‘Maybe we will,’ Michaels replied. ‘This is just the start. We’ve tried to stop the Nazis here in Europe, and got a bloody nose for our trouble, but that Austrian bastard isn’t going to give up until either he’s walking through London surrounded by flags with swastikas printed on them and we’re all learning to speak German and do the goose-step, or he’s lying dead in the smoking ruins of Munich or Berlin. This will be a fight to the death, make no mistake about it. It’s the Nazis or us, and once we’ve regrouped and rearmed we’re going to end up back here in France or Belgium or Holland and facing the Wehrmacht and the Luftwaffe again. I reckon we’ll still be fighting this war in five years’ time.’
‘And I’ve no doubt you’ll be somewhere near the front line, Dawson,’ Rochester added, ‘making stuff go bang.’
‘That is what I do, sir,’ Dawson replied, and gave the two officers a crisp salute. ‘Take care, both of you,’ he then turned back to look at the columns of smoke rising above Saint-Nazaire, where the second Dornier’s bombs had dropped.
When he glanced behind him again, both men had gone.
Author’s Notes
XD Operations
As I said in the Foreword to this novel, the events depicted in Amsterdam and elsewhere in the Netherlands actually took place, albeit slightly earlier than the dates given in these pages. Eddie Dawson clearly could not be in two places at once, and his location and the date given at the end of the last book – Right and Glory – meant that I had to play around with the overall timing to make this one work.
The events depicted in the second half of the book are also accurately described, at least in broad terms, though of necessity I have had to make some alterations to the sequence of events and to significantly compress the timeline as the action took place. In reality, the KFRE sappers had to wait several days, not just a few hours, in the tank farms along the Seine before starting their demolition work.
The main source I relied upon for the descriptions of these operations was the only authoritative book on the subject – XD Operations by C. C. H. Brazier, available from Amazon and elsewhere – supplemented by copies of the after-action reports submitted by the officers directly involved and which are available on the Internet.
Operation XD was far more important to the Allied war effort than most people realized then or appreciate now, over seventy-five years later. The actions of these virtually unknown Territorial Army soldiers remained secret at the time, but there was official appreciation, and for a time the KFRE was the single most highly decorated unit in the entire British army. The awards made for these operations included an Order of the British Empire, three Distinguished Service Orders, a Military Cross, a Distinguished Conduct Medal and three Military Medals.
Operation Dynamo – The Miracle of Dunkirk
While the soldiers of the KFRE were fighting their way along the River Seine, leaving a trail of burned-out oil refineries and tank farms in their wake, an operation of a very different sort was taking place some 200 miles to the north-east.
The Second World War began after German forces invaded Poland in September 1939. In response to this aggression, both France and Britain – in fact officially the British Commonwealth and Empire – declared war on Germany. France was obviously in Hitler’s sights, and troops of the BEF, the British Expeditionary Force, were landed at Cherbourg, Nantes, and Saint-Nazaire to bolster the French military. This was a large and powerful military organization that eventually comprised ten divisions under the command of Lord Gort, and in addition to the British troops the Allied force included the Belgian army and the French First, Seventh and Ninth Armies.
For about the next seven months, nothing much happened in this theatre, this period becoming known as the phoney war.
That situation changed dramatically on 10 May 1940, when German forces simultaneously invaded Belgium and the Netherlands, and three Panzer corps hacked their way through the Ardennes region of France. This part of the country had been protected by the forts of the Maginot Line, a series of static defences, and by the natural obstacle provided by the forests and hills of the Ardennes, and was popularly believed by the French high command to be impenetrable. Consequently, the French provided only a skeleton military presence in this area.
The German attack through the Netherlands and Belgium avoided the Maginot Line, and the forests of the Ardennes turned out to be much less of an obstacle than anyone had expected. The German advance headed directly for the English Channel, and by 21 May 1940, less than two weeks after the attack had begun and after the failure of a counter-attack at Arras, the Nazis had driven the BEF, what was left of the Belgian army, and the three French armies westwards until they were trapped between the German forces and the English Channel.
On 22 May, another counter-attack was ordered by Churchill, an attempt to break through the German lines to the south and to link up the BEF with other French forces, but by 25 May it was clear that this was not going to work and Lord Gort accepted that the evacuation of the troops from France was the only viable option. Accordingly, he ordered a withdrawal to begin to Dunkirk.
On the British side of the Channel, preparations for this operation had begun on 20 May, under the direction of Vice-Admiral Bertram Ramsay. It was codenamed Operation Dynamo, the name was a reference to the dynamo room that provided electrical power to the Royal Navy headquarters under Dover Castle. As part of these preparations, ships were ordered to assemble at Dover in readiness for the evacuation
Unexpectedly, the beleaguered troops were then involuntarily assisted by the Germans, because on 22 May the order was given to temporarily halt further offensive operations against them. This order, issued with Hitler’s approval by the German High Command, has been the subject of much speculation, and it’s probable that the decision was taken for a number of different reasons.
The German Panzer units had advanced so far and so quickly that their flanks were vulnerable and their supply lines stretched to the limit, and there was also concern in the high command that the very marshy terrain around Dunkirk could actually bog down the tanks. Attacks by the Luftwaffe were weather-dependent, and the German air crews were exhausted after some two weeks of almost constant operations: Hitler did later order his air force to destroy the Allied troops, and he also ordered the Panzer units to continue their advance, but this order wasn’t acted upon for almost one day.
It’s also likely that Hitler’s own beliefs somewhat clouded his judgement. Surviving German senior officers stated that Hitler thought that once the British troops left European soil, they would never return. It was also claimed that he believed Britain would be more likely to sue for peace with Germany if her troops had been allowed to escape rather than by being forced to surrender or getting massacred on the beaches of Dunkirk.
But whatever the reasons, the unexpected delay allowed the Allies to prepare for the evacuation and to construct what defences they could against the German advance.
By 24 May, Boulogne was in German hands, Calais had been surrounded – the BEF there surrendered on 26 May – and a single British battalion stood between Dunkirk and the German front line. Near the port, the conditions were chaotic, with vehicles dumped everywhere, many of them blocking the roads, crowds of civilian refugees trying to get to safety somewhere, shortages of food and drink and thousands of bewildered soldiers wondering what would become of them.
Operation Dynamo formally began in the early evening of 26 May, but the evacuation did not start in earnest until the following morning, when a Royal Navy cruiser, eight destroyers and twenty-six other vessels were used to convey soldiers from the eastern breakwater at Dunkirk, across the Channel to England. Raids by the Luftwaffe that day rendered the harbour at the port unusable, but the 1,400 yard-long breakwater was wide enough to allow troops to walk or march along it four abreast, and the naval officer designated as the ‘beachmaster’, Captain William Tennant, realized it was an ideal alternative to the harbour, enabling troops to board ships direc
tly rather than having to ferry them out in small boats and then climb up ladders to get on board.
Interestingly, almost exactly four years later Captain Tennant was the man responsible for supervising the construction and operation of the Mulberry harbours – temporary artificial harbours that would allow for the landing of large numbers of troops in a very short time – they were key to the success of the Allied landings in Normandy. Because of his experience at Dunkirk, he recommended that each Mulberry be protected against adverse sea conditions by what became known as a Gooseberry, an artificial breakwater constructed by one or more scuttled ships.
At Omaha Beach, the Americans decided not to bother with such a breakwater, and as a result Mulberry A was destroyed by a violent storm only a few days after becoming operational. In contrast, Mulberry B at Gold Beach was protected by a Gooseberry and continued to function for almost a year, and in total handled roughly 500,000 vehicles, 4 million tons of supplies and some 2,500 million soldiers during that ten-month period.
On that first day of the Dunkirk evacuation, 7,669 Allied troops were picked up from the eastern breakwater and transported across the English Channel, but it was clear that additional resources would be needed. Royal Navy officers visited boatyards and moorings up and down the Thames and along the south coast of England, looking for small craft that could be used to pick up soldiers off the beaches and ferry them out to waiting ships. Some boats were requisitioned without the knowledge or consent of the owner, because there was simply no time to do so: the vessels were needed desperately, and they were needed immediately.
Because of the nature of the emergency, calls for help from private boat owners were made, and the response was almost overwhelming. By 31 May, nearly 400 small craft – the ‘little ships of Dunkirk’ – many of them crewed by their owners, were involved in the rescue effort. By the end of the evacuation, some estimates suggest that over 800 vessels were involved in all.
In most cases, the small craft would stop about a 100 yards offshore to avoid getting beached on the gently sloping sand, and the soldiers would then wade out to the vessel and climb on board. But in some places, most notably at Bray-Dunes and De Panne, British ingenuity helped to speed up the process. Soldiers drove abandoned vehicles onto the beach at low tide and formed them into lines leading out into the sea. They held them in place with ropes and sandbags, and then linked them together with lengths of wood on their roofs to form walkways, allowing them to be used as improvised jetties.
The original plan for Operation Dynamo had hoped to recover about 45,000 men of the BEF in the first two days – roughly 10 per cent of the total number – because it was believed that by then the Germans would have reacted and blocked any further rescue efforts. But although the Nazis did react – on 31 May, for example, Dunkirk again suffered heavy bombing raids by the Luftwaffe, targeting both the harbour and the town and killing about 1,000 civilians – there was little direct interference with the evacuation, as is proved by the numbers of troops who were rescued.
On the second day, 28 May, roughly 6,000 soldiers were picked up from the beaches and a further 12,000 from the eastern breakwater. The third day saw a huge increase in numbers, with a total of over 47,000 troops picked up, a greater number on that one day than had been envisaged for the entire operation. There were almost 54,000 rescued on the fourth day; 68,000 on the fifth; 62,500 on the sixth; 26,000 on the seventh; 27,000 on the eighth day and a further 26,000 on 4 June, the ninth day of the evacuation. In all, roughly 198,000 British troops and 140,000 French and Belgian soldiers had been rescued. On that last day, senior officers embarked in a motor launch and sailed up and down the beaches of Dunkirk, using a megaphone to try to attract the attention of any Allied soldiers who were still on shore.
In the circumstances, it was a remarkably successful operation, but in no possible way could it be considered a victory. Winston Churchill, the British prime minister, described the retreat from France as a ‘colossal military disaster’ and the somewhat unexpected success of the evacuation as a ‘miracle of deliverance’. But he also cautioned that ‘wars are not won by evacuations’.
In all, the BEF lost over 60,000 soldiers during the campaign in France, the bulk of them ending up as prisoners of war, and almost all of the vehicles and other equipment transported across the Channel with the BEF had to be abandoned as there was no way to recover them.
The totals are a grim reminder of the actual scale of the defeat. In all, over 415,000 tons of stores, 75,000 tons of ammunition, almost 2,500 guns, 162,000 tons of fuel, 20,000 motorcycles and nearly 65,000 trucks, cars and other vehicles, plus over 400 British tanks were left in France after the evacuation of the BEF, much of this matériel being abandoned at Dunkirk.
It wasn’t a case of snatching victory from the jaws of defeat, more a matter of snatching defeat from the jaws of disaster.
Although everybody remembers the ‘little ships of Dunkirk’, it’s worth pointing out that without the dedication, flying skills and bravery of the Royal Air Force, which combated the Luftwaffe in the skies over Dunkirk, almost certainly the evacuation would never have happened.
The might of the Luftwaffe was held in check by sixteen squadrons of Royal Air Force fighters, which flew over 3,500 sorties during Operation Dynamo. On 27 May, the day the German bombers destroyed Dunkirk harbour, RAF pilots shot down thirty-eight German aircraft for the loss of fourteen British fighters. Their efforts to protect the soldiers on the beaches, who had neither anywhere to hide nor any anti-aircraft weapons, and who suffered from both bombing and strafing attacks, continued throughout the entire evacuation. Overall, 145 RAF fighters were lost, over forty of which were Spitfires, but the Luftwaffe fared slightly worse, losing 156 aircraft of various types during the course of Operation Dynamo.
Today, tourists cross the Channel in about ninety minutes in one of the regular ferries, following a standard route. In the spring of 1940, the situation was very different. Vessels carrying soldiers back to England followed one of three routes, and all of them offering dangers and hazards of their own.
Route Z was the shortest at only 39 nautical miles, but it ran along the coast of France and brought the vessels using it within range of German-controlled shore batteries. Ships using Route X covered 55 nautical miles and avoided the shore batteries and most surface attacks, but were forced to pass through a part of the English Channel that was very heavily mined, and the route also took them very close to the Goodwin Sands, meaning that it could not be used at night because of the danger of running aground. Route Y was by far the longest at 87 nautical miles, more than double the distance of Route Z, and followed a similar course to Route X, heading north out of Dunkirk, then west towards the North Goodwin Lightship and then south to Dover. Also like Route X, it could not be used at night because of the Goodwin Sands, and it also offered the highest probability of attack by the Luftwaffe as well as by German submarines and warships.
During Operation Dynamo, the Royal Navy lost six destroyers and the French three destroyers, and a total of nine other major vessels were also sunk. A further nineteen destroyers were damaged, some badly. Of the other vessels involved in the evacuation from Dunkirk, over 200 were sunk and about the same number suffered damage of one sort or another.
Although most people have heard about the Dunkirk evacuation, even if they don’t know it was called Operation Dynamo, this wasn’t the only evacuation that took place in the early summer of 1940. Quite apart from the events at and near Dunkirk, the extremely rapid German advance across France had cut off three divisions of British soldiers to the south of the Somme, and at the end of May the British government decided to send another two divisions to this region in an attempt to create a second British Expeditionary Force.
Unfortunately, just like the first one, this was a failure, and between 15 and 25 June some 192,000 Allied soldiers, the majority of them – about 144,000 – being British troops, were evacuated from France using several different ports. This operation
was code-named Operation Ariel.
The day before Ariel began, on 14 June 1940, German troops reached Paris and eight days later France surrendered. The first part of the Second World War was over. To paraphrase what Winston Churchill said, the surrender of France really was the end of the beginning.
Acknowledgements
The publishing landscape has changed dramatically over the last decade, and authors have had to change with it. Many of the cows are no longer sacred, and some old assumptions no longer hold true. Just like authors, literary agents and publishers have had to react to these unfamiliar new conditions or perish.
I’m lucky enough to be represented in the UK by Luigi Bonomi of LBA, a calm centre in an ocean of chaos, and in my opinion the best literary agent in London. And I’m equally lucky to be published by Michael Bhaskar, the co-founder and publishing director of Canelo. His vision and dedication, and his talented staff, are rapidly transforming his company into a major force in twenty-first century publishing.
First published in the United Kingdom in 2018 by Canelo
Canelo Digital Publishing Limited
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Beaconsfield, Bucks HP9 2DU
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Copyright © James Barrington, 2018
The moral right of James Barrington to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781788630108
Operation XD Page 33