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    Retreat from Amiens
    Retreat from Amiens
    Retreat from Amiens
    Ebook63 pages39 minutes

    Retreat from Amiens

    By Edward Cooper

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    RETREAT FROM AMIENS: MAY 20TH 1940

    A true account told by a soldier who was there

    Early one morning in the English summer of 1939, Edward Cooper spread a blanket on the short grass of the South Downs high above the Sussex village of Folkington. Before him, he saw the clean lines of the South Downs and the broad panorama of the Sussex Weald, silent in the soft haze that promised the hot day to come.

    Appreciative of the beauty of it all, he thought of the many times he would return to enjoy such moments. Delighting in his freedom, he felt contented and at peace.

    But, within months, he suddenly and unexpectedly found himself enlisted in the British army, soon to be trapped in the horror and suffering of the Second World War.

    This book is his story.

    Written when the events he described were fresh in his memory, he recounts with devastating freshness and poignancy the memories of a young soldier caught-up in the British military withdrawal from northern France that was the retreat from Amiens.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTouchworks Ltd
    Release dateFeb 1, 2018
    ISBN9781386270058
    Retreat from Amiens

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      Book preview

      Retreat from Amiens - Edward Cooper

      To enhance the immediacy and authenticity of the author’s unabridged words, extracts copied from his original manuscript have been inserted in the text of this book together with copies of his papers and photographs.

      QUOTATION

      Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot

      But he’ll remember with advantages

      What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,

      Familiar in his mouth as household words,

      Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,

      Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,

      Be in their flowing cups freshly remembered.

      This story shall the good man teach his son,

      And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,

      From this day to the ending of the world,

      But we in it shall be remembered —

      We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;

      For he today that sheds his blood with me

      Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,

      This day shall gentle his condition;

      And gentlemen in England now abed

      Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,

      And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks

      That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.

      William Shakespeare

      Henry V, Act 4, scene 3.

      On the field of the Battle of Agincourt,

      Northern France, 1415

      QUOTATION

      ‘...I never get between the pines

      But I smell the Sussex air;

      Nor I never come on a belt of sand

      But my home is there.

      And along the sky the line of the Downs

      So noble and so bare.

      A lost thing I could never find,

      Nor a broken thing mend:

      And I fear I shall be all alone

      When I get towards the end.

      Who will there be to comfort me

      Or who will be my friend?

      I will gather and carefully make my friends

      Of the men of the Sussex Weald;

      They watch the stars from silent folds,

      They stiffly plough the field.

      By them and the God of the South Country

      My poor soul shall be healed.

      If I ever become a rich man,

      Or if ever I grow to be old,

      I will build a house with deep thatch

      To shelter me from the cold,

      And there shall the Sussex songs be sung

      And the story of Sussex told.

      I will hold my house in the high wood

      Within a walk of the sea,

      And the men that were boys when I was a boy

      Shall sit and drink with me.’

      Hilaire Belloc (1870 to 1953)

      Excerpt from The South Country.

      INTRODUCTION

      EDWARD ROBERT COOPER (1919-1994)

      July 1939, aged 20

      Early one morning in the English summer of 1939, Edward Cooper, always called ‘Ted’, spread a blanket on the short grass of the South Downs high above the Sussex village of Folkington.

      Having cycled the 16 miles from his hometown of Hastings, he settled down to a breakfast of tea from his flask and a bag of fresh jam doughnuts, purchased less than an hour earlier from a baker in the nearby town of Polegate.

      Around him, he heard bees working on red clover, blue speedwell, daisy and buttercup and also a skylark, its song diminishing as it climbed ever higher. Before him, he saw the clean lines of the South Downs and the broad panorama

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