Beached
The British Expeditionary Force was now cornered by advancing German forces. Casualty Clearing Station No. 5 was in their path; the medical staff there were ordered to pack up and move towards the port of Dunkirk. On 20 May QA Lorna Bradey and her fellow nurses found themselves in a Red Cross ambulance as part of a troop convoy en route to the coast. That first day they travelled twenty miles to a small town named Frévent, where they spent the night in the château, converted into a hospital. They woke next morning to find their accompanying troops had departed, leaving a note from the Commanding Officer: ‘We have moved forward – you are to turn back.’ Unknown to the nurses, orders had been received that no women were to proceed to Dunkirk from that point. The CO’s command saved the nurses’ lives.
By the time they could organise their departure going south the countryside was a battle zone. Eventually the ambulance convoy set off, heading for Dieppe, designated a hospital port. A terrifying journey now began, in a vehicle which moved painfully slowly along a road crammed with refugees who clung to its sides; they had been forbidden to open the doors in case the panicked crowds attempted to get in. Every half-hour Stukas sprayed the fleeing civilians with fire. ‘They were remorseless, the Red Cross meant nothing to them.’ Peering out through the small slit windows of the ambulance, Lorna could see carnage. It went against all her instincts and training to abandon wounded civilians, but they had no medical equipment.
Stopping was out of the question. Lorna became desperate to find a toilet. ‘You can’t just do it here,’ they all said. Relief came in the form of a large tin containing peaches, the last one they had left:
Solemnly we opened it and shared the contents; most delicious under the circumstances. One empty tin was now to be used for other purposes! Me first, nothing daunted and with an audience I balanced in that jolting ambulance.
By the time another eight hours had passed all the nurses were glad of that large tin.
The convoy passed through Abbeville; as they left the town was bombarded behind them. The next day they reached Arques-la-Bataille, just outside Dieppe, where they joined a hospital train for Dieppe Harbour, only to find the harbour in flames. As they stood at a loss, the hospital ship the Maid of Kent was blown up and sunk in front of their eyes; twenty-eight crew and medical personnel were drowned that day. Fear set in. Nobody knew where to go. Their train crawled through France, loaded with hospital staff and wounded; at night they shunted into a siding near Rouen, where, as darkness fell, the bombing started up again.
The nurses were coping, but near to hysterical. Lorna asked a friend sitting on the top bunk to pass something down to her; as the girl leaned over a bullet struck the panel where seconds before she had been resting her head. ‘We were still laughing, too frightened, too terrified to cry.’ Another girl lay chalk-faced and wide-eyed on the floor – ‘she couldn’t take any more.’ At dawn they started up again. Orderlies brought the nurses buckets of hot sweet tea – ‘we could have kissed them all’. Slowly the train zig-zagged across France to the southern Brittany coast, making for St Nazaire:
Miraculously no one on that journey south was hit. Midday – hot meat and veg on a tin plate – this was luxury indeed and we had a loo! [The journey] took us all of that day, but the sun was shining, the bombers were behind us and we were alive!
In those grim days, Dunkirk engrossed the nation. Like thousands upon thousands of mothers across the country, Clara Milburn was consumed by anxiety as news of the catastrophe became public. Her son Alan, unlike Lorna Bradey, was in the thick of it.
On Wednesday 29 May Mrs Milburn heard on the radio of the Belgian surrender and the withdrawal. On Friday the 31st her hopes for Alan were raised after a neighbour telephoned to say she had heard that the Royal Warwickshire Regiment was safely evacuated, only to be dashed on discovering that the news appeared ill founded. ‘Our spirits went down and down and the day wore slowly on. We worked in the garden.’ Saturday came, and ‘still no news’. Tales came through of the evacuation: the horrors as the men on the beach were bombarded; the nightmare of their escape on the armada of small ships. A local boy, Philip Winser, had been killed. By the following Wednesday Clara broke down on discovering a box of Alan’s sports trophies put away at the beginning of the war. ‘To cry a bit relieved the tension.’ On Friday Mrs Winser called by. They talked about the boys. Philip was dead. And Alan? Nobody knew. ‘I felt how splendidly brave and calm she is.’ Impossible for Clara not to imagine herself in Mrs Winser’s shoes; would she, too, be splendidly brave and calm? A fortnight after the withdrawal of the BEF Mrs Milburn wrote:
One’s mind seems numbed, and the last day or two I go on, keeping on the surface of things as it were, lest I go down and be drowned. Every moment Alan is in my thoughts, every hour I send out my love to him – and wonder and wonder.
For the 224,585 British troops who escaped from Dunkirk alive the reception was unstinting. The British woman lived up to her image during this most mortifying episode of the war. Tirelessly angelic, patient, nurturing and endlessly kind, she was the apotheosis of the perfect housewife. She cut sandwiches, washed up for hours on end, bandaged, healed and produced inexhaustible supplies of clean clothes. As the trains bearing the exhausted evacuees rolled slowly into London the WVS parked their mobile canteen beside the railway line and handed buttered buns and sandwiches to them through the train windows.
At Joyce Green Hospital in Dartford the message arrived overnight that the hospital must start preparing to receive wounded soldiers arriving from Dunkirk. At 2 a.m. the nurses were woken; Peggy Priestman, a twenty-year-old nurse, worked fifteen-hour shifts from then on, dealing with injuries ranging from broken arms to shrapnel wounds. Peggy had not been trained to extract shrapnel, but the doctors were too busy to do everything. She had to dig fragments out of the patients’ heads, and then stitch them back up. ‘You just got on with it and did the best you could.’ Worse than shrapnel was gangrene. In many cases there was nothing for it but amputation. Another nurse, VAD Lucilla Andrews, received wounded evacuees arriving at a military hospital on Salisbury Plain and took notes on her experiences, which later ended up in a war memoir:
Men too tired to remember to swallow a mouthful of soup or keep their eyes open, but not to mumble, ‘Thanks, nurse … ta, duck … that’s great, hen … grand, luv … I say thanks awfully.’
Day after day of washing from the bodies of exhausted men the sand of Dunkirk, the grime of St Malo, of Brest, of Cherbourg, the oil of wrecked ships, the salt from the Channel.
The ATS came into its own. Kathy Kay’s platoon was based at a militia camp in Cambridgeshire. Here, hundreds of straggling evacuees arrived, many in tatters, all needing food and beds. The platoon was immediately detailed to undertake the ‘hard and tedious’ jobs required to care for them: food preparation and washing up, re-equipping them with clothes and other necessities. Like all the others, Kathy was ungrudging. She knew how grateful the troops were, how glad they were to be back on home soil. Mary Angove was another, a seventeen-year-old based at Penhill camp near Newquay: ‘We got thrown in the deep end. There was no bread-cutting machine – I was cutting hundreds of slices of bread and laying on liver sausage sandwiches. No dishwasher either – I was sleeves rolled up with my hands in a deep sink full of greasy washing-up water. The men were coming back all over the country … and they were just so tired. They didn’t seem to want to talk about it. Not that we asked, we didn’t have time, we just had to look after them, and then they got sorted and sent on leave.’
WAAF Joan Davis, based at Calshot near Southampton, witnessed the Dunkirk evacuation, both before and after. As the rescue vessels slipped into Southampton Water there was an atmosphere of anticipation and dread. Within a short time many of the small ships returned, bearing exhausted soldiers. Many of them were half-naked. Joan and a companion were ordered to collect as much clothing as possible from the stores. The spring weather was unnaturally hot, and the pair worked for hours on the doc
k, distributing garments to tattered, filthy men. ‘The stench was terrible.’ Inevitably the soldiers were in great distress; most of them had lost their belongings, all they had were a few wet remnants and some mementoes and photographs. The young WAAFs were harrowed with pity for these abject survivors. ‘On our return to Calshot my companion, Air Craft Woman Foote, said to me, “I think the real war now begins.” ’
*
The German army proceeded remorselessly across France. In Villers-sur-Mer the Henreys believed that Normandy was still protected by the French lines of defence behind Amiens. Their smallholding was Madeleine’s pride. Feminine to the core, she had poured into it all her love for home, for the finesses of everyday life. Her identity as a Frenchwoman – her ‘chic’, her savoir faire, her domestic artistry – were all bound up in the Normandy farm. That June the garden was a mass of roses, the grass a perfect green, grazed down by her cows. The air was scented with new-mown hay.
At midday on 9 June, without any warning, the sky darkened, the breeze stilled, and the day turned deathly cold. Madeleine and Robert walked out to the Point beyond the village, from where there was a panoramic view across the Seine estuary. They looked out and saw a vast plume of smoke billowing up like a volcano – it was the oil refinery at Port Jérôme, upriver from Le Havre. This refinery held the biggest petrol storage tanks in France. The allies had fired the tanks at dawn to prevent them from falling into enemy hands, and by lunchtime the cloud of smog had completely blotted out the sun. That evening while eating dinner with Mme Gal they heard planes overhead; bombs were being dropped on Le Havre. Bobby slept in his cot. As the sun set they walked up to the Point again, and watched as the coastline burned. With horror they now learned that German tanks were in Rouen. ‘We both knew only too well what would happen if we left things to the last moment. The baby might get crushed or machine-gunned.’ If they were not to be caught up in the advance they must flee.
As early as possible the next morning Madeleine rose. She made the bed, tidied her room, dusted and put away her treasures. ‘I was determined that our house should be trim when we left it.’ As a final touch she went out to the garden and cut roses to adorn the sitting room. But there was no more time to lose. A neighbour had agreed to drive the four of them ninety miles across country to St Malo, from where they hoped to escape to England. They packed what they could.
We took a last look round the house. The bedroom was bathed in sunshine, and I opened my wardrobes, filled with my dresses, my furs and hats, and looked at them with tears in my eyes. My linen cupboard, scented with lavender from my garden, was my pride … my baby’s cot was all ready for him to sleep in.
I kissed the pillow in the cot when nobody was looking, and I steeled my nerves, driving my nails into the flesh of my hands. I knew there must be no choosing of this or that to take away. The sacrifice must be complete or it might cost us our lives.
Thus the family took to the road. They were refugees. ‘The bottom had fallen out of my dream farm … Would I ever see it again? … It hurts to love.’ Madeleine had stamped this little corner of Normandy so indelibly with her own personality that leaving it was a kind of annihilation.
Two days later, after getting transport and lodging through a combination of persuasion and bribery, they arrived at St Malo, the last of the major Channel ports still not bombed. Here, despite an abundance of luxuries in the shops, the signs of suffering were everywhere. St Malo was overrun with flotsam from all over northern France; they had arrived, like the Henreys, weighed down with prams and suitcases, and now haunted the picturesque streets, helplessly trying to find some means of getting away.
Transports arrived from England and tied up at the quay. The Henreys went to the British Consulate. Madeleine had a British passport, her son had a British father; there would be no problem for the three of them. Madeleine’s mother was a different matter, however, and the Consular bureaucrat who guarded the gate was deaf to all entreaties. Nothing would persuade him that Madame Gal had a case for returning to London, where she had lived for years, and which she had left in order to help look after the grandchild she had loved, nursed and cherished since the day he was born. ‘My pleading was in vain.’
Afterwards Madeleine saw that she had no real choice in doing what she did; as British citizens she and Robert would have been interned by the Nazis, and their baby might have died. They had to leave France. But on that June day she felt like a criminal. Robert thrust a bundle of banknotes into his mother-in-law’s hand. Madeleine climbed the companion-way carrying the struggling Bobby in her arms, her eyes filled with tears. The danger was still terrible; their little steamer might be strafed or torpedoed. The Henreys stood on the boat deck as Madame Gal’s figure on the shore became smaller and smaller, until she was out of sight. ‘We were free. We were to be given a second chance … The next morning we sailed into Southampton Water.’
Five years would pass before she saw her mother, or her farm, again.
*
The news worsened. Italy joined the conflict. Paris fell. But the ordeal of the French invasion wasn’t over for Lorna Bradey. At St Nazaire in Brittany her nursing unit was assimilated into the Base Hospital, awaiting casualties from the fighting. Everyone there was still in total ignorance of the Dunkirk tragedy. But before long wounded men began to arrive, and the QAs were working flat out, knowing that the Germans were gaining ground by the day, and that they would be forced to flee yet again. Rescue arrived in the form of nineteen troop ships which arrived in St Nazaire harbour, and on 16 and 17 June a mass exodus took place, with thousands of troops inching their way on to the vessels waiting to carry them to safety. With difficulty, Lorna helped to get her patients on board. As the stretchers were carried up the gangplank, the sky was black with Messerschmitts. The killing was indiscriminate, and chaos reigned. As soon as the patients were loaded the nurses headed below decks to settle them, from where they could hear the ceaseless crump of bombs above them, climaxing with a number of terrifyingly huge explosions, which, they were later to learn, had sunk the nearby Lancastria, killing at least 3,000 of the troops who were on board.
‘Our turn next we thought. We never thought we’d get away alive.’ Panic started to erupt among the passengers, with a civilian woman screaming uncontrollably; Lorna slapped her face and shook her until she stopped. With great courage the ship’s captain held out till night fell and took the ship out into the Atlantic under cover of darkness. Two days later they docked in Southampton.
Lorna was in rags. Issued with a travel warrant she made her way back to her parents’ home in Bedford, where she rang the doorbell. Her mother answered it and promptly fainted. Lorna was ignorant – till that moment – of what had been unfolding in Dunkirk.
When she recovered I learned that I had been reported missing, presumed killed, for the past ten days. News that No 5 C.C.S. had been wiped out had got to the War Office from Dunkirk, and the War Office presumed we were with them. All those men, all our comrades had been killed. I felt very humble. We had been pointed in the opposite direction by the foresight of our Commanding Officer.
Nobody knows exactly how many men were killed at Dunkirk, but at least 5,000 soldiers from the BEF lost their lives. People all over Britain quaked to think of what the future might bring, but for women whose waking thoughts were with the soldiers in France whom they loved, the lack of concrete news was a daily, hourly ordeal. It was not until Tuesday 16 July, after weeks of rumour and uncertainty – and nearly seven weeks after the army’s withdrawal – that Clara Milburn heard the fate of her son.
That afternoon she had dropped in at the Women’s Institute to see how the local produce exhibition was progressing. The judges were busy testing the range of jams, jellies, chutneys and bottled fruit. At 5.30 it was time to take Twink for a walk and, feeling rather heavy-hearted, she made her way out of the village. Two fields away, she caught sight of Jack waving wildly to her from beyond the hedge. Struggling to dampen the hopes and fears that now sur
ged up, she strode to meet him – the telegram had come:
‘Alan is a prisoner of war,’ he said. There and then, saying ‘Thank God’, we embraced each other for sheer joy at the good news. Oh, how delighted we were to hear at last that he is still alive – and apparently unwounded …
My darling dear, you are alive!
Frances Campbell-Preston, recently married and with a baby daughter, had to wait even longer to hear that her husband, Patrick, a young officer in the Black Watch, was missing in action. Frances had friends in high places, and the officer network did their best to reassure her that he was a captive, but nothing concrete came through until late August, when one of Patrick’s fellow officers arrived in Britain, having daringly escaped from German clutches. He was finally able to tell Frances that her husband too was a prisoner, and alive – ‘Oh the excitement, joy and God knows what, I can hardly bear it, it is so marvellous.’ Finally, in late autumn, she heard from Patrick himself. A letter arrived addressed Lager Bezefchung Oflag VIIC, Deutschland. He had been wounded in the head, he was safe and he was settling in for a long captivity.
News was even slower for Barbara Cartland, who heard early in June 1940 that both her brothers, Ronald and Tony, had gone missing at Dunkirk. But she and her mother had to wait until January 1941 for confirmation that Ronald was dead. Tony’s death was not confirmed until the end of 1942.
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