In London the French naval attaché Admiral Odend’hal did his best to put the matter in perspective. He was a good Frenchman, but at the same time tried to give Paris the British point of view. For his pains, Admiral Darlan wrote back asking whether Odend’hal had “gone into the British camp.”
“I have not gone into the British camp,” Odend’hal replied, “and I would be distressed if you believed it.” To prove his loyalty he then reeled off some of his own run-ins with the British, adding:
But it is not with the English but with the Boches that we are at war. Whatever may have been the British faults, the events of Dunkirk must not leave us with bitterness. …
His advice was ignored.
Such matters of state made little difference to the men of the BEF these early days of June. They only knew that they were home, and even that was hard to believe. As the train carrying Captain John Dodd of the Royal Artillery steamed slowly through the Kentish countryside, he looked out the window at the passing woods and orchards. “Good gun position … good hideout for vehicles … good billets in that farm,” he thought—then suddenly realized he was at last free from such worries.
Signalman Percy Charles, wounded at Cassel, boarded a hospital train for Northfield. It traveled all night and at 7:00 the following morning Charles was awakened by brilliant greenish lights streaming through the window. He glanced around and noticed that the other men in the compartment were crying. Then he looked out the window, and the sight he saw was “what the poets have been writing about for so many centuries.” It was the green English countryside. After the dirt, the blackened rubble, the charred ruins of northern France, the impact of all this fresh greenness was too much. The men simply broke down.
General Brooke, too, felt the contrast. After landing at Dover, he checked in with Ramsay, then drove up to London in a staff car. It was a lovely sunny morning, and he thought of the horror he had just left: burning towns, dead cows, broken trees, the hammer of guns and bombs. “To have moved straight from that inferno into such a paradise within the spell of a few anguished hours made the contrast all the more wonderful.”
In London he conferred briefly with General Dill, then caught the train to Hartley Wintney and home. He was overwhelmingly sleepy now, and walked up and down the compartment in a desperate effort to stay awake. If he so much as closed his eyes, he was afraid he’d fall asleep and miss the station.
His wife and children were waiting on the platform. They whisked him home for a nursery tea, and then to bed at last. He slept for 36 hours.
How tired they all were. Major Richardson of the 4th Division staff had managed only sixteen hours of sleep in two weeks. During one stretch of the retreat he went for 62 hours straight without even a nap. Finally reaching the Division assembly point at Aldershot, he threw himself on a bed and slept for 30 hours. Captain Tufton Beamish, whose 9th Royal Northumberland Fusiliers saved the day at Steenbecque, topped them all with 39 hours.
The rescuers were just as weary. Lieutenant Robin Bill, whose minesweepers were in constant demand, had five nights in bed in two weeks. Lieutenant Greville Worthington, in charge of unloading at Dover, stumbled groggily into the mess one morning. When bacon and eggs were put before him, he fell asleep with his beard in the plate. Commander Pelly, skipper of the destroyer Windsor, discovered that his only chance for a rest was during turn-around time at Dover. Even then he never took a nap, fearing that he wouldn’t have a clear head when he woke up. Instead, he simply sat on the bridge, nursing a whisky and soda. It must have worked, for he never went to sleep for ten days.
No one was more tired than civilian volunteer Bob Hilton. He and his partner, cinema manager Ted Shaw, had spent seventeen hours straight rowing troops out to the skoots and small paddlers from the beach near the mole. Not even Hilton’s training as a physical education instructor prepared him for a test like that, but somehow he managed it. Now the job was done, and they were back at Ramsgate.
They could have used some rest, but they were ordered to help take the little ships back up the Thames to London. To make matters worse, they were assigned the Ryegate II, the balky motor yacht they had sailed to Dunkirk and abandoned when her screws fouled. Wearily they set off, around the North Foreland … into the Thames estuary … and on up the river itself.
The cheering really began after Blackfriars Bridge. Docklands and the City had been too busy to watch the passing of this grimy, oil-stained fleet. But as Ryegate II passed the training ship Discovery, moored alongside the Embankment, her Sea Scouts set up a mighty cheer. It grew ever louder as the yacht continued upstream. Chelsea … Hammersmith … Twickenham … every bridge was lined with shouting people.
Hilton and Shaw ultimately delivered Ryegate II to her boatyard and walked to the tube, where they parted company. After rowing together, side by side, for seventeen hours, it would be reasonable to suppose they remained lifelong friends. As a matter of fact, they never met again.
Hilton took the tube home. As he entered the train, any idea he may have had that he would be greeted as a hero quickly vanished. He had a three-day growth of beard; his clothes were covered with oil; he reeked to high heaven. His fellow passengers quickly moved to the far end of the car.
He reached the front door and discovered he had forgotten his keys. He rang the bell, the door opened, and his wife Pamela was standing there. She took one look at “this tramp” and threw her arms around him. He was a hero to someone, after all.
Written Source Materials
“I AM SORRY I AM unable to get the details and events to dates,” writes Sapper Joe Coles of the 223rd Field Park Company, Royal Engineers. “That was an impossibility even a few days after Dunkirk. This I can only put down to continual fatigue and the atmosphere of continual emergency, 24 hours a day.”
He isn’t the only one with this problem. The days had a way of merging into one another for most of the participants, and the passage of more than 40 years doesn’t make memories any sharper. Personal recollections are indispensable in recapturing the atmosphere and preserving many of the incidents that occurred, but overreliance on human memory can be dangerous too. For that reason, I spent even more time examining the written source materials on Dunkirk than in interviewing and corresponding with those who were there.
The Public Record Office in London was the starting point. The basic Admiralty files dealing with the evacuation are ADM 199/786-796. These have been well mined, but fascinating nuggets still await the diligent digger. For instance, ADM 199/792 contains not only Admiral Wake-Walker’s familiar 15-page account, but an earlier, far more detailed 41-page account that has lain practically untouched through the years—apparently because it is so faint and hard to read. A powerful magnifying glass pays handsome dividends.
ADM 199/788-B and ADM 199/796-B, dealing with ships reluctant to sail, are still “off-limits” to researchers, but it is possible to work around this restriction and piece together the story from other documents.
Additional Dunkirk material pops up elsewhere in the Admiralty files. ADM 199/360 contains day-by-day information on the weather. ADM 199/2205-2206 includes much of the radio traffic between Dover and Dunkirk, and between ships and the shore. ADM 116/4504 has the story of the bizarre “lethal kite barrage.”
The RAF role at Dunkirk can be traced through the Operational Record Books at the PRO, but most of these are too detailed for all but the most exacting scholars. AIR 20/523 does include a useful overview of the Fighter Command’s contribution. The War Office records tend to mire the reader in the campaign, although occasionally some documents bear specifically on the evacuation. WO 197/119 has an excellent account of Brigadier Clifton’s improvised defense at Nieuport; also a report by Colonel G.H.P. Whitfield, area commandant, depicting the chaos in Dunkirk itself until Captain Tennant arrived.
In some ways the most valuable materials at the PRO are the War Cabinet Historical Section series, CAB 44/60-61 and CAB 44/67-69, not released until 1977. The telephone played an
enormous role in the decisions involving Dunkirk, and these CAB files contain detailed accounts of many of the calls, along with the texts of pertinent letters and telegrams.
The PRO is not the answer to everything. Probably the most useful single source of information on the evacuation is the three-volume annotated index of participating ships at the Ministry of Defense’s Naval Historical Branch. Labeled “Alphabetical List of Vessels Taking Part, with Their Services,” these volumes are occasionally updated as new information trickles in. They include valuable data on the French ships contributed by the French naval historian Hervé Cras.
Another extremely useful source is an account of RAF operations prepared by historian Denis Richards for the Air Historical Branch. Entitled RAF Narrative: The Campaign in France and the Low Countries, September 1939–June 1940, this volume gives day-by-day coverage of the evacuation.
Then there are the records so lovingly kept by most of the famous British regiments. These usually include battalion war diaries and often individual accounts. I paid most rewarding visits to the regimental headquarters of the Coldstream Guards, the Grenadier Guards, the Queen Victoria’s Rifles, the Gloucestershires, and the Durham Light Infantry.
The formal dispatches of Lord Gort and of Admiral Ramsay complete the official side of the Dunkirk story. Gort’s dispatch appeared as a Supplement to the London Gazette, October 17, 1941; Ramsay’s account as a Supplement to the Gazette of July 17, 1947. They are helpful in fixing dates and places, but neither could be called a distinguished piece of battle literature.
There’s no end to the unofficial material on Dunkirk. The Imperial War Museum is a cornucopia of unpublished diaries, journals, letters, memoirs, and tapes. I found the following especially valuable: Corporal P. G. Ackrell’s account of early turmoil on the Dunkirk waterfront; W.B.A. Gaze’s recollections of the 12th Casualty Clearing Station; Commander Thomas Kerr’s letters to his wife on conditions at Malo and Bray-Dunes; Admiral Sir L. V. Morgan’s reflections as Ramsay’s Chief of Staff; Chaplain R. T. Newcomb’s impressions as a padre caught up in the great retreat; Signalman L. W. Wright’s manuscript, “Personal Experience in the Defence of Calais.”
Few of the shipping companies that provided vessels have saved their records (many were destroyed in the blitz), but the Tilbury Contracting Group has preserved accounts by three of its skippers. Tough’s Boatyard has a useful file of papers and clippings describing its contribution.
Numerous unpublished accounts have been made available to me by participants and their families. These include no fewer than fourteen diaries. Contemporary letters have been another important source, especially an almost-running commentary from Admiral Ramsay to his wife.
The voluminous published material on Dunkirk began to appear even before the evacuation was over. The Times and the other London papers are curiously bland, but not so the local press of the south and southeast coast. Their accounts make fresh, vivid reading even today. The cream of the crop: The Evening Argus (Brighton), June 5; Bournemouth Times and Directory, June 14; The East Kent Times (Ramsgate), June 5; The Kentish Gazette and Canterbury Press, June 8; Folkestone, Hythe and District Herald, June 8; Isle of Thanet Gazette (Margate), June 7; Sheerness Times and Guardian, June 7. The Dover Express is, of course, a “must” for the whole period.
A number of eyewitness accounts also appeared in various periodicals at the time. Some good examples: The Architectural Association Journal, September–November, 1940, “And So—We Went to Dunkirk” (Anonymous); Blackwood’s, August 1940, “Prelude to Dunkirk” by Ian Scott, and in November 1940, “Small Change from Dunkirk” by M.C.A. Henniker; Fortnightly Review, July 1940, “Dunkirk” by E. H. Phillips; King’s Royal Rifle Corps Chronicle, 1940, an important letter by Sub-Lieutenant Roger Wake, RN, who served as acting pier master on the eastern mole, night of June 2–3.
The magazine Belgium—published in London during the war and frankly Allied propaganda—occasionally carried articles on Belgian participants at Dunkirk. Georges Truffant’s piece in the issue of July 31, 1941, deserves special mention.
Through the years newspapers have often marked the anniversary of Dunkirk with fresh material. The Scarborough Evening News, for instance, commemorated the tenth anniversary with a splendid series by “A Green Howard,” appearing April 24, 26, and May 1, 1950. Just about every paper in England must have marked the 40th anniversary. Especially striking was the series in the Manchester Evening News, March 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 1980.
Magazines and service journals are another continuing source of information. Hitler’s role is analyzed in the Army Quarterly, January 1955, “The Dunkirk Halt Order—a Further Reassessment” by Captain B. H. Liddell Hart; and again in the Quarterly, April 1958, “Hitler and Dunkirk” by Captain Robert B. Asprey. The Belgian surrender is examined in History Today, February 1980, “The Tragedy of Leopold III” by James Marshall-Cornwall. Alexander’s takeover and the last days are recalled in the Army Quarterly, April 1972, “With Alexander to Dunkirk” by General Sir William Morgan. But beware of General Morgan’s contention that Admiral Abrial still didn’t plan to evacuate as late as May 31. Alexander himself refutes this in his report.
Particular ships get their due in a host of articles through the years: Malcolm, in “Mostly from the Bridge” by Captain David B. N. Mellis, Naval Review, October 1976; Harvester, in “Dunkirk: The Baptism of a Destroyer” by Hugh Hodgkinson, Blackwood’s, June 1980; Massey Shaw, in “New Bid to Save London Fireboat,” Lloyd’s Log, October 1981; the sprit-sailing barges, in “The Little Ships of Ipswich” by J. O. Whitmore, East Anglian Magazine, July 1950. The medical effects of continuing fear and exhaustion are intelligently discussed by James Dow in Journal of the Royal Naval Medical Service, Spring 1978.
No discussion of periodicals would be complete without some mention of the Dunkirk Veterans Association Journal. This little quarterly not only keeps the DVA members in touch, but serves as a clearinghouse for all sorts of questions and answers concerning the evacuation. It was through its columns, for instance, that the indefatigable Sam Love tracked down the story of the Hird, the ship that returned to France before unloading at Dover.
The books on Dunkirk could fill a warehouse. At least fifteen different titles are devoted entirely to the evacuation or the events leading up to it. From John Masefield’s Nine Days Wonder, 1941, to Nicholas Harman’s Dunkirk: The Necessary Myth, 1980, I have learned from them all. Two stand out especially: A. D. Divine’s Dunkirk, 1944, and Gregory Blaxland’s Destination Dunkirk, 1973. Mr. Divine was there himself with the little ships, while Mr. Blaxland has written the very model of a campaign history—clear, candid, and complete.
Not limited to Dunkirk, but covering the campaign in detail, are two official histories: Captain S. W. Roskill, The Navy at War, 1939-45, 1960; and Major L. F. Ellis, The War in France and Flanders, 1939—1940, 1953. Ellis’s maps should be the envy of every military historian.
Published memoirs and diaries abound, written by both the known and the unknown. The leaders include: Clement R. Attlee, As It Happened, 1954; Duff Cooper, Old Men Forget, 1953; Hugh Dalton, The Fateful Years, 1957; Anthony Eden, The Reckoning, 1965; General Lord Ismay, Memoirs, 1960; R. MacLeod,(ed.), The Ironside Diaries, 1962; Field-Marshal the Viscount Montgomery, Memoirs, 1958; Lieutenant-General Sir Henry Pownall, Diaries, 1972; Major-General Sir Edward Spears, Assignment to Catastrophe, 1954; Sir Arthur Bryant, The Turn of the Tide, 1957, based on the diaries of Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke. In a class by himself: Winston S. Churchill, Their Finest Hour, 1949.
Others are less famous but sometimes more revealing: Sir Basil Bartlett, My First War, 1940; Eric Bush, Bless Our Ship, 1958; Sir H. E. Franklyn, The Story of One Green Howard in the Dunkirk Campaign, 1966; Gun Buster (pseud.), Return via Dunkirk, 1940; Sir Leslie Hollis, One Marine’s Tale, 1956; J. M. Langley, Fight Another Day, 1974; A.R.E. Rhodes, Sword of Bone, 1942; General Sir John G. Smyth, Before the Dawn, 1957; Colonel L.H.M. Westropp, Memoirs, 1970.
Us
eful biographies cover some of the leading figures. For Admiral Ramsay, see David Woodward, Ramsay at War, 1957; and W. S. Chalmers, Full Cycle, 1958. Lord Gort is gently handled by Sir John Colville in Man of Valour, 1972. Lord Alanbrooke is examined by General Sir David Fraser in Alanbrooke, 1982. Field Marshal Montgomery gets full-dress treatment from Nigel Hamilton in Monty: The Making of a General, 1981.John Rutherford Crosby by George Blake, 1946, is a touching, privately published tribute to a young, little-known sub-lieutenant (later a casualty) that somehow captures the glow of Dunkirk better than many more ambitious books.
Then there are the unit and regimental histories. I have made use of 54 of these volumes, and have come to appreciate the loving care with which all have been prepared. I have relied especially on D. S. Daniell, Cap of Honour (Gloucestershire Regiment), 1951; Patrick Forbes and Nigel Nicolson, The Grenadier Guards in the War of 1939–1945, 1949; Jeremy L. Taylor, Record of a Reconnaissance Regiment, section headed “The Fifth Glosters,” by Anthony Scott, 1950. David Quilter, No Dishonourable Name (2nd Coldstream Guards), 1947; David Russik, The DLI at War, 1952; W. Whyte, Roll of the Drum (King’s Royal Rifle Corps), 1941; and Robin McNish, Iron Division: The History of the 3rd Division, 1978.
Other books are important for specific aspects of the story. The defense of Calais: Airey Neave, The Flames of Calais, 1972. The role of the railways: Norman Crump, By Rail to Victory, 1947, and B. Darwin, War on the Line, 1946. Reaction along the southeast coast: Reginald Foster, Dover Front, 1941. The air battles: Douglas Bader, Fight for the Sky, 1973, Larry Forrester, Fly for Your Life, 1956; B.J. Elian (pseud.), Spitfire! 1942, and Denis Richards, The Royal Air Force, 1939–1945, 1953.
Many of these titles concern the rescue fleet. The little ships: Nicholas Drew (pseud.), The Amateur Sailor, 1946; and A. A. Hoehling, Epics of the Sea, 1977. Role of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution: Charles Vince, Storm on the Waters, 1946. The MTB’s and MA/SB’s: Peter Scott, The Battle of the Narrow Seas, 1945. The Massey Shaw: H. S. Ingham, Fire and Water, 1942. The Medway Queen: The Paddle Steamer Preservation Society, The Story of the Medway Queen, 1975. The Clan MacAlister: G. Holman, In Dangers Hour, 1948.
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