The 1st Battalion went to France with the BEF as part of the 6th Brigade, 2nd Division, arriving at Cherbourg on 24th September, 1939. It spent the winter and spring working on a defensive line facing neutral Belgium. When the Germans invaded the Low Countries on 10th May 1940, the battalion was in training, but it was rushed to the village of Ottenburg as reserve to 6th Brigade. Orders for the withdrawal of the battalion came on the 14th May, but trucks failed to arrive and the retreat was carried out on foot. On the 19th May, the trucks arrived and carried the battalion to the Escaut River, where it held this river line for the next 58 hours under intense bombardment. Extremely tired, the battalion was moved to an area just north of Bethune to rest. The break lasted two hours before the men were rushed back into action to recapture four bridges over the La Bassée Canal south of St Venant, where a new defensive line was to be established.
The distance between the four bridges was three miles, too much for one fit battalion, never mind a battle-weary one with no support. The battalion made its first assault on the 24th May. Facing superior armoured forces, the battalion took terrible casualties and withdrawal was the inevitable outcome. The battalion was effectively wiped out, losing 759 men with only three officers and eighty men making it to Dunkirk.
Private Pritchard was killed on the 25th May 1940, during an air attack and is buried in the CWG plot at St Vennant Communal Cemetery. St Vennant / La Bassée was at the southernmost point of the 'Dunkirk Corridor', which was being kept open by a collection of regular and scratch British Army units. The heroic defence of villages and towns such as La Bassée, Le Paradis, Cassel, Wormhout and Bergues bought the time needed to allow the bulk of the BEF and the French XVI Army Corps to be evacuated from the Dunkirk pocket. This report was dictated by Sgt D P Evans of the RWF, whilst he was still convalescing from his own wounds in Alder Hey Hospital. Note that the statement was taken some five months after the event, in November 1940.
Grave of Private J C Pritchard, CWG plot, St Vennant Communal Cemetery, France
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