Royal Armoured Corps News

Royal Amoured Corps Veteran shares memories of Dunkirk

24th November 2008

A former member of the Royal Armored Corps, who served during the Second World War, remembers the horrors he and his comrades faced in Dunkirk, during the D-day landings.

Gilbert Shimmin made a living with his hands as a mechanic and coach driver, but he never learned to swim with them.

That led to terrifying moments for him as a British soldier at Dunkirk in 1940, when more than 300,000 defeated Allied troops were evacuated from the beaches of northern France.

At his cozy Bonnie Place seniors apartment, the affable 90-year-old cheerfully recalled six years of Second World War service with an army he said was frequently ill prepared.

Speaking about his survival, his evacuation was far from easy. Shimmin recalled having to abandon a small leaky canvas boat with two other non-swimmers. Fortunately, the water was not over their heads.

He joined soldiers heading away from Dunkirk. They had to stay still at night to avoid detection.

“We kept marching away from the bombing and strafing and confusion,” he said.

A rowboat came to shore one day and Shimmin was among those scrambling to board it. He clung to the side for dear life, weighed down by his full pack and rifle.

“A sergeant leaned over, got me by the scruff of the neck and seat of the pants and dropped me into the bottom of the boat,” said Shimmin.

The soldiers eventually made it to a larger Dutch boat and crammed into a space below. Shimmin said they were attacked twice on the way home, but the exhausted evacuees slept through it all.

He believes there was British air cover over Dunkirk, but the German planes outnumbered them by a 3:1 ratio.

“They were only young, half-trained people,” said Shimmin about the British pilots. “I cried with frustration about it.”

He also served with the 109th Royal Armoured Corps, which trained soldiers to work on tanks used to set off mines.

“You explode them to make a path for the infantry,” said Shimmin. “People think that you’re safe in a tank, but you’re not.”

He also served with the Lancashire Fusiliers and the Royal Electrical Mechanical Engineers.

By 1945, Shimmin was shipped to the Nairobi area of Kenya to train locals to help build the Burma supply road.

But he said the trainees sold their uniforms while on leave and burnt out clutches when driving.

“They were destroying the vehicles as fast as we could get them,” said Shimmin.

The group was headed for Burma when atomic bombs were dropped on Japan, ending their mission and the Second World War.

“On V-J (Victory over Japan) Day everyone went to the sergeant’s mess and there was a huge bowl of all the liquor that was left,” said Shimmin. “It was tipped into the bowl and it’s a wonder it didn’t melt the glass.”

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