Frequently they passed ships like the Malcolm heading back to England. Decks packed with troops, they were a sobering sight. For their part, the men on the returning vessels watched this armada of small craft with mounting excitement and pride. The very names seemed to say “England”: Swallow … Royal Thames … Moss Rose … Norwich Belle … Duchess of York … Blue Bird … Pride of Folkestone … Palmerston … Skylark … Nelson … Southend Britannia … Lady Hatg … New Prince of Wales.
Many of the names also had a personal quality, suggesting that this rescue effort was no mere naval operation; that it was really a family affair: Grace Darling … Boy Bruce … Our Maggie … Our Lizzie … Girl Nancy … Handy Billie … Willie and Alice … Auntie Gus.
Traveling in company, usually shepherded by an armed tug or skoot, the little ships moved across a smooth, gray carpet of sea. The English Channel has a reputation for nastiness, but it had behaved for four days now, and the calm continued on May 30. Best of all, there was a heavy mist, giving the Luftwaffe no chance to follow up the devastating raids of the 29th.
“Clouds so thick you can lean on them,” noted a Luftwaffe war diarist, as the Stukas and Heinkels remained grounded. At Fliegerkorps VIII General Major von Richthofen couldn’t believe it was that bad. At headquarters the sun was shining. He ordered Major Dinort, commanding the 2nd Stuka Squadron, to at least try an attack. Dinort took his planes up, but returned in ten minutes. Heavy fog over Dunkirk, he phoned headquarters. Exasperated, Richthofen countered that the day was certainly flyable where he was. If Herr General major didn’t believe him, Dinort shot back, just call the weather service.
But cloudy weather didn’t guarantee a safe passage for the little ships. Plenty of things could still go wrong. The Channel was full of nervous and inexperienced sailors.
“Periscope on the starboard bow,” shouted the lookout of the 80-foot excursion steamer New Prince of Wales. It turned out to be the mast of a sunken ship, standing fifteen feet out of the water, complete with shrouds.
Next, New Prince of Wales was almost run down by a destroyer that mistook her for a German S-boat. The skipper, Sub-Lieutenant Peter Bennett, managed to flash a recognition signal just in time. A little later he ran alongside an anchored French cargo ship, hoping to get some directions. “Où est l’armée britannique?” he called. The reply was a revolver shot. These were dangerous days for strangers asking questions.
Uncorrected compasses were another source of trouble. It was easy to find the French coast, but the right spot was another matter. Sub-Lieutenant William Ronald Williams anchored his lighter a few hundred yards off an empty stretch of beach and had a boat row him ashore. Walking a quarter-mile inland in search of somebody in authority, he hailed a couple of soldiers he saw silhouetted against a distant blaze.
“Lieber Gott!” one of them cried, and they began shooting at him. Williams ducked behind a dune and shot back. Both Germans fell, but there were other voices now, and Williams raced back to the beach. In less than five minutes he had his lighter under weigh at her full six knots.
One way or another, most of the little ships eventually reached the right part of the coast and went to work. Essentially they were ferries, carrying or towing troops from the beaches to the larger vessels lying further out. Sometimes it was easy—just a matter of towing some rowboat or inflated raft; other times it was difficult and dangerous—especially when they had to pluck men directly from the sea.
“Well done, motorboat, wait for me,” a voice hailed Lieutenant Irving, as he nursed Triton alongside a destroyer with one more load. An officer wearing a lambskin coat leapt aboard. It was Commodore Gilbert Owen Stephenson, a 62-year-old retired vice-admiral, who had been recruited for the crisis and put in charge of all offshore operations at La Panne. Hatless and wet through, he seemed oblivious to his own discomfort as he told Irving to carry on. He added that he might later have “one or two other jobs” for Triton to do.
Stephenson then threw himself into the rescue work too. Nothing was beneath him. He steered, passed lines, helped haul the exhausted troops aboard. Through it all he kept up a line of cheerful chatter. “Come on, the Army!” he would cry; or, to some half-drowned soldier, “Where have I seen you before? You’re so good-looking I’m sure I know you.”
Late in the afternoon Stephenson had Triton take him to a certain spot off the beach. Instructing Irving not to move, he explained he was going ashore to look for Lord Gort. If he brought back the General, Irving was to take him straight to England. With that, Stephenson plunged over the side and waded ashore through the surf, often up to his neck in water.
In an hour he was back, again wading through the surf, but there was no sign of Lord Gort. Stephenson offered no explanation, nor did Irving ask. They simply went back to their rescue work, the Commodore still hatless and soaked to the skin. Along with his words of cheer for the troops, he had plenty to say to Irving himself. Sometimes the lieutenant was a “good fellow”; other times, “a bloody fool.” Irving didn’t mind. He’d do anything for a senior officer like this.
Off Bray-Dunes to the west, the Constant Nymph was hard at work too. At first Basil Smith, her accountant-skipper, could find only French troops. These he ferried out to the skoot Jutland, which was serving as a “mother ship.” Then a British army officer swam out to say there was a whole division of the BEF waiting a little farther west. Smith shifted his boat slightly and began picking them up.
It was never easy. On top of all the other problems, the Germans were now within artillery range, and began shelling the beach. East of La Panne an enemy observation balloon rode unmolested in the sky directing the fire. Smith was one of the few who didn’t seem disturbed. As he later explained, he was deaf and had a lot to do.
Off Malo-les-Bains the Ryegate II was having less success. Coming over from Ramsgate, her engines broke down; then it turned out she drew too much water to get close to the beach; finally she fouled her propeller on some piece of wreckage. Disgusted, her skipper Sub-Lieutenant D. L. Satterfield tied up to the skoot Horst and assigned his crew to a couple of ship’s boats.
Bob Hilton and Ted Shaw, the pair who had brought Ryegate II down the Thames, manned the Horst’s own lifeboat. As they pulled toward the shore, they could hear the skoot’s radio blaring away. It was incongruously tuned into the BBC’s “Children’s Hour.”
Coming through the surf, Hilton and Shaw were immediately mobbed and capsized. Gradually they learned the art of successful ferry-work. Basically, it consisted of getting close enough to pick up men, but not so close as to be swamped. For seventeen straight hours they rowed, side by side, carrying troops to the Horst.
Hour after hour the little ships worked the beaches, returning to Ramsgate only when they could find no more fuel, or when the crews were too tired to carry on. Then they discovered that the trip home could be perilous too. The motor launch Silver Queen had neither charts nor compass, but the crew felt they had a good idea where England was, and they headed that way.
Halfway over they found a soldier’s compass, and this increased their confidence. Finally they sighted land, and then a friendly-looking harbor. Approaching the breakwater, they were greeted by a blast of gunfire. Hopelessly twisted around, they had stumbled into Calais by mistake.
Six batteries of German guns pounded away as Silver Queen frantically reversed course. One round crashed into her stern; another landed on the starboard bow. The Belgian launch Yser, traveling in company, was hit too. Someone on the Yser fired a Very pistol in a desperate call for help. Amazingly, a friendly destroyer did catch the signal, hurried over, and provided covering fire while the two strays crept out of range. Somehow Silver Queen limped back to Ramsgate, discharged a load of troops, and then quietly sank at her pier.
For most of the little ships, the time of greatest danger was not going over or coming back; it was at the beach itself. Even when the troops behaved perfectly, the boats were in constant danger of capsizing. The sea was still smooth, but the wind was
veering to the east and the surf began rising. The loading went more slowly than ever.
At La Panne, Lieutenant Harold J. Dibbens of the Military Police had been puzzling over the loading problem ever since reaching the beach the previous afternoon. Unlike most of the BEF, Dibbens was thoroughly at home on the sea. He grew up on the Isle of Wight—always around boats—and even served a hitch in the Navy before settling into his career as a detective at Scotland Yard. When war came, his professional experience won him a direct commission in the Military Police, and until “the balloon went up” he spent most of his time fighting pilferage and chasing black marketeers. The great retreat ended all that, and now here he was, with the remnants of 102nd Provost Company, waiting on the beach like so many others.
Watching the confusion at the water’s edge—some boats overturning, others drifting away untended—Dibbens decided that the biggest need at the moment was a pier or jetty stretching out to sea. Then the boats could come alongside and be loaded far more efficiently. But where to find the materials for such a jetty? His eye fell on the mass of abandoned trucks and lorries that littered the beach. Now all he needed was a little manpower.
“Want a sapper unit! Need a sapper unit!” Dibbens shouted, stalking through the dunes, where many of the troops were waiting. He was acting on his own initiative—had no authority at all—but it was a time when resourcefulness was what counted, and a colonel would listen to a corporal, if his idea was good enough.
Captain E. H. Sykes of the 250th Field Company, Royal Engineers, stepped forward. What was wanted? Dibbens couldn’t order the Captain to do anything, but he suggested a deal: his own men would provide a supply of lorries, if Sykes’s men would use them to build a jetty out into the sea. As a “sweetener” the sappers could be the first group to use the completed jetty.
Sykes agreed and detailed 2nd Lieutenant John S. W. Bennett’s section to do the construction. These men threw themselves into the job with amazing enthusiasm, considering their mood until now. They had just completed a long march to the coast, and the last night had been hell. They had lost many of their officers somewhere in the dark, and most of the company just melted away. Normally 250 strong, they were down to 30 or 40 by the time they reached La Panne.
Lieutenant Bennett was one of the few officers who stuck with them all the way. He did his best, but in peacetime he was on the Faculty of Fine Art at Cambridge, and what they wanted right now was a professional soldier. There was a lot of grumbling, until in exasperation he finally told them, “If you want me to lead you, I’ll lead you; if you want me to leave you, I’ll leave you.”
“Frankly, I don’t give a damn what you do,” someone called out from the ranks.
But the art professor was a better leader than they realized. The men were soon working flat-out. They lined up the lorries side by side, leading into the sea. They loaded them with sandbags and shot out the tires to keep them in place. They scavenged timber from a lumberyard for staging. They ripped decking from stranded ships for a plank walkway. They even added the touch of a rope railing.
When they began the tide was out, but now it came rolling in. Soon the men were up to their waists in the surf, lashing the lorries with cable. Sometimes they had to hold the jetty together by linking arms until a lashing could be made. Buffeted by the surf, they were soaked to the skin and covered with oil and grease.
The men of 102nd Provost Company had been good scavengers—sometimes too good. At one point an irate brigadier stormed up to Dibbens. Somebody had stolen four lorries he had earmarked for use as ambulances. Dibbens expressed appropriate dismay, said he couldn’t imagine who could have done a thing like that, and quietly replaced the missing lorries with four others stolen from somebody else.
The “provost jetty,” as it came to be called, was finished during the afternoon of May 30 and proved a huge success. All evening, and all the next day, a steady stream of men used it to board the growing fleet of small boats and launches engaged in ferry work. Ironically, Bennett’s men were not among them. Corps headquarters decided that they had done such a splendid job, they now must maintain it. Down the drain went the promise that they would be the first “customers.” Instead, they learned the hard way the old military maxim: never do a task too well, or you’ll be stuck with it forever.
Later there would be considerable speculation over who first thought of the jetty. Besides Lieutenant Dibbens, credit has been given to Commodore Stephenson, Commander Richardson, and General Alexander, among others. Curiously, all these claims may be valid. It seems to have been one of those ideas “whose time had come,” for examination of Luftwaffe photographs shows that no fewer than ten different lorry jetties were slapped together on May 30–31 between Malo-les-Bains and La Panne.
This in turn meant there were many builders besides the long-suffering 250th Field Company. One such unit was A Squadron of the 12th Lancers, who built a jetty about three miles west of La Panne. They were anything but experienced in this sort of work—they were an armored reconnaissance unit—but the perimeter was now fully manned, and all surplus fighting troops were being funneled to the beaches.
With the regulars moving in, there was a striking improvement in discipline. At Bray-Dunes Commanders Kerr and Richardson had their first easy night. As Kerr explained a little unkindly, they were at last dealing with “real officers.”
The long shadow of tradition was now very much in evidence. When Colonel Lionel H. M. Westropp ordered the 8th King’s Own Royal Regiment to head down the beach toward the mole, he first assembled his officers. He reminded them that they wore the badge of one of the oldest regiments of the line. “We therefore will represent the Regiment as we march down the beach this afternoon. We must not let it down, and we must set an example to the rabble on the beach.”
The battalion set off in perfect step, arms swinging in unison, rifles correctly slung, officers and NCO’s properly spaced. The “rabble on the beach” were suitably impressed.
Nineteen-year-old 2nd Lieutenant William Lawson of the Royal Artillery knew that appearances were important, but he felt he had a good excuse for looking a little scruffy. His artillery unit had been badly mauled on the Dyle, again at Arras, and had barely made it back to the perimeter—two rough weeks almost always on the run.
Now at last he was at La Panne, and it was the Navy’s turn to worry. Wandering down the beach, he suddenly spied a familiar face. It was his own father, Brigadier the Honorable E. F. Lawson, temporarily serving on General Adam’s staff. Young Lawson had no idea his father was even in northern France. He rushed up and saluted.
“What do you mean looking like that!” the old Brigadier thundered. “You’re bringing dishonor to the family! Get a haircut and shave at once!”
The son pointed out that at the moment he couldn’t possibly comply. Lawson brushed this aside, announcing that his own batman, a family servant in prewar days, would do the job. And so he did—a haircut and shave right on the sands of Dunkirk.
At the mole Commander Clouston had standards, too. Spotting one of the shore patrol with hair far longer than it could have grown in the last three or four days, he ordered the man to get it cut.
“All the barbers are shut, sir,” came the unruffled reply. Clouston still insisted. Finally, the sailor drew his bayonet and hacked off a lock. “What do you want me to do with it now,” he asked, “put it in a locket?”
Under the Commander’s firm leadership, the mole continued to operate all day, May 30. A steady stream of destroyers, minesweepers, Channel steamers, and trawlers pulled alongside, loaded up, and were off again. For one two-hour stretch, Clouston had the troops trotting out the walkway on the double. He embarked over 24,000 during the afternoon and evening.
Clouston’s efforts got a big assist from a major policy reversal engineered in Dover. Early afternoon Admiral Ramsay phoned Admiral Pound in London, insisting that the modern destroyers be put back on the job. They were absolutely essential if he was to get everybody off in the
time he had left. After a heated exchange, Pound finally relented. At 3:30 p.m. orders went out, sending the destroyers back to France.
German batteries were now firing on Dunkirk harbor from Gravelines, but the mole lay just out of range. German planes made occasional hit-and-run attacks on the shipping, but Kesselring’s great fleets of bombers remained grounded. In sharp contrast to yesterday’s fear and confusion, today the mood was cheerfully relaxed. While the Malcolm loaded some Cameron Highlanders, her navigator Lieutenant Mellis played his bagpipes on the foc’sle. As one party of Royal Dragoon Guards moved along the walkway, a big Royal Marine stood ladling out hot stew. One Dragoon officer had no cup, but he did produce a long-stemmed cocktail glass picked up somewhere. The Marine filled it with gravy, solemnly inquiring, “Can I put a cherry in it, sir?”
But the greatest change was on the beaches. Discipline continued to improve; the columns of waiting men were quiet and orderly; the ever-growing stream of little ships methodically ferried the troops to the larger vessels lying offshore. As Captain Arthur Marshall’s twelve-man internal security unit patiently waited their turn, a colonel bustled over. Apparently worried that the unit had nothing to do, he ordered the men to “tidy up the beach a bit.”
At first Marshall felt the colonel must be joking; but no, he was dead serious. The smaller the mess they left, he explained, the less likely the Germans would think that the BEF had left precipitously. The result would decrease the enemy’s feeling of triumph, thereby helping the war effort.
Finally convinced that the colonel meant what he said, Marshall’s party glumly went to work—piling abandoned overcoats here, stowing empty crates there, neatly coiling stray lengths of rope. They kept at it as long as the colonel was in sight.
The World War II Collection Page 18