D-DAY BSA M20
After a career delivering despatches in World War II, this 1944 BSA M20 has an equally intriguing tale to tell about its post-war life
The tale of the World War II despatch rider who kept his bike
Few of the tourists strolling past Paul Eastwood’s 1944 BSA M20 would guess at its story. In fact, few give it more than a second glance. We’re at the old German artillery battery at Longues sur Mer in Normandy, overlooking Gold Beach, on June 8. As part of the 75th anniversary of D-day this part of Normandy has been crawling with WWII vehicles for a couple of weeks now, and one more olive drab motorbike doesn’t attract much attention. It’s not even as though a BSA M20 WD is an unusual sight. Huge numbers were made, they were in service for over 30 years and plenty have survived to be turned to civilian use – and often, later, to be restored back to their wartime specification. There’s no shortage of people who’ve bought and restored them in memory of relatives who rode
‘JOHNNY “FORGOT” TO GIVE IT BACK AT THE END OF THE WAR’
them in service during the war. Paul, though, has never been tempted to build a replica of the M20 which his uncle John ’Johnny’ Baulcomb rode as a wartime despatch rider. He doesn’t need to – because this is the actual bike Johnny rode onto the beach on D-day plus two, going on to serve with distinction as a signaller, line layer, despatch rider and convoy marshall right through France, Holland, Belgium and finally all the way to Berlin and victory. The story of how Johnny’s BSA came into Paul’s hands is remarkable, especially as this is no tale of a long and detailed search or a miraculous barn find, although it does involve a barn or two, as we shall see. In fact the bike’s been in the family all the time – Johnny simply ‘forgot’ to give it back at the end of the war... “I remember when I first saw it,” says Paul. “Johnny and my dad dragged it out of the barn as if he’d just got it to restore – I didn’t know then that he’d retained it after the war. It was in a hell of a state. It had been hidden away in this barn on the farm for decades, and all the barns leaked. It was that sort of place.” But how did it get from Berlin to an English barn anyway? Simple – Johhny rode it back after VE day. “Johnny wasn’t conscripted, he’d volunteered in 1942 at the age of 20, ending up in the Royal Sussex Regiment as a regular. When the war in Europe was over, the war against Japan was still very much on, and expected to drag on for years. So instead of being demobbed, he was sent to India to train troops.“But between Berlin and Bombay, as far as Paul can tell, Johnny had embarkation leave, and shoved the bike to the back of a barn along with all his equipment. By the time he came back, nearly three years later, presumably the powers-thatbe had forgotten – or most likely not even noticed – that they were short one rather secondhand BSA. And if they had noticed, they wouldn’t have known where to look. While stationed in Yorkshire prior to D-day Johnny had met a red-headed local lass and fallen head over heels in love. It was at her family’s farm that Johnny left his bike in 1945, rather than at his family home in Sussex, and when he was eventually demobbed in 1949, it was back to Yorkshire he went, to finally marry the girl he’d met five years earlier. “He was absolutely besotted with Margaret – in all his wartime letters to her he signs off: ‘To my Dream Girl’. He remained devoted to her for the rest of their lives. When she died in 1997 it broke his heart, and he died a few months later. He’d just given up.“The old soldier may be gone, but his bike keeps soldiering on... Paul’s determined to keep it – and use it – as long as he can, and then ensure it’s passed on to someone else. “I don’t think you ever really own something like this – I’m just the current custodian. I haven’t changed anything much, but even so it’s probably only about 80% original – the purists won’t like it.“Originality is always troublesome for wartime M20s, anyway – specs constantly changed and bikes would be crashed, rebuilt, cannibalised, blown up (sometimes literally) and rebuilt again. Very few are now exactly how they left the factory –
and that’s without taking into account personal modifications. “People say the panniers aren’t correct, but that’s what he used, so they were original to him. The seats are from a later one – I’ve got the originals but they’re completely worn out. All the cables were seized, so we changed those. One footpeg was broken, so Johnny cast a new one – he was a self-taught engineer. He could fix anything. He rebuilt the motor because that was worn out, and we spent a lot of time tinkering with it so he could ride it.“It’s no surprise that the BSA was a bit worn out. “Johnny told me he’d done 140,000 miles in ten months. If you do the sums that comes out at more than 450 miles a day, which seems like a bit of an exaggeration, but then again, he knew how to do the miles. In summer 1944 he was in Normandy, near Falaise, when he got a 72-hour pass, so he rode back to the farm in Yorkshire and proposed to Margaret, then rode back again!” One thing Paul has changed recently is the tyres: “Until our first trip back to Normandy three years ago it still had the original War Department tyres! I’ve changed a couple of other things on safety grounds, including adding a proper stop/tail light as the original was just dangerous.“The original lighting, incidentally, was designed so the rider could switch on just the rear light, for use in convoy. Paul’s safety-first attitude doesn’t extend as far as the brakes, though: “Ah no, the brakes don’t really work, not as such – I do get through a bit of boot-leather... the girder forks need a rebuild, too – it wanders all over the road.“Despite that, Paul still enjoys riding it, and not just pottering around, either. “We did about 600 miles on this trip to Normandy, and the same when we came over a few years back. We even took it flat out the full length of Gold, Juno and Sword beaches and it did really well on the sand! When it goes wrong you can fix it at the side of the road – the clutch started badly slipping, not uncommon if they get oil in the plates, but that was easy to fix on the campsite. Then the decompressor spring rusted through and snapped, but I just wired it up. I’ll fix it when I get home.”
‘IT’S PROBABLY ONLY 80% ORIGINAL – THE PURISTS WON’T LIKE IT’
Paul has also inherited all his uncle’s riding kit, including his helmet, haversack, water bottle, well-used clasp-knife and all sorts of memorabilia, including old banknotes, (including a one hundred million mark note from the hyper-inflation days of 1923), which Johnny brought back as souvenirs. “I asked him why he didn’t fill his panniers with proper loot,” says Paul. “But he said food, water and ammo seemed more important at the time! Most of his uniform had fallen apart with age, and the rubber on his goggles and gas mask has melted, but I’ve still got his all the badges etc. No medals, though – he never collected them after the war. He had a bad time of it. A leg wound he received caused him much pain for the rest of his life, and once he was lucky not to be killed by a garotte wire strung across a road in France. It was only because a branch had fallen on the wire that it hit his front wheel instead of taking his head off. “It all took its toll on him, and I think he wasn’t ever really fully fit afterwards. Nowadays you’d call it PTSD and have counselling, but back then it was shellshock, and you were just expected to put up with it. I worked with him on the farm and if a plane came over or there was a loud bang he’d throw himself in the ditch. And he wouldn’t have anything German or Japanese on the farm – if you’d turned up on a BMW or a Honda he’d have made you park it out on the road! I just wish I’d listened to more of his stories, but there were so many of them I didn’t really listen properly – I thought he was making it all up!” Despite claiming not to have listened, Paul clearly absorbed Johnny’s stories – he’s a natural story-teller himself – and equally obvious he loved his aunt and uncle. “Actually he wasn’t really my uncle – Margaret was my dad’s cousin. But they had no kids and I used to spend a lot of time with them. Then he asked if I wanted to go and work with him. I had a high-paid job then back in the early ’90s, so I swapped 50 grand a year for 40 quid a week! But it was worth it for the life experience.” The BSA had a part to play in this. With Paul’s help, Johnny expanded into market gardening, supplying local restaurants and hotels. Paul would ride round on the M20, delivering flyers and drumming up business. “I remember getting home after the first day and auntie saying: ‘the bloody phone’s not stopped ringing all day!’ Great, who’s been calling? ‘I don’t bloody know!’. Ringing all day, but she hadn’t answered it! I put an answerphone in after that.” When Johhny and Margaret passed on, Paul inherited half the farm. “We got hammered for death duties, though, so we couldn’t keep it going. I got his fishing rods and shotguns – and the BSA.” Since taking ownership of the bike, Paul’s tried to do the minimum to keep the M20 going. “I’ve had the carb resleeved because it was so worn that it leaked petrol everywhere, and I had the magneto rewound – I asked them not to clean and paint it, just to make it work properly. That’s all it needs, really. So long as it’s got fuel and a spark it starts first or second kick. It’s simple, it just runs. That’s what made it such a great despatch bike.”