7607852, Sergeant, Philip John WHITE
Aged 28
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Philip John WHITE was born on 3rd September 1911 (4th qtr 1911 Wigan 8c:49). the son of John Thomas and Annie WHITE (née PILLIPS).
In the 1939 register he was apparently home on leave at 13 Green Lane, West Bromwich, a private in the 14th R.A.O.C. His father [31-10-1884] was a consultant mechanical engineer, mother [16-10-1884]. CWGC puts them later in Bournemouth. The parents of this Old Culfordian donated a prize to the school in his memory. |
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His unit by its very nature is hard to pin down, but thanks to Lt Col Prestage's nephew and Pierre Vandervelden's website www.inmemories.
com we do now know that:- "On 23 May 1940, nineteen men from the RAOC (Royal Army Ordnance Corps) lost their lives in the Audruicq/Zutkerque area of northern France, just south-east of Calais. Seven are buried in Audruicq churchyard and twelve in Zutkerque churchyard. All were members of the 14th Army Field Workshop, a unit attached to the British Expeditionary Force which fought its way back to the Dunkirk "pocket" in late May 1940. After training in England in 1939, these civilians in uniform - they were Territorials - arrived at Carvins, near Lille in January 1940, where they set up two operations, dealing with the repair and recovery of army vehicles. In essence they were non-combatant motor mechanics. In mid-May 1940 Carvin was bombed and their CO, Lt Col Walter Hadley Prestage, moved his 250 men and 30 lorries to the Château Cole, near St Omer airfield. They then received instructions to fall back to Calais and to abandon their equipment, in the process moving on to Château Cocove at Reques-sur-Hem, a spot reconnoitred by their French liaison officer, Paul Nizan (a famous writer, buried in La Targette French National Cemetery, Neuville St Vaast). They got there at 5.30 on the morning of 23 May 1940. At 10 am, German panzers were seen approaching and these tanks and infantry fired into the woods, hitting at least a dozen British men who, sadly, had received precious little training in combat and were under-armed. Realising the situation was hopeless, Col Prestage asked for French assistance to help cover their withdrawal. They decided to leave in army trucks, taking with them their dead and wounded as well as Paul Nizan. On leaving the château grounds, they were fired at again. Col Prestage gave the order that they should make their own way to the coast in separate groups, four in all. Col Prestage and some of his men then ran into French machine-gunners who mistook them for Germans. He was killed outright at the wheel of his vehicle, with Lt F.H. Austin RAOC as passenger (both now rest side by side in Audruicq churchyard extension, having previously had temporary graves at the site of the tragedy). " |
photo; Pierre Vandervelden www.inmemories.com
click here to go to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website for full cemetery/memorial details