LEST
WE FORGET
The
3rd Panzer division launched their attack on the small town of St Venant,
northern France, on the 27th May, 1940 at 0800 hours. They attacked
from the east, the motorised SS-Verfügungs-Division of the SS Germania
Regiment from the west. The battle for St Venant would be key in slowing
down the German advance on Dunkirk. Defending the town were the 1st
battalion Royal Welch Fusiliers, the 2nd Durham Light Infantry (DLI)
and the 1st Royal Berkshires. These were supported by the 44th battery
of the 13th anti-tank regiment of the Royal Artillery.
My father, Samuel Thomas Pickering (aged 19) was operating a 2-pounder
anti-tank gun in front of a house in which the DLI had set up their
headquarters, by the Lys canal. His best friend “Tug” Wilson
(also 19) was the Bren gunner who gave covering fire to the anti-tank
team against enemy infantry. There is a ditch running alongside the
garden of the house which would have been an ideal place for Tug to
set up his Bren gun.
Seated, my father’s job was to rotate the gun and fire it when
ordered to by the sergeant. As the German tanks approached my father
opened fire. This immediately gave their position away and the tanks
fired back, blowing up the gun. My father was blown out of his seat
and on to the garden. Tug left his relatively safe position and came
to his aid and asked him if he was alright. At this point they came
under machine gun fire and both fell to the ground. After some time
my father said to Tug that they couldn't stay there. Tug did not respond.
He saw that Tug had been killed, either as they fell to the ground or
while they were lying on the ground. By the nature of his wounds Tug’s
death would have been instantaneous. My father got up and ran up the
garden, up some steps to the back door of the house, bullets hitting
the walls either side of him as he went through the door. He went through
the house, out the front door, clambered aboard a truck and escaped
down a narrow lane and over the canal bridge. He made his way to Dunkirk
where he was treated for his wounds. Fierce fighting continued in St
Venant town but the German overwhelming force eventually succeeded.
Tug was buried near a barn close to where he fell, along with five others.
Two years later the Germans finally allowed the six bodies to be re-buried
in the communal cemetery in St Venant. I later learned that 55 British
prisoners were massacred by the Germans in St Venant (probably by the
SS regiment, there were other massacres in the vicinity of unarmed British
prisoners).
On
his return to England from Dunkirk my father had shrapnel removed from
his shoulder. After he recuperated he was posted to Malaya, were he
fought the Japanese. He was captured at Singapore and forced to work
down a coalmine in Japan for three and a half years. Ironically he had
enlisted in the army to avoid working down the mines. Upon release he
weighed six and a half stone.
My
father never spoke much about his war experiences until very late on
in life. He made some mention of the horrors of jungle warfare, the
brutal and humiliating treatment of his Japanese captors. He could not
remember the two or three others who made up the rest of the anti-tank
gun unit but he always remembered Tug, and that he came from Norfolk.
Using this sparse information I was able to locate where Tug was buried
through a search on the Commonwealth War Graves commission website (my
father had not known where they had fought has they arrived at the town
in the back of a covered lorry that pulled the anti-tank gun, set up
the anti-tank gun and waited for the enemy to attack).
Sadly
my father died in February this year three months short of the 70th
anniversary of the battle of St Venant, which was commemorated this
year with a week-long exhibition by a military historical society, presided
over by Dominique Faivre. Fortunately I had been to St Venant the previous
November and had photographed the actual place where my father and Tug
had fought together all those years ago, along with Tug’s grave.
Dominique was a great help in providing information. With his assistance
I tracked down some photographs at the Imperial War Museum in London
taken on 15th February 1940 showing my father’s anti-tank unit
in a training exercise. Amazingly my father is shown in one of the pictures.
There is also a picture of a grinning soldier with a Bren gun across
his shoulders. Could this be Tug? I have not been able to obtain a picture
of Tug to compare.
When
my father died he still had a metal splinter in his head, possibly from
a helmet or one of the bullets that had killed Tug.
Why am I writing this after all these years? Well, as we approach Remembrance
Sunday it is good to remember the sacrifices that those names engraved
on the thousands of war memorials across the country made for the freedoms
that we enjoy today. And in particular one name engraved on the war
memorial at Wiggenhall St Mary Magdalen – that of “C Wilson”
(or rather Cyril Earnest Robert Wilson, Gunner, Royal Artillery, 884358,
son of Arthur Earnest and Hilda Wilson, of Magdalen, Norfolk).
Was Tug a hero? I think so – he could have stayed in his position
but he saw my father, his friend and comrade, in need of help, and without
a thought for his own safety went to help amid all the exploding shells
and bullets. In doing so he paid the ultimate price. Jesus said “Greater
love has no-one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends”
(John chapter 15 verse 13).
I hope the people of Magdalen turn out to honour the fallen of two world
wars. I intend to be there, on behalf of my father, to remember the
sacrifice of one young man, buried far away from home: “... That
there's some corner of a foreign field That is forever England ...”
(Rupert Brooke, from in his poem entitled “The Soldier”).
David Pickering, son of Samuel Thomas Pickering, Gunner, Royal Artillery,
880803, son of James Henry and Evelyn Pickering, Ashby-de-la-Zouch,
Leicestershire).
