211036 Pte. James Lewis Leighfield British Army 8th Btn. Royal Warwickshire Regiment My great Uncle, James Leighfield volunteered for the British Expeditionary Force at the beginning of the war. He had already done army service in South Wales. He was among the first to arrive in France late in 1939. After the first few months "digging in" in Northern France, the Germans invaded Holland and Belgium and the BEF was marched North. He was involved in heavy fighting and as the French fell back, (he said they ran away), the Germans came in through the Ardennes to the South. The BEF was pulled back, fighting all the way.
His regiment, the 8th. Warwicks, along with a number of other regiments were told to stay back and act as rear guard for the Dunkirk evacuation, i.e. they weren't going to get away. The order was to fight to the "last round, then every man for himself". In heavy fighting across the Escaut Canal at Antoing/Courtoing and got shot through the chest. He somehow managed to stay on his feet for 3 days, but was captured by the Wehrmacht several miles away near Wormhoudt, where the 2nd. Warwicks were massacred by the Waffen SS. In that sense, he was lucky. After weeks in a German military hospital, he was taken to a prisoner of war camp in Silesia, now part of Poland. He didn't see another English person for several months and the family at home didn't get news that he was still alive until well into 1941. This camp site provided (slave) labour for an adjacent open cast coal mine and that was what he was forced to do, dig "brown" coal. He escaped three times, but was caught twice. On the last occasion in early 1945, he teamed up with other escaped prisoners living wild in the country and they all headed West. With the confusion in Germany at that time, they weren't caught and eventually met up with the Americans. The Yanks brought him home. He only weighed 6 1/2 stone and was a typhoid suspect until 1948.
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