I was scratching through ancestral papers, as one does in one’s footloose retirement, and rediscovered a remarkable thing: a tightly folded letter tucked in a small envelope. The envelope bears an inscription: “Geoffrey’s letter to Pon from Dunkirk, May 1940.” Another hand, which must be my mother’s, had written above “Geoffrey” the word “uncle”, and above “Pon”, “aunt”. Now I knew that Geoffrey Hobson Matthews was my grandfather’s brother; “Pon” was the family nickname for Honor, their sister. I knew that Geoffrey had become a priest, and I remembered that he had been killed at Dunkirk, where some 300 000 troops of the British Expeditionary Force were being desperately evacuated ahead of the Nazi invasion of Belgium. I have a photographic print of him in military uniform. Yet somehow I hadn’t fully absorbed the drama of this letter.
Geoffrey Herbert Berrow was born to John and Alice Matthews on 12 December 1903 at Stanley Lodge, Monmouth, Wales. “From the
start,” wrote a cousin and family chronicler David Pontifex, “he was a child of character and full
of quaint remarks”. He began his education at St Benedict’s in Ealing, long a
Matthews haunt. He remained there during the First World War, while his older
brother Bernard was, ironically, dropping small bombs on the Germans in France
from his Sopwith Camel.
Geoffrey seemed bent on becoming a priest from the earliest
age: his father’s diary records a remarkable sermon on miracles he delivered at
the age of 3. He joined the Benedictine community at Downside Abbey in 1922,
spent a year of study at Sant Anselmo in Rome, and was ordained priest on 1
July 1928. Just a month later Bernard, who had gone to Kenya to try his hand at
farming, died of blackwater fever (malaria), leaving his wife Mary pregnant
with their second daughter – my mother.
 |
| Honor, Bernard, John, Geoffrey and Monica Hobson Matthews, ca. 1910. |
There are intriguing differences between the two accounts. Though he didn’t exactly sugar-coat it, his account to Pon lacks some of the diary’s details, omits to mention that he was actually on the beaches on the last couple of days, and adopts a slightly more offhand and upbeat tone. He doesn’t mention that a handful of chaplains drew lots to see who should leave or stay. The last line of the diary reads: “a priest certainly should stay”.
Here is the letter.
No. 2 C.S.S.
B.E.F.
Friday,
May 24, 1940
My leave
seems to have ended years and years ago. It is all so different out here now!
After
writing to you at the harbour station at Boulogne I had to decide what to do. I
could get no news at all of the unit and all of us were told to stay put
pending instructions – which might not be forthcoming. Two chaps (major O’Meara,
who sent off my wire from Dover; and Lacey, the United Board, whose leave was
over before mine), left by train (civvy train) for Arras. The line was so
blocked by refugee trains and hospital trains that it took three hours to get
as far as Etaples, and I didn’t arrive at Arras until after midnight. In the
train I learned that Courcelette, the little village where I sang Mass on the
Sunday before my leave, had been bombed and destroyed. There was a big petrol
dump there.
I can’t
describe the tension in Arras. It was awful. The town was of course in complete
darkness; cars were gliding about without lights and refugees were trying to
sleep in the open streets. I crossed the square and wandered into a big hotel
just opposite the station; it had been abandoned, but the side doors were open.
Two French soldiers were standing nearby. One of them said, “Are you a priest?
All right you can go in. You will find a bed in Room 19 on the third floor; but
sleep lightly and be ready for grave news.” So I went up to room 9 on the third
floor, washed and shaved in cold water, and slept on an unmade bed, without
undressing, to the wail of air raid sirens. I was the only soul in the
building, and it was about as weird an experience as you could wish!
At 6
o’clock I knocked on the door of an Augustinian convent and asked if I might
say Mass. The nuns got everything ready for me and attended in full force; and
just after the Communion there was a hefty air raid that lasted until I left
the altar. Lots of bombs were dropped and thirty people were killed in the
streets by Boche machine-gun fire. The noise was appalling.
The Rev.
Mother gave me breakfast in the convent and I then collected my bag from the
empty Moderne and repaired to the station, where I received a sharp but
friendly rap on the knuckles, from the Military Authorities, for having come up
from Boulogne on my own!
I remained
at the station from 7.30 until lunch-time, trying unsuccessfully to get news of
2 C.C.S. from the R.T.O. in his office. At 8.30 a Boche plane swept down on us,
dropped several bombs (which fell wide, but not as wide as one would have
wished) and then began to let loose a hail of machine-gun bullets on all
present. The Boche bullets pinged uncomfortably loudly on the stone platform,
within a yard or two of me, and I leapt with unwonted agility into the R.T.O.’s
office. No sauntering, I mean!
Shortly
afterwards, the aviator (or it may have been another one) was brought down and
taken prisoner. They brought him into the station under escort: a boy of 18:
his left arm was broken and his right eye was cut and bruised. The French
soldiers left him standing against a wall, while everyone ogled him. I felt
unreasonably sorry for him and bunged some cigarettes at some French wounded,
who were waiting for a hospital train, I am afraid for the sole purpose of
giving him one too. He said “Thank you” in English; but his hand trembled so
that he upset the packet. He tried to pick them up but I lit his and prevented
him. After standing the whole thing exceedingly well for some time, his nerve
gave and he began to moan and cry out; the bruises had spread all over his face
and he was obviously in a bad way from shock. They took him into a waiting room
and laid him down on a wooden bench; but they wouldn’t do anything else for
him. When I went in to see him he cried in English “help me, help me!”, but
quite quietly. I suggested that one of a number of pillows, lying nearby, might
be put under his head; but I nearly got lynched for suggesting it! After a bit
he recovered somewhat; and the last I saw of him was his being put on a
hospital train with the French wounded.
There were
air raid alarms all through the morning. I spent the time helping to bundle the
aged of the refugees into what trains were going, until at mid-day word came
through that every British troop was to be out of Arras immediately. Most of
them had already left.
I had to
decide then between returning to Boulogne or somehow getting forward to where
our 3rd. Corps was, in the Bethune area. I was told that it was just possible
that I might get some news there of the C.S.S.; but that if I didn’t somehow
get out of Arras without delay the consequences would be very serious. In other
words the Boche were about to enter.
After some hesitation (actually
getting on to a Boulogne hospital train and getting off again!) I climbed with
my suitcase on to a lorry laden with ammunition, feeling like half a dozen
suicide squads whenever I thought of what would happen if the joint went up! I
left thereon at 1.30; and exactly twenty minutes later the station was bombed
to bits and more than 100 people were killed, mostly refugees. I find it hard
to get the thought of them out of my mind: two or three trains packed with
them; others huddled together on the platforms and just inside the station doors. I heard about
it later from the R.T.O. He congratulated me on getting away and told me that
his office had got a direct hit just after he left it; that two trains had
direct hits also; that there was practically nothing left of the station and
that the sight was too awful for words. So maybe ‘twas your prayers that sent
that ammunition lorry along in the nick of time!
The lorry took me to 3ed. Corps
H.Q. and I at once went to the R.T.O. there to ask of news of the unit; and
there I had the most incredible luck, for seated in the office was Colonel
Graham (C.O. of No.2 C.C.S,) and a few yards away was the whole outfit – with
Master Maurice Summers and my own little car! They were actually on the move
and called there en route to get instructions! I put my suitcase on to my car
and there we were! Much tail-wagging on all sides!
As you see from my using my
typewriter, I got hold of some of my kit that I left behind when I went on
leave; but most of it, including my altar kit and my large suitcase, is still
on a train somewhere and can’t yet be got at. An awful nuisance as I now want
my altar kit badly. Fortunately I brought out a new supply of Oils with me this
time. We are opening up in full tonight. Till now we have only had fairly light
cases, owing to our being unable to stay for more than a few hours in one
place.
We have been all over the shop
and I have been sleeping in woods and under haystacks and on the top decks of
ambulances. Now we are established in an evacuated school on the Belgian
frontier and I suppose we shall stay here unless a move is indicated.
German planes fly overhead all
day and all night and there has been a lot of bombing all around. A few moments
ago 12 Boche planes went past, ‘mid a colossal shindy from A.A. guns. It is a
bit uncomfortable (but no more than that) to hear and see them incessantly. No
one bothers about them unless they are bang over us; then all have to get under
cover.
The plight
of the refugees (mostly Belgian) has been pitiful beyond words. The roads have
been thronged with them, and things have been happening so quickly that it has
been quite a common sight to see them making first in one direction and then
all returning and trying to get away in another. I gave the Last Sacraments to
one poor man who was dying by the roadside. They were all so patient and there
has been no panic at all; just the most awful suffering.
I was not
able to say Mass from the day I left Arras until yesterday; but I went once to
Holy Communion, seizing the moment, never giving a thought to the fact that I
had broken my fast in the small hours of the morning while we were travelling.
And that Thursday was the feast of Corpus Christi didn’t dawn on me until that
afternoon when I went into a church on our road.
On
Wednesday it was decided to evacuate all the nursing Sisters to England, as
things have been rather hot for them (this war is entirely unlike the last and
there is no safety ‘behind the lines’) and the C.O. asked me to take them to
Dunkirk. We set off in an ambulance at 8.00 a.m.’ the driver, nine sisters, and
myself (I in front with the driver). When we arrived at a town just outside
Dunkirk we were stopped. Dunkirk was being bombed. While we were waiting there
I ran into Frs. Coghlan and McCreton, to my delight and theirs. I was the first
of our chaplains they had made any kind of contact with since the flap began.
Later we pushed on into Dunkirk; but the bombing had put the harbour
temporarily out of action and the only thing to do was make for Calais – rather
perilous in view of the German spearhead advance towards Boulogne. Also they
have odd tanks dashing around all over the place!
We got out
of Dunkirk just in time to avoid a second raid on the town, during which I
hoicked the sisters out of the ambulance and into a ditch for shelter. Then we
tried to get onto the Calais road; as no one quite knew what was happening
between there and the coast. We had to turn back and I found a farmhouse where I
unloaded the sisters and got rooms for them. It seemed that we were stuck.
After a few
hours, however, we were allowed to push on again by a very round-about route;
and the road was so congested with refugees that our progress was slow and very
difficult. We reached Calais at last at 6 p.m., to find that it had been having
a good old bombing just before. The harbour station had been hit and fires were
blazing away all round the docks. A boat was expected to leave for England in
the morning; so I parked the sisters on the Area Commandant, a Colonel Holland,
and bade them a tender farewell – to my enormous relief!
The job then was to get back
again. I had taken my leave kit with me as it was very doubtful whether one
would succeed. I could have come to England for the asking: the pass was made
out for myself and the sisters, in case there should be no getting back from
the port. The driver and I set off at 7.30, hoping for the best, and did in
fact get back here (the unit had come here during the day) at about midnight –
driving without lights, past thousands of troops, guns, tanks and ammunition
lorries being rushed up to the defence of Boulogne and Calais. The roads and
bridges were all mined, ready to be blown up to stop the Boche, and we had to
zig-zag our way between barrels of gunpowder. There were several huge fires at
Dunkirk, which had evidently been bombed again since we came through, and the
flames were shooting up ‘mid great columns of smoke. Later we passed through a
town that had been bombed to pieces since our driving through it in the
morning; a terrible sight now in the darkness, with great holes in the streets,
houses yawning open from direct hits, and every window smashed for miles.
Lots of
love to all the family; and thumbs up! Jerry is gabling on a knock-out; but
we’re not knocked out yet and our turn will come!
Pray for
the wounded. They are so good and patient. Some of the cases are very pathetic.
I haven’t
had any mail since I came back. No one has. I do hope you are out of London!
Your very
loving,
Geoffrey.
30.5.40
The folded, typewritten letter I possess looks rather authentic, but must itself be a copy: ‘copy’ is in fact written on the envelope, I guess by David Pontifex, who must have sent it to my grandmother. Or possibly after the war Honor (Pon) took it on her visit to Kenya, where Mary had married Alban Mitford-Barberton, and was raising Bernard’s two girls on their farm near Kitale. My mother, then a young girl, recalled meeting Pon, and perhaps did so again when she visited England later. Pon died in 1967.
After 1945 everybody
thought that Europe had finally exhausted its appetite for war. Not as far as
Putin is concerned: the scenes of devastation, numbed refugees, the casualties
buried where they died, described by Dom Gervase, are shockingly being exactly
replicated in eastern Ukraine. Insane.
*****
No comments:
Post a Comment