History has always forgotten the small heroes, almost as easily as it does, in ignoring all those who have no fame ...
... but the rise of the Internet, means that many of us now leave a foot print, no matter how small, for histories record.
Take the case of Melbourne Johns, a Welshman born just outside the village of Hundleton (or Llanwnda?), near Pembroke, in 1901. He attended Fishguard County School (now Ysgol Bro Gwaun), and married Catherine Williams of Bridgend in 1930.
He left Wales, and started working in munitions factories in England, presumably as an engineer or skilled machinist, as he was familiar with deep hole boring machines of the type used for drilling the barrels of the Hispano-Suiza HS.404 20mm cannon used in either aircraft or on anti-aircraft guns. But a version of which, created in 1938, was designed for aircraft at the request of the French government. It was installed on a wide range of pre-war French fighter aircraft.
The British also had a licence to produce the aircraft version, that went in to a number of fighter aircraft such as the Westland Whirlwind of 1940, and later in the Bristol Beaufighter, providing the Royal Air Force (RAF) with cannon-armed interceptors. This later became adopted as the auto-cannon armament for the majority of RAF fighters, however it needed the development of a reliable belt feed mechanism in 1941 (in a slightly modified form as the Hispano Mk.II.) for its installations in the Hawker Hurricane and Supermarine Spitfire.
Mr Johns moved to Grantham in England to work at the British Manufacturing and Research Company (BMARC) munitions factory just after the war started (He would have been in a reserved (or scheduled) occupation scheme worker at that time), and it was while he was there that he got his chance to 'do his bit,' when he volunteered to go with a team, to recover the important deep hole boring machines at the Hispano-Suiza works in France, possibly at Bois-Colombes near Paris. These were in imminent danger of falling in to the invading Germans hands.
This volunteering was expressly against his employers wishes (but one way or another - subterfuge if you believe the film version), he left for France in June, and got to the factory by June the 8th or 9th, just before the arrival of the Germans. The group found the factory deserted with the plant machinery still inside. With the help of two British soldiers in the area, they commandeered a five ton van, and loaded the machinery, fleeing a day before the German forces arrived.
They then navigated across a France in chaos, with the roads flooded with fleeing people, and under threat of German aircraft strafing and bombings, as the French government evacuated Paris on June the 10th (the French had previously sworn to defend the city 'street by street'). The British and Allied troops at Dunkirk had been evacuated by 5th of June, and the Germans had ringed and trapped others around Le Havre, in the Pays de Caux of Upper Normandy, where Operation Cycle ran from the 10th to the 13th of June 1940 to evacuate them, so he may have been forced westward rather than northward.
They may have taken the machines to one of the ports in western France to be evacuated during Operation Aerial, in which British troops and personnel were evacuated between the 15th to 25th of June 1940, as France headed towards surrender on June the 22nd 1940. The exact port he may have used is not known, but La_Pallice, the port of La Rochelle ('La Rogette' in the movie), which hadn't yet fallen was possibly the location.
And there it would have ended, but a Britain reeling from the fall of France, and the debacle of Dunkirk, was in need of some heroes, so the author JB Priestly was commissioned to write a film screen play based upon the exploits of Mr Johns, and turn it into a morale raising movie. It was an early Ealing Studio war time movie made in 1941, and was in black and white, with the French scenes being shot in Cornwall and using some real French evacuees and Free French Forces.
It was released in early 1942 as 'The Foreman Went to France' (USA 'Somewhere in France'), but to no great acclaim, despite a committed cast and message.
The couple had no children and lived in the Grantham area until his death, which was reported in the local Grantham newspaper as the 'Death of the Foreman Who Went to France'. in 1955. With no children, the details of the Mr Johns wartime adventure have been lost ... only the Internet and that old movie keeps it alive.
 |
| A Trip to France Immortalised ..... |
... but the rise of the Internet, means that many of us now leave a foot print, no matter how small, for histories record.
Take the case of Melbourne Johns, a Welshman born just outside the village of Hundleton (or Llanwnda?), near Pembroke, in 1901. He attended Fishguard County School (now Ysgol Bro Gwaun), and married Catherine Williams of Bridgend in 1930.
He left Wales, and started working in munitions factories in England, presumably as an engineer or skilled machinist, as he was familiar with deep hole boring machines of the type used for drilling the barrels of the Hispano-Suiza HS.404 20mm cannon used in either aircraft or on anti-aircraft guns. But a version of which, created in 1938, was designed for aircraft at the request of the French government. It was installed on a wide range of pre-war French fighter aircraft.
The British also had a licence to produce the aircraft version, that went in to a number of fighter aircraft such as the Westland Whirlwind of 1940, and later in the Bristol Beaufighter, providing the Royal Air Force (RAF) with cannon-armed interceptors. This later became adopted as the auto-cannon armament for the majority of RAF fighters, however it needed the development of a reliable belt feed mechanism in 1941 (in a slightly modified form as the Hispano Mk.II.) for its installations in the Hawker Hurricane and Supermarine Spitfire.
Mr Johns moved to Grantham in England to work at the British Manufacturing and Research Company (BMARC) munitions factory just after the war started (He would have been in a reserved (or scheduled) occupation scheme worker at that time), and it was while he was there that he got his chance to 'do his bit,' when he volunteered to go with a team, to recover the important deep hole boring machines at the Hispano-Suiza works in France, possibly at Bois-Colombes near Paris. These were in imminent danger of falling in to the invading Germans hands.
This volunteering was expressly against his employers wishes (but one way or another - subterfuge if you believe the film version), he left for France in June, and got to the factory by June the 8th or 9th, just before the arrival of the Germans. The group found the factory deserted with the plant machinery still inside. With the help of two British soldiers in the area, they commandeered a five ton van, and loaded the machinery, fleeing a day before the German forces arrived.
They then navigated across a France in chaos, with the roads flooded with fleeing people, and under threat of German aircraft strafing and bombings, as the French government evacuated Paris on June the 10th (the French had previously sworn to defend the city 'street by street'). The British and Allied troops at Dunkirk had been evacuated by 5th of June, and the Germans had ringed and trapped others around Le Havre, in the Pays de Caux of Upper Normandy, where Operation Cycle ran from the 10th to the 13th of June 1940 to evacuate them, so he may have been forced westward rather than northward.
They may have taken the machines to one of the ports in western France to be evacuated during Operation Aerial, in which British troops and personnel were evacuated between the 15th to 25th of June 1940, as France headed towards surrender on June the 22nd 1940. The exact port he may have used is not known, but La_Pallice, the port of La Rochelle ('La Rogette' in the movie), which hadn't yet fallen was possibly the location.
 |
| Somewhere In France (US 1942) |
And there it would have ended, but a Britain reeling from the fall of France, and the debacle of Dunkirk, was in need of some heroes, so the author JB Priestly was commissioned to write a film screen play based upon the exploits of Mr Johns, and turn it into a morale raising movie. It was an early Ealing Studio war time movie made in 1941, and was in black and white, with the French scenes being shot in Cornwall and using some real French evacuees and Free French Forces.
 |
| Somewhere In France |
It was released in early 1942 as 'The Foreman Went to France' (USA 'Somewhere in France'), but to no great acclaim, despite a committed cast and message.
The couple had no children and lived in the Grantham area until his death, which was reported in the local Grantham newspaper as the 'Death of the Foreman Who Went to France'. in 1955. With no children, the details of the Mr Johns wartime adventure have been lost ... only the Internet and that old movie keeps it alive.
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