with no original sources cited) it seems that the policy for returning soldiers was:
Get them away from the coast (to temporary sites until permanent camps were organised).
Get the wounded and sick treated.
Get them fed.
Restore morale, discipline, and fitness.
Re-supply weapons, uniforms, vehicles and equipment.
Training, training, and more training.
I am sure that the immediate concern would have been to re-organise the soldiers into effective fighting regiments to be ready to repel an invasion. I doubt if sending them on leave was a priority!
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Thank you so much Philip. This makes so much sense. The attitude of the Army should have been obvious to me. I have various documents from his war years and the very first leave recorded was Jan 1941. So that is a good seven months after Dunkirk!
Thank you very much for your help.
Eleri
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Had an uncle in the Seaforths who got away at Dunkirk. The Highland Brigade were less fortunate & were still fighting, trapped at St Valery until they ran out of ammo & surrendered to Rommel. No ships for them but the long walk into POW camps!
https://51hd.co.uk/history/valery_1940
Skoosh.
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Yes Skoosh, that was related in a very frank programme about Dunkirk on TV at the commemoration time.
The French were not far away but not on the beaches or near enough to be effective I seem to remember .
I once had an argument with some kid in the tourist office in Dunkirk ,we asked for maps etc and directions to a memorial .
She pretended she did not know what we were talking about!
Eventually she said “ Oh you mean when you ran away,” WOW! >:( >:( >:( >:( >:(.
——I blazed up and said “But we came back !” Plus a lot more etcetc.Not at all polite nor politically correct but she was quite subdued when I had finished
What a @#&£#@# Cheek .
We were really angry., and suggested she was not fit to work in such a place given her attitude .
There was a suggestion box!I used it.
Viktoria.
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My Father. Had done 8 years in the army up to 1935, so was still in the reserves. So his call up was 5th September 1939.
After his initial three weeks retrain he came back and married my Mother by special licence on the 4th of October. Two days later he was gone back to the army. Apart from Christmas 1939 on a 72 hour pass, (Possibly compassionate leave as he was so newly married) that was the last she saw of him. Until November 1940, when he had one month leave.
He was then posted along with my mother to Scotland. thence onto Northern Ireland. My mother came home from Ireland as she was pregnant with my older brother.
My Father came home from Dunkirk on a fishing trawler to Ramsgate. Like many he never talked about it.
Then one weekend (My Father was a Dunkirk Veteran very involved in their lodge) we were in Ostend for the Dunkirk Memorial weekend. Late one night five vets including my Father and myself were at a late night bar imbibing Bier and Brandy. And the stories started, I sat there totally dumbfounded at what these guys really went through. I thought no way is my father going to follow in his story, but to my amzement he did.
Only to find that he was a mile from Paradis (the site of the massacre of the Warwickshires) and only escaped death on the beaches by millimetres.
Laying in the dunes being strafed by Stukas and Messerschmitts when they had passed, he got up, his two comrades either side of him didn't. not once but twice this happened.
Even when he came home on leave in November 40 my mother said he was a nervous wreck still then.
After that weekend in Ostend my father did start to open up about his army career we had talked about his early years and got all his India, Egypt and Palestine stories.
We were about to get onto WW11. But he was diagnosed with cancer and passed soon after.
His army papers were ordered before the lockdown but all hope of getting them this year have gone. hopefully once here I can piece together his WW11 story.
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It will be an epic account of immense heroism and fortitude ,by people we would term” ordinary chaps” in other times.
The fact that they did not speak much about it all says a lot about it all.
Whatever comes in the post ,you can not but be proud .
I truly wished that girl had been confronted by a veteran, but believe me I gave her something to think about and I hope she was ashamed of her attitude.
Such epic times we have seen, born 1937 I was too young to really appreciate Dunkirk, no cinemas where I lived and probably did not quite understand it all in the one newspaper a week.
I did later when older .
Just think ,I and many many others ,have been neighbours of,worked with and chatted to men who played a part in one of the most extraordinary events in our country’s history,without knowing it .
So modest have those men been.
Thanks for telling us your Dad’s part in it all .
Viktoria.
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Thank you all. Those stories are fascinating! I'm so glad I asked the question.
It's very strange that even though I have several of my father's war documents with his number quite clearly written and his rank and his unusual name, I still cannot find him on any of the sites which are supposed to help us.
Very strange
Eleri