EPIC TRIP IN TANK.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 146, 21 June 1940, Page 6

EPIC TRIP IN TANK.

TRAPPED IN FLANDERS YOUNG GUNNER'S STORY. FORTY MILES TO THE COAST. LONDON, June 2.

Trapped in Flanders with the order, "Save yourselves"—so they scrounged a lift in a tank. A young gunner told this classic tale of the British resourcefulness when he arrived safe in England from Dunkirk. "For two days we ran in and out of German columns," he said. "Once we came right on them, but we just laid low and they passed us by. Another time we struck a small unit and opened fire on them. We cleaned them up and got a move on quickly. "We steered by compass, had no water and precious little food. But we meant to get that tank and ourselves to Dunkirk somehow. And we did it. "Before we broke up our unit to make for the coast we blew up our guns—the same guns that demolished in five minutes a village in Belgium where a German battery had been set up. "On the beach," he continued, "we had to bury ourselves in the sand when the machine-gunning was too hot. But, believe me, there were other times when the boy«, bombers or no bombers, went for a bathe." Tens of thousands of the B.E.F. and French troops were trapped in like manner; most of them had epic tales to tell, too.