After school I went to Sandhurst. I was very lucky that a very nice group of young officers had started at the same time there with me and we used to play rugger a lot at weekends. McMordie, E. Heighway, J. Hilton, H. McMahon, T. Hamer, R. Farrell, J. Mayberry, K. Seated - Cpl. Williams, J. Bullen, F. Major E.
Pullan, M. Higson, J. I was at Colchester when the war broke out. First of all, we went to a sort of holding area in the south of France and we set up a camp in an orchard. We had three different platoons, one from each battalion of the brigade. There was the Lancashire Reserve Platoon, with its own officer which was me, and there was an East Surrey regiment Platoon and the Ox and Bucks Platoon and luckily we all got on very well together.
My company was put in a line of houses overlooking a canal, and opposite the canal, there was a road leading up to the canal and we thought that the German tanks would come up that road.
The local Belgian inhabitants were very anti-German too and they had turned a bus upside down to prevent the tanks had coming along. And anyway I thought I should make sure that there were no fifth columnists in the houses down the road so l went through the houses and they were alright. I wondered if it could be an excuse and so I went in and sure enough it was absolutely genuine and I felt awfully guilty about it.
We were in position and they decided to withdraw us. We marched back towards the Escaut Canal and occupied a farm building on a main road, directly opposite another farm. The Germans came over, but fortunately they attacked the other farm first where another company were and so we were alright. There were ploughed fields between us and the other farm and we saw somebody coming across and so we shouted at him. He had a white flag and we thought he was one of our chaps who had got away.
