Syd Whyte Part One
Sydney talks about events leading up to being taken prisoner in World War Two.

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In the April, ’39, I was in the cinema one night, and my employer – he was later Lord Nugent – he rang home saying would I like to go along and join up the T.A. at Cranleigh because there were six of us on the firm liable to be called up for the two years - I think they called it Militia then. So I got the message and I went along and joined up that very evening. It was only a matter of weeks before World War broke out and we was called up on the 1^st.

 

We were doing guards and actually we done guards up to the Christmas anyway. Well, in the April we was all down on the train down to Southampton over the channel to Le Havre. We went to Vorges for a few weeks and then later on, we moved up on to the Somme.

 

Then it was that time that the Germans broke through the Ardennes.  There was three armoured Panzer divisions that hit us you see on their drive to cut off Dunkirk and that’s where ’course most of us was taken prisoner of war.

 

Well, first of all we had air raids and that, we was very badly equipped.  There was a field full of tanks one side of us, we were just in a sort of spinny wood and ’course they sent in troops to surround us. We only started off with fifteen rounds apiece and even to keep the bren going, which was useless against armour, I had to go round and collect as much ammunition from the riflemen as I could. We had an anti-tank rifle which you had to be very accurate to do any harm with it. I think we had five rounds for that.

 

The Captain decided to call it a day. Well that time we was pretty well out of ammunition anyway.

 

I mean, it’s a funny feeling, you had never thought it would end, you know, come like that, you know. You always thought you might get wounded or something, you never thought you’d be taken prisoner.