This excerpt comes from chapter "One Step Ahead of the Bombs" the testimonial of Zosia Krakowiak recorded in 1997.
La Panne, Belgium, Friday May 10, 1940
Thousands of desperate people were now amassed on the Belgian coast. They believed that they would be protected, and that the enemy would never penetrate the Maginot Line. But, they were worried. And then their turn came. Ignas and Hala were awoken before dawn by roaring motors. Incredulous, they watched from their balcony as billowing German parachutes streamed down like giant white teardrops. Stunned by the force of the blitzkrieg, all they could do as they waited for Ignas’s brother Hipek and his wife Zosia to join them from Brussels, was to listen to news reports. As the day unfolded, the blare of BBC broadcasts and silence would alternate, as a sense of alarm electrified the huddled groups that congregated along the beachfront in front of their apartment. First Holland and now Belgium. The dreaded invasion had begun …
… Cars crawled along the crowded roads, traveling only as fast as the people who walked alongside them. German war planes soared and parachutists peppered the sky. The booms seemed never ending. At a moment’s notice, all travelers were poised to jump into the ravines that lined the dirt roads. Refugees moved south and retreating soldiers came north. They all covered only a few kilometers a day. When they arrived at the town of Poperinge, the family found a bottleneck at the bridge over the Yser Canal. They saw more cars, bicycles, and people on foot pushing baby carriages, carts loaded with family treasures, or with children or an infirm mother or father. The lines stretched like rows of ants with an inner sense of purpose telling them exactly what to do and where to go—head south…
When they reached the border with France, there were no guards on duty, no one to challenge the fact that the Krakowiaks’ did not have the proper travel documents. They slipped into France without being noticed, and continued west toward Dunkirk. When they did come across a petrol station, the pumps were usually broken and the reserves of fuel were dry. Thousands of cars were on the roads by now.
When night fell, they repeated the same routine: stop the car by the side of the road, take the mattresses off the roof, cover themselves with blankets and fall asleep under the stars. At dawn they would get back on the road.
They inched past lines of exhausted British soldiers, heads hung low from fatigue and the shame of retreat. One morning, after a night of rain, a British troop transporter making its way north abruptly shifted a gear, lunged forward and slid across the muddy road. The British vehicle’s front wheel ticked the Krakowiaks’ back fender, spinning their Mercedes into a ditch. Some soldiers jumped off their vehicle and dragged the heavy car back onto the road. The captain gave the refugees two Jerry cans full of petrol from their supply.
Ignas strapped the lifesaving liquid on to the back fender, and thanked the captain repeatedly. The captain reassured Ignas that they didn’t need it. They were going home.
The Krakowiaks’ mission in Dunkirk accomplished, they drove southwest. Zosia glanced back through the rear window and saw the flames and smoke from the excess petrol burning. The British soldiers did not want the German enemy to use it when they took over Northern France. With the Allies suffering defeat, the Krakowiak family was more worried than ever…