The World War II Collection

by Lord, Walter;

  “British and French troops must now evacuate in approximately equal numbers,” General Dill stressed in his telephone call to Gort, relaying the Prime Minister’s new orders. Lest there be any misunderstanding, Dill repeated the instructions three different times in the conversation. When Churchill himself came on the wire, the Prime Minister emphasized that the whole future of the alliance was at stake.

  He was right. Paris was full of rumors and recriminations these days, mostly to the effect that the British were running home, leaving the French holding the bag. Hoping to clear up any misunderstandings, Churchill flew to Paris the following morning, May 31, for a meeting of the Allied Supreme War Council. Accompanied by General Dill and a few top aides, he was met at the airport by his personal representative to Reynaud, Major-General Sir Edward Spears, who had been bearing the brunt of the French complaints these past few days.

  At 2:00 p.m. the British and French leaders met at the Ministry of War on the rue Saint-Dominique. Joining the group for the first time was Marshal Pétain, an ancient gloomy figure in civilian clothes. General Weygand was there too, wearing a huge pair of riding boots that made him look, General Spears felt, like Puss in Boots. The French sat on one side of a large baize-covered table; the British on the other. Through the tall, open windows lay a garden basking in the sunshine. It was another of those glorious spring days—so many this year—that seemed to mock these grim statesmen and generals trying to ward off disaster.

  Churchill opened the meeting on a cheerful note. The evacuation, he reported, was going far better than anyone had dared hope. As of noon this day, 165,000 men had been lifted off.

  “But how many French?” Weygand asked sharply. The Prime Minister dodged a direct answer for the moment: “We are companions in misfortune. There is nothing to be gained from recrimination over our common miseries.”

  But the question wouldn’t go away. After a brief survey of the Norwegian campaign, the discussion came back to Dunkirk, and it turned out that of the 165,000 evacuated, only 15,000 were French. Churchill did his best to explain this awkward disparity: many of the British were rear area troops already stationed near Dunkirk … the French had farther to come … if just the fighting divisions were counted, the disparity wasn’t so bad.

  Reynaud broke in. Whatever the reasons, the hard facts remained: of 220,000 British, 150,000 had been rescued: of 200,000 French, the number saved was only 15,000. He couldn’t face public opinion at home with figures like these. Something had to be done to evacuate more French.

  Churchill agreed and explained the new “equal numbers” directive. He also stressed that three British divisions still at Dunkirk would stand by the French until the evacuation was complete.

  Darlan then drafted a telegram to Admiral Abrial in Bastion 32, describing the decisions taken by the Council. It mentioned that when the perimeter closed down, the British forces would embark first.

  Churchill leapt to this feet. “Non!” he cried. “Partage—bras-dessus, bras-dessous!” His atrocious French accent was a legend, but this time there was no mistaking him. With dramatic gestures he vividly acted out an arm-in-arm departure.

  Nor did he stop there. Emotionally carried away, he announced that the remaining British troops would form the rear guard. “So few French have got out so far,” he declared, “I will not accept further sacrifices by the French.”

  This was a lot more than arm-in-arm, and to General Spears it was going too far. After more discussion, the final draft simply said that the British troops would act as rear guard “as long as possible.” It also said that Abrial would be in overall command. It was just as well that Lord Gort did not know of the Prime Minister’s outburst. It was difficult enough to swallow the policy of “equal numbers.” At least it wasn’t retroactive. London agreed that the rule only applied from now on. Still, it could be costly. The War Office had instructed him to hang on longer, so that as many French as possible could be evacuated. But how long? This morning, May 31, everything pointed to a heavy German attack on Furnes. If he hung on too long just to save more Frenchmen, he might lose the whole Guard’s Brigade.

  He was still mulling over this problem when General Alexander—the calm, capable commander of the 1st Division—visited GHQ at 8:30 a.m. Gort glumly told him to thin out his division, since it looked as if he would have to surrender most of his men alongside the French. At least that was what the War Office’s instructions seemed to mean.

  At 9:00 a.m. Anthony Eden came on the phone with an interpretation of these orders that must have greatly eased Gort’s mind. As Eden explained to Brigadier Leese:

  The instructions sent the previous night to hold on so as to enable the maximum number of Allied troops to be evacuated must be interpreted to mean that [Gort] should only do so as long as he was satisfied that he could continue to hold his position with the forces at his disposal, but he should not prejudice the safety of the remainder of his force by trying to hold his position beyond that time.

  In other words, hanging on for the sake of evacuating an equal number of Frenchmen was desirable—as long as it was safe.

  Enlightened, Gort now drove down to Dunkirk to meet with Admiral Abrial at 10:00 a.m. The Admiral was, as usual, in Bastion 32. Besides his staff of naval officers, he had with him General Fagalde, commander of the French military forces in the perimeter, and General de la Laurencie, who had just arrived with the only French troops to escape from the German trap at Lille.

  Gort’s sessions with Abrial were often strained. Tucked away in Bastion 32, the man never seemed to know what was going on. Today, all was cordial. Gort relayed the “equal numbers” policy, stated that he had already promised to evacuate 5,000 of de la Laurencie’s men. Abrial said that Weygand preferred to use the space for some mechanized cavalry units, and de la Laurencie made no objection. Gort also offered the French equal access to the eastern mole. If it seemed a little odd for the British to be offering the French free use of a French facility in a French port, Abrial was tactful enough to keep silent.

  Gort and Fagalde now exchanged full information on each other’s positions along the perimeter—apparently the first time this had been done—and Gort announced that he had been ordered home. At this point General Blanchard turned up. Nominally the Army Group commander, these days he was virtually unemployed. Gort invited him and General de la Laurencie to accompany his own party to England. Both politely declined. As de la Laurencie put it: “My flag will remain planted on the Dunes, until the last of my men have embarked.”

  There were farewell toasts. Everyone promised to meet in France soon again.

  Returning to La Panne, Gort summoned General Alexander to the seaside villa that served as GHQ. The Commander-in-Chief had reached a major decision: Alexander, not Barker, would take over after Gort’s own departure for England. He never explained the switch. Perhaps he was impressed by Montgomery’s fervent protest the previous evening, but the stolid Gort was not known to be easily influenced by the mercurial Monty.

  In any case the orders were ready and waiting when Alexander arrived around 12:30 p.m. Technically, he would relieve Barker as Commanding Officer of I Corps, consisting of three rather depleted divisions. His orders were to “assist our French Allies in the defence of Dunkirk.”

  He would be serving under Abrial, as decided in Paris, but with an important escape clause added: “Should any order which he may issue to you be likely, in your opinion, to imperil the safety of your command, you should make an immediate appeal to His Majesty’s Government.”

  That was all, as Gort originally dictated the orders to Colonel Bridgeman, still acting as the General’s Operations Officer. Yet there was an important omission. Gort had left out the War Office’s instruction authorizing surrender “to avoid useless slaughter.” Bridgeman felt it should be included, but didn’t dare say so to his chief. Finally, he got a copy of London’s original telegram, pointed to the passage in question, and asked whether he wanted it included, too. Gort said yes, a
nd it was done. To the end they managed to avoid actually saying the dreaded word, “surrender.”

  Technically, Gort’s orders would not take effect until 6:00 p.m., when GHQ was scheduled to close down. As a practical matter, they became operational almost right away. After a quick lunch, Alexander drove back to his headquarters and turned his division over to one of his brigadiers. Then he drove down to Dunkirk, accompanied by his Chief of Staff Colonel William Morgan and the ubiquitous Captain Tennant. At 2:00 p.m. they entered the candle-lit gloom of Bastion 32 for Alexander’s first meeting with Admiral Abrial and General Fagalde.

  It did not go well. Abrial planned to hold a reduced beachhead, running as far east as the Belgian border, with French troops on the right and a mixed French-British force under Alexander on the left. This force would act as a rear guard, holding the beachhead indefinitely while the rest of the Allied troops embarked. Then, presumably, the rear guard itself would scurry to safety at the last minute.

  Alexander felt it would never work. Protracted resistance was impossible. The troops were in no condition to fight indefinitely. The proposed perimeter was too near the harbor and the beaches. Enemy artillery fire at short range would soon stop the evacuation completely. Instead, he proposed to wind up the evacuation as fast as possible, with the last troops pulling back to the beach the following night, June 1–2.

  Abrial was unimpressed. If the British insisted on leaving anyhow, he added, “I am afraid the port will be closed.”

  Alexander decided it was time to invoke the escape clause in his orders. He announced that he would have to refer the matter to London. Then he drove back to La Panne, relieved to find that the telephone line was still open.

  At 7:15 p.m. he managed to get through to Anthony Eden and quickly explained the problem. An hour later Eden called back with new and welcome instructions from the Cabinet:

  You should withdraw your force as rapidly as possible on a 50-50 basis with the French Army, aiming at completion by night of 1st/2nd June. You should inform the French of this definite instruction.

  The phrase “on a 50-50 basis with the French Army,” Eden explained, did not require Alexander to make up for any past discrepancies; it simply meant that equal numbers of French and British troops must be withdrawn from now on. Supported by the Cabinet, Alexander hurried back to Bastion 32.

  Meanwhile, Abrial, too, had gone to his superiors. Wiring Weygand, he protested that Alexander—who had been placed under him—was refusing to follow instructions to fight on. Instead, the British commander planned to embark on the night of June 1–2, whatever happened, “thus abandoning the defence of Dunkirk.”

  Weygand could do little but buck the complaint to London. At 9:00 p.m. he radioed Dill, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, reminding him of the decisions reached by the Supreme War Council that very afternoon. Paragraph 4 had specifically put Abrial in charge.

  The Admiral was still waiting for some word from Weygand, when Alexander arrived back in Bastion 32 with the British Cabinet’s instructions. He announced that he would hold his sector of the perimeter until 11:59 pm. June 1—tomorrow night—then would withdraw to the beaches under cover of darkness. The French were welcome to come along and share the British shipping, but whatever they did, he was pulling out.

  Faced with no alternative, Abrial agreed.

  It was now after 11:00 p.m. Alexander had shifted his headquarters to the outskirts of Dunkirk, but the roads were strange and full of craters. It seemed safer to stay in Bastion 32 overnight, so he and Colonel Morgan curled up on the concrete floor—as hard and as cold as relations were getting to be between the two great Allies.

  Completely oblivious to all this high-level wrangling, an old soldier sat in his quarters at La Panne on the afternoon of May 31, snipping medal and campaign ribbons from a uniform blouse. General Gort was getting ready to go home. The evacuation was Alexander’s headache now, and at the moment Gort’s main concern was to see that no German soldier made a souvenir out of anything he had to leave behind.

  He was to go at 6:00 p.m. Two separate plans had been made for his embarkation, and it was typical of these trying days that neither group of planners knew of the other’s existence. Under one of these plans—developed by the Navy liaison at GHQ—four motor torpedo boats would dash over from Dover to pluck Gort and his staff off the beach. The orders were very vague. The commander of the little flotilla only knew that he was to pick up “a party.” When he arrived, he checked with Admiral Wake-Walker, in charge offshore, for further directions.

  Wake-Walker knew even less. No one had briefed him, and it never occurred to him that these motor torpedo boats had been sent to pick up the Commander-in-Chief. He thought that was his responsibility. He assigned the MTB’s to courier chores and continued his own planning. Gort would leave his villa shortly after 6:00, going to a designated spot on the beach two miles west of La Panne. Here he and his staff would be met by a launch and taken out to the destroyer Keith lying offshore. The Keith would then run the party back to Dover. Commodore Stephenson would be in direct charge, with Wake-Walker himself supervising.

  As planned, Gort’s party left his villa at 6:00 p.m., but that was as far as they followed the script. For some reason the two staff cars carrying the group did not go to the designated rendezvous, but to a spot much closer to La Panne. This meant no small boats were waiting, and the departure from the beach became a very ragged affair. Ultimately Gort’s staff wound up on the Keith, he himself on the minesweeper Hebe, and his batman, driver, and luggage all on the motor yacht Thele.

  Safely aboard the Hebe, Gort went to the bridge to greet the skipper, Lieutenant-Commander J. S. Wemple. There was time for only the briefest exchange of niceties; then the sea, the sky, the ships all seemed to erupt with explosions. The weather had cleared, and the Luftwaffe was back—ten separate raids this evening. As the Hebe’s crew rushed to their gun stations, Gort learned how useless his role had at last become. He settled quietly in a corner of the bridge, raised his binoculars, and gazed absently around.

  “Won’t you go below and take cover, sir?” suggested Captain Eric Bush, one of Ramsay’s coordinators working with Tennant and Wake-Walker.

  “No, thank you, I’m quite happy where I am,” the General replied politely. Finally the raid tapered off, and Gort—unruffled as ever—went below for a bite to eat,

  The Hebe still did not head for England with her distinguished passenger. By now hundreds of ordinary soldiers were swarming aboard, delivered from the beaches by the ever-growing swarm of little ships. Wake-Walker decided to wait until she had a full load before sending her back.

  Dover and London grew restless, then frantic. Seven hours had passed since the Admiralty had dispatched the four MTB’s to pick up Gort, and still there was no sign of him. Those boats could do 40 knots; they should have been back long ago. Worse, the latest radio traffic indicated that the MTB’s hadn’t even been used to get the General. What had happened to him anyhow?

  “Report immediately why MTB’s sent for Commander-in-Chief were diverted to other duties,” Admiral Phillips, the Vice-Chief of Naval Staff, radioed Wake-Walker at 11:36 p.m. “Take immediate action to embark Commander-in-Chief and report steps taken.”

  On the Keith, Wake-Walker sent one of the MTB’s to the Hebe to get Gort, but he was no longer there. He had taken a launch, hoping to reach the Keith. A half-hour passed, and still no sign of the launch.

  Now it was Wake-Walker’s turn to agonize. The night was black; no lights showing. Had the launch missed the Keith? Was Gort out there somewhere drifting in the dark? Wake-Walker had visions of the disgrace that would be his if he botched this job and lost the Commander-in-Chief of the BEF.

  It was after midnight, the opening minutes of June 1, when the launch finally loomed out of the dark. Gort climbed aboard the Keith, reunited at last with his staff.

  But only briefly. He and Brigadier Leese quickly transferred to the speedboat MA/SB 6 and headed For Dover. At 6:20 a.
m. they landed at the Admiralty Pier, where Gort gulped a cup of tea and caught the next train to London.

  Anthony Eden and members of the War Cabinet were on hand to greet him, but the little group passed almost unnoticed amid the crowds swirling around Victoria Station. By now bedraggled soldiers were tumbling off every train from the south coast into the waiting arms of friends and relatives. Gort seemed to be just one more of them. He was already a fading figure of the past.

  Far more important than the escape of a discredited chieftain was the rescue on May 31 of 53,140 more men who could help form the nucleus of a new British Army.

  Thousands of them used the lorry jetties that had been improvised at Bray-Dunes and La Panne. Despite the ingenuity of the builders, these were rickety affairs that heaved alarmingly in the surf and changing tides. Still, a steady stream of soldiers clambered out along the duck boards, dropping into the row-boats and launches that came alongside.

  “Well, my lucky lad, can you row?” a sailor greeted Private Percy Yorke of the 145th Field Ambulance, as he tumbled into a boat. “No? Well, now’s your time to bloody well learn.” Yorke learned by doing, and managed to reach the excursion steamer Princess Elizabeth.

  Major E. R. Nanney Wynn, 3rd Division Signals, reached the end of a jetty and peered down at a waiting motor whaler. Manning it, improbably, was a ship’s steward immaculate in his short white jacket. It was almost like going Cunard.

  Other troops made use of the growing mountain of debris that littered the beaches. Private C. N. Bennett of the 5th Northamptonshires came across a discarded army boat made of canvas. It was designed to carry six men across a river; now ten men jumped into it and headed across the sea. Using their rifles as paddles, they hoped to get to England. It was just as well that a motor launch soon spotted them and look them to the destroyer Ivanhoe.

  Brigadier John G. Smyth, commanding the 127th Infantry Brigade, rallied nineteen men around a big ship’s lifeboat stranded well up on the beach. A heavy, bulky thing, it required all their strength to shove it down to the water. Even then their troubles weren’t over: it was a sixteen-oared boat, and not one of Smyth’s recruits could row.