Another Pay Corps unit stationed near the coast was told to form up in full marching order outside the town hall after breakfast that morning. Their commanding officer told them that the Germans were approaching, and that the local Mayor had said they had to leave within an hour. So he ordered them to set off towards St-Nazaire. They had not been told of the evacuation, and simply hoped they would be able to pick up a boat to get home.
Suddenly there was a shout of ‘Take cover!’ The soldiers dived into ditches as a German plane flew over very low. But it did not fire. A little while later, the same shout went up, and the plane flew over once more, again not firing. It must have been on a reconnaissance mission.
In Britain, that Sunday had been declared a day of prayer for France. At his official country residence, Churchill lay in bed, reading the latest news of war developments brought by a dispatch rider from London. The Prime Minister’s secretary, John Colville, thought he looked ‘just like a rather nice pig clad in a silk vest’.1 Having finished the reports, Churchill ruminated for a while before deciding to return to London and call a Cabinet meeting for 10.30. There, it was decided to tell the French that they could investigate German armistice terms on condition that their fleet immediately set sail for British harbours. Without the fleet, Britain would continue to hold Paul Reynaud to the agreement not to seek a separate peace.
As Churchill was reading the latest news in bed at Chequers, the French ambassador, Charles Corbin, was on his way to the Hyde Park Hotel with an eminent French international official and banker, Jean Monnet, who had been sent to try to use his contacts in London to get reinforcements for France. The previous day, over lunch at the Conservative Party stronghold of the Carlton Club, Corbin had discussed an audacious idea with the Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax, and other high British figures. What evolved was the notion of forming a union between their two countries as a means of keeping France in the war. On Sunday morning, Corbin and Monnet decided to put the scheme to Charles de Gaulle.
The future leader of the Free French was shaving when two visitors called. Monnet spoke of the value of binding Britain and France together in a political, military and economic union. Though the difficulties of the scheme were evident, de Gaulle agreed. So did other French officials in London who were consulted.
De Gaulle was already showing the mettle and bravado that would mark his long career. Despite having no authority to do so, he had just issued an order for a French merchant ship loaded with arms and ammunition to put into a British port rather than sailing to his country’s occupied northern coast. Shortly after noon, the General telephoned Paul Reynaud in Bordeaux to tell him that ‘something stupendous’ was being prepared. Though the British government had not yet formally considered the idea, de Gaulle said bluntly that ‘Churchill proposes the establishment of a single Franco-British government’.2 Then he added a most unlikely carrot, suggesting that Reynaud might become head of a joint War Cabinet. Having set the ball rolling, he went to meet Churchill for lunch at the Carlton Club.
At 3 p.m., the War Cabinet met in Whitehall to discuss the proposal. After harbouring initial doubts, Churchill concluded that ‘some dramatic announcement was clearly necessary to keep the French going’. De Gaulle and Corbin sat outside the Cabinet Room, officials coming out from time to time to consult them. At 4 p.m., the General made another telephone call to Reynaud to say that there was going to be ‘a sensational declaration’. The French Premier warned that he must have it before his Cabinet met that evening if he was to head off the defeatists.
After two hours of discussion, the War Cabinet approved a declaration that France and Great Britain ‘shall no longer be two nations but one Franco-British Union’. The two countries, it said, were joined indissolubly in their ‘unyielding resolution in their common defence of justice and freedom, against subjection to a system which reduces mankind to a life of robots and slaves’. They would have joint defence, foreign, financial and economic policy organs, and a single War Cabinet during the conflict in charge of all their forces. The two parliaments would be formally associated. And thus, the declaration concluded: ‘We shall conquer.’
It was an amazing leap of faith for a government which included its fair share of hard-headed realists, and a sign of how desperate the situation had become. Despite having flirted at one point with the idea of trying to open negotiations with Hitler, Lord Halifax backed the scheme. So did the two Labour Party members of the Cabinet, Clement Attlee and Arthur Greenwood. On the French side, his later unshakable defence of French sovereignty gave an ironic tinge to de Gaulle’s involvement though, as the future ‘Father of Europe’ and promoter of the original Common Market, Jean Monnet was acting entirely in character.
‘Nous sommes d’accord,’ Churchill cried as he emerged from the Cabinet Room, launching into an impromptu speech while ministers clapped de Gaulle on the back and told him he would become Commander-in-Chief. ‘Je l’arrangerai,’ Churchill broke in. The Prime Minister’s private secretary wondered if the General was a new Napoleon. ‘From what I hear, it seems a lot of people think so,’ Colville added in his diary.3 ‘He treats Reynaud (whom he called ce poisson gelé) like dirt.’ What nobody in London seems to have taken into account was the danger that the proposal would make those in Bordeaux intent on reaching an armistice even more determined to take the final steps to end France’s war.
Heading for evacuation from St-Nazaire, Horace Lumsden heard news of the unity proposal on the radio. He and his fellow soldiers approved, but they realised they were caught up in ‘a major disaster’. What particularly struck Lumsden was the blank expression on the faces of the French people crowding the roads. It was, he thought, as if they did not understand what was going on and, if they did, could not grasp it.
When he arrived at the airfield outside St-Nazaire, Lance Corporal Morris Lashbrook and his friend, Alan ‘Chippy’ Moore, scouted round to see the lie of the land. They were both very hungry after the drive from St-Etienne-de-Montluc. They found a field kitchen, and plenty of wood. The only food to hand was bully beef, potatoes and margarine. They cooked it up, and helped the meal down with Scotch from a bottle provided by one of their officers. Then they were ordered to set out on foot for the docks.
Feeling bored in a Royal Engineers camp some thirty miles from the coast, Neville Chesterton, the former railway clerk from Staffordshire whose unit had wandered apparently aimlessly across France, decided to go to a cinema in a local town with a friend called Derek. They thought the trip would pass the time though neither would understand the French dialogue.
They were let into the cinema without paying. There were only half a dozen other people inside. As the film went on, Chesterton and Derek heard excited chattering round them, and the audience began to slip out. By the time the film had finished, the hall was empty. The French had left after hearing rumours that their government had surrendered.
British troops in St-Nazaire began to embark on the first evacuation boats that had arrived during the afternoon of 16 June. Two big troopships, the Georgic and the Duchess of York, lay well off the coast in Quiberon Bay together with two Polish vessels, the Batory and the Sobieski. They had no protection against German planes or submarines, but were not attacked. In St-Nazaire, a hospital ship pulled into the harbour and, shouting through a megaphone, the captain offered to take men on board if they left their weapons behind to enable the boat to keep its noncombatant status – their commanders refused.
Some of the rescue ships had sailed in haste without time to prepare. One was so short of food that the captain and crew went ashore to grab a wooden case that had been dumped on the quayside – it turned out to contain only biscuits. Wanting something more varied, the officers put up 400 francs, and two of them went to buy oranges, potatoes and carrots.
Most of the men on the quays concentrated on getting on to a ship, abandoning their equipment. Noticing cases loaded on lorries left on the docks, the commander of a unit of the 6th Royal Sussex regiment o
rdered them to be opened. Inside were Bren guns in mint condition, along with ammunition. The officer told his men to grab as many as they could, and they used them subsequently to fire from their rescue ship at attacking German planes.
The weather was balmy. ‘The sea is calm and blue, singing on her way to break on the golden shore,’ wrote a local newspaper, the Courrier de St-Nazaire et de la Région.4 ‘The summer’s gentle wind carries with it the perfume of the flowers.’
But the mass of soldiers on the boulevard by the sea acted as an unwelcome reminder of the reality of war. ‘Why this deployment of British forces here?’ the newspaper asked. ‘It is said that our allies are going back to England. We don’t want to believe it and yet, it is true.’ It went on:
On the open sea, big boats are at anchor, waiting for the order to enter the harbour. The presence of these soldiers and boats, which already has brought upon us the nocturnal visits of the German planes, is again going to attract them, day and night in our skies.
A little before midday, we perceive the distant noise of an airplane, and immediately afterwards, the tragic screeching of the sirens pierces the quiet air. Everybody rushes towards the nearest shelter.
The sounding of the all clear meant that people could go home safely through the streets to lunch. But, at about 4 p.m., a lone German aircraft flew over slowly at low altitude. British soldiers strolling on the boulevard threw themselves to the ground as a small round white cloud rose from the ground where the plane’s bombs had landed.
‘The British are boarding!’ a local woman noted in a memoir for her sister, who was in England.
They fill the whole boulevard, assembled by companies and regiments. It is hot, the weather is close and stormy; they are thirsty. The German planes are above us.
During mass, the air-raid sirens ring out. I am coming back via the boulevard but, to avoid the projectiles, I have to rush under a big porch near the rue Fernand Gasnier. Many British soldiers have also taken refuge there.
This day has been most painful and harrowing. You can guess our feelings of helplessness and abandonment; it was terrible, and these rumours of a separate armistice which were causing the departure of the English, what a disgrace!
A British doctor who had taken a bedroom in her house came to say farewell on the Sunday evening. ‘Mummy and I were crying. We were so sad. But the doctor tried to cheer us up. “We will be back,” he said. “All is not lost.” Yet I had a foreboding of all the sufferings we would have to endure, of how long and hard the struggle was going to be and of the numerous pitfalls and stumbling blocks that would face us. Would we ever see happier times again?’5
In Nantes, the British manager of a wood factory which had made panelling for Atlantic liners was driving back from his plant when German planes flew in to bomb the city. Alfred Edwin Duggan, a First World War veteran, had lived in Nantes since 1920, though he kept up his English habits down to porridge at breakfast. Now, he drove to the British club to see if there was any information there about what was happening. The building was virtually empty; a padre told him British troops had been instructed to evacuate.
Duggan went on to the British consulate where he barged into a meeting between the Consul and the Port Admiral. He insisted on being told what was going on. A British naval attaché advised him to head immediately for St-Nazaire and the rescue fleet waiting there.
Going to his home in the rue de Rennes in the north of the city, Duggan told his wife, his 15-year-old daughter and his 13-year-old son to pack. They filled four suitcases, numbered 1 to 4 – the last, carried by the youngest member of the family, John, was to be abandoned first, if necessary.
Duggan telephoned other British inhabitants of Nantes, only to find that some had already left. Two families joined the Duggans in a three-car convoy which headed towards St-Nazaire. Before setting out, they agreed that, if any car broke down, it would be abandoned. The vital thing was to get to the coast and sail away.
It was, John Duggan recalled, an exciting episode for a teenage boy. The weather was beautiful. He had with him his Bedlington terrier of which he was particularly fond. The road was clogged, and, as they passed through French villages, people cheered them.
The route west from Nantes divides at the town of Savenay, one fork going to St-Nazaire and the other north-west towards Brest. Eddie Duggan looked up the right-hand fork and saw the road was empty. So he decided to take it, giving up the idea of going to St-Nazaire and heading instead for Brest.
One car’s fan belt gave way as they passed through a deserted village, where the road became a hard, dusty track. Ignoring their agreement to abandon any vehicle that broke down, the men forced open garages to find a replacement. As they did so, they kept a watch on the road, half expecting to see German tanks driving towards them. John Duggan stood by a water trough, with his terrier. Behind him, he heard a skylark.
German planes were attacking at will across France. The last RAF units had been withdrawn to the Channel Islands. The French air force was largely ineffective.
From the base outside Louvain in Belgium, the KG30 Diving Eagle unit of JU-88s was ordered to bomb Tours. Though the government had left for the greater safety of Bordeaux, the city was still a major point on the refugee route.
Using their usual tactic of flying in with the sun behind them to blind the defenders, the planes dived on a bridge crossing the river. The pilot, Peter Stahl, waited until a red mark on the Plexiglas panel in the nose passed the target. Then he pulled the level that sent his plane into its steep dive. As he hurtled down, an anti-aircraft shell hit the panel, and Stahl pulled the plane upwards. Regaining height, he put the Junkers into a second dive, and, this time, hit the bridge – a few days later, the damage was to prove a hindrance to Wehrmacht troops as they came to cross the Loire.
Back in Belgium, the crews had what Stahl’s diary called ‘a good serious drinking session with many speeches in the nearby village. The wine is good and our hosts in the local inn are most pleasant.’6
France’s new capital of Bordeaux was crammed with half a million refugees. People clamoured for rooms in the lobbies of smart hotels, or slept in private homes that were turned into dormitories. The correspondent of The Times described the city as being in ‘bedlam’, with ‘ladies bent on saving their lapdogs, refugees of all kinds, French and foreigners [and] a ceaseless maelstrom of cars’. 7
Government leaders set up in official buildings: Paul Reynaud chose the military commander’s residence as a sign of his intention to keep a grip on the conduct of the war. In the late afternoon of 16 June, Churchill’s military liaison officer, General Edward Spears, and the British ambassador, Sir Ronald Campbell, called on the Premier with a message from London saying that, if France did seek armistice terms, Britain expected to be consulted.
Then the telephone rang. Reynaud picked up the receiver. The next moment, Spears recorded, ‘his eyebrows went up so far they became indistinguishable from his neatly brushed hair; one eyebrow to each side of the parting’.8
‘One moment,’ the Premier said. ‘I must take it down.’
The caller was de Gaulle with the terms of the British declaration on union between the two countries.
Grasping a sheet of foolscap paper on the table in front of him, Reynaud began to write in a scrawl, using a short gold pencil with an enormous lead. He repeated each word as he went along, getting more and more excited. Spears held the paper to stop it sliding across the slippery surface. As each sheet was filled, the General handed Reynaud a new one. The Premier’s pencil gave out, so the British general handed him his.
Finally, Reynaud said into the mouthpiece, ‘Does he agree to this? Did Churchill give you this personally?’
There was a moment’s pause. Then Churchill came on the line.
Reynaud started to speak in English. He pledged to defend the union proposal to the death. He would take the appeasers by surprise at the Cabinet meeting that evening. As Spears gathered up the scrawled sheets to carry t
hem to secretaries in the next room to be typed, he glimpsed Reynaud’s face ‘transfigured with joy . . . happy with a great happiness in the belief that France would now remain in the war’.
The two Prime Ministers agreed to meet the following day in the Breton port of Concarneau. To mark the historic nature of what was happening, Churchill decided to take the senior figures from the Labour and Liberal parties with him, as well as the Chiefs of Staff. He also dropped the demand for the French fleet to sail to British harbours.
Still, the Prime Minister rebuffed a final appeal by de Gaulle to send troops to France: the union had not yet taken shape, and he was not going to abandon his policy of harbouring reserves to defend Britain. A report from a British general on the spot said that the Tenth Army in northern France was in full retreat. Any forces sent across the Channel might well be chewed up by the Wehrmacht. According to Churchill’s account, de Gaulle paused as he left the room, took a couple of steps back and said, in English, ‘I think you are quite right.’ Then he boarded a plane to fly to Bordeaux with the text of the unity declaration.
What neither Churchill nor Reynaud nor de Gaulle knew was that the French Premier’s telephone was being tapped – by agents working for France’s Commander-in-Chief. They had recorded de Gaulle’s call at noon, and his subsequent conversation with Reynaud at 4 p.m. They also noted a call the Premier made at 4.40 p.m. to President Lebrun asking for a private meeting before the Cabinet session.
That was not all. When Spears took the scrawled sheets to be typed up, Reynaud’s mistress, Hélène de Portes, had barged into the secretaries’ room. It may have been by chance though, quite possibly, she had been alerted that something big was going on by her lover’s excitement after the earlier calls from de Gaulle.
The Sinking of the Lancastria Page 8