At any rate, the order to halt now had the written authority of the Führer, and this time Guderian had no choice but to abide by it. In so doing, however, the opportunity to annihilate the entire BEF, and with it very possibly to win the war, was lost.
‘Our spirits rise and fall,’ noted Henry Pownall, ‘sometimes, most of the time, the position seems perfectly hopeless … then the clouds lift a little and there seems just a chance of seeing it through. It’s a wearing existence.’ The halt order was a godsend to Lord Gort, whose southern flank was now looking increasingly fragile. On the night of the 23rd, 5th and 50th Divisions were pulled back from Arras and the River Scarpe to the east of the city; it was these two hard-pressed divisions that were still earmarked for the great ‘Weygand Plan’ counter-attack on the 26th. Other troops had been shuffled around to shore up the fragile line closer to the coast around the town of Cassel. Rations were low, ammunition supplies critical, and the Luftwaffe had apparently complete mastery of the sky, making air-supply drops impossible. Gort and Pownall’s task was to try to fill any breaches as the German forces pressed forward and tightened the noose around them.
But then an intercepted German message revealing the halt order gave them cause for one of their rises in spirits. ‘Can this be the turn of the tide?’ wondered Pownall. ‘It seems almost too much to hope for.’ It certainly gave Gort an option which would otherwise have been lost. On the 25th, news arrived that Boulogne had fallen, then that the Germans in the north had broken across the River Lys in parts. The Belgians were still clinging on to Courtrai, but a dangerous gap had appeared between the end of the British north flank and the Belgian army. Gort ordered his last reserves, one brigade and one machine-gun company, to help fill the gap, but it was clear that unless it was more amply filled, the Germans could easily push through and get in behind the British from the north. To make matters worse, General Dill, the Vice-CIGS, then flew over with the news that the BEF was getting criticism at home. The icing on the cake was a copy of a telegram from Reynaud to Churchill in which he complained that the British withdrawal from Arras and the Scarpe had seriously jeopardized the plans for the counter-attack on the 26th and that, as a result, Weygand had given the order to call off the proposed attack northward from the south. This was disingenuous: Weygand had called off the northward thrust because his forces south of the Somme had not managed to get their act together in time.
Increasingly urgent messages arrived from General Brooke, commanding II Corps on the northern flank. The gap was widening between Menin and Ypres; captured German documents confirmed that the Germans were intending to attack heavily towards Ypres. By five o’clock, news arrived from the Belgians that they were unable to close the hole in the line.
By this time, Gort was already reaching one of the toughest decisions of his life. Between 5 and 6 p.m., he was alone in his small office at his Premesques headquarters, first staring at the map spread out on the wall and then sitting at his desk. Just before 6 p.m., news arrived that General Altmayer would be providing only one division for the next day’s supposed counter-attack; unbeknown to Gort, Général Blanchard, who had finally taken over from Billotte, had already told Weygand that the French First Army was too weak to take part in a counter-attack. Weygand had responded by giving Blanchard complete discretion as to whether the attack went ahead or not. The Weygand Plan was thus already utterly dead in the water. As at Arras, the French were bottling it once again. Even worse, Moroccan troops had apparently bolted at Carvin, to the south of Lille. Two battalions from 50th Division had been rushed forward to plug the gap there.
By six o’clock Gort’s mind was made up. Cancelling the proposed attack for the following day, he ordered 5th Division to move immediately with all speed to the gap in the north between Menin and Ypres. Whatever trucks were available were to be used to move them the thirty miles north. As soon as 50th Division could extricate themselves from Carvin, they too were to follow. It was a brave decision, taken without consultation and which involved directly disobeying the orders of his French superiors and his chiefs back home. But by doing so, he had given the British army a tiny, tiny glimmer of hope.
The die had been cast. There was now only one course of action left to the besieged British forces, and that was to fall back to the coast and to try to evacuate as many troops as possible. ‘I must not conceal from you,’ Gort warned the Government the following morning, having received provisional authorization to fall back on Dunkirk, ‘that a great part of the BEF and its equipment will inevitably be lost even in best circumstances.’
’ And should his prediction be true, then the will of Britain to fight on would be severely, if not irremediably, damaged. For Britain, the situation could hardly be more grave.
15
Fighter Command Enters the Fray
THE BLENHEIMS OF 18 Squadron – or what few remained after ten days of battle – left France on 20 and 21 May. Arthur Hughes flew into Lympne in Kent, a Fleet Air station, and was immediately impressed by the hospitality of the Royal Navy. ‘They ordered extra food,’ he jotted, ‘the petty officers ate bully beef so that our sergeants could have the hot meal; they arranged transport, fixed billets – and by midnight I was relaxing in the luxury of a hot bath at the Grand Hotel, Folkestone.’
Arthur was one of the lucky ones – in fact, one of just four pilots that remained. Pilot Officer Light, who had only been married a few days before, had failed to return; he and his observer – who had been Arthur’s first ever in the squadron – were never heard of again. Pilot Officer Rees was shot down on his way back to England, although by a Spitfire of 610 Squadron; he and Sergeant Pusey and a squadron mechanic managed to escape unhurt, but the aircraft had to be abandoned along with three others left in France.
The squadron was sent to Watton, in Norfolk, but was still considered operational. Less than three days after arriving back in England, Arthur was called at 3 a.m. and told to fly down to Hawkinge in Kent and from there to fly a mission over France. Ground mist prevented him from carrying out the planned dawn take-off so it was not before 11 a.m. that he finally got going. By 3 p.m., he was in the air again, sent off on a recce of Boulogne. Going in south of the town over Berck-sur-Mer, he then turned and flew up the coast only to find himself coming under heavy anti-aircraft fire. Smudges of black smoke were blossoming all around him, but by taking fairly dramatic evasive action, he escaped, only to hit more flak over Le Touquet. ‘To say that I was scared would be an understatement,’ he noted. ‘My stomach was a dead load of lead and my mouth was so dry that my breath rasped, while my heart was rattling like a Browning.’ Again, however, he managed to escape the attentions of the German flak gunners, and then, somehow willing himself on, dropped lower to around a thousand feet to investigate some suspicious objects to the side of a road which he realized were camouflaged enemy trucks. Then spotting a larger park of some fifty enemy vehicles from Guderian’s 10th Panzer, he shouted back to his observer, Joe Strong, ‘Get a report back on this—’ when he felt as though he had been smacked in the mouth with a wet fish and at the same moment saw his left hand appear to momentarily disintegrate. With a sense of horror and excitement, he muttered to himself, ‘I am hit’, then, stunned and not thinking clearly, flew on towards Abbeville.
Gradually, he managed to gather his wits. His microphone was shattered, his oxygen mask was full of blood and was dripping on his tunic, and his hand was badly wounded at the base of his left forefinger; the skin had peeled back like an orange, so that he could see the bone and tendons, which looked curiously black. Spotting a few enemy columns, he then banked and headed back for home. He could feel no pain – only relief that he was still alive, mingled with apprehension that the treatment might prove more painful than the wound. Odd thoughts flitted through his mind: concern that he might meet some Messerschmitts, pride that he was a wounded hero, hope that he might now get a few weeks off. ‘We got back to Hawkinge without difficulty and I landed with no trouble at all,’ he scribbled,
‘having lost much less blood than the gory mess suggested.’ Even so, an ambulance was called, his hand was bandaged, and then he was taken off to Shorncliffe military hospital. Another of 18 Squadron’s pilots was now out of action – for the time being at any rate. That left just three.
The RAF might have been frantically pulling its squadrons back from France, but this did not mean the Battle of France would not continue to drain away Dowding’s precious fighters. Far from it, the mantle of responsibility had now been handed over to Fighter Command. Spitfire squadrons were now being sent over to the Pas de Calais to provide protection for the first troops that were being despatched back to Britain: the evacuation of non-fighting troops had begun on 20 May, while a number of Hurricane squadrons – such as Pete Brothers’ 32 Squadron – were rotated out of the fray having been operating almost non-stop since first flying over to France. Dowding had been desperate to keep his Spitfires away from the fighting, mainly because the supply situation was so bad that he knew he could not have maintained their existence had they been shot down in the kind of numbers he had suspected would – and indeed did – happen in France. But with the losses to the Hurricane squadrons and with the new demands on Fighter Command over the Channel ports, Dowding could no longer maintain that policy. ‘The Spitfires,’ he wrote, ‘had to take their share in the fighting.’ Although Fighter Command was now operating over France, it was, in helping to safeguard the BEF, more directly defending Britain, its stated role. There would be no more letters from Dowding urging that his fighters should be kept at home. In his mind, the Battle of Britain had begun.
Three squadrons were sent on offensive patrols over the Channel ports on 23 May, and two of them, 74 and 92 Squadrons, were equipped with Spitfires. Based at Northolt, to the west of London, 92 Squadron flew off at dawn to Hornchurch in Essex, refuelled, then flew on over the Channel. As they approached the French coast, 21-year-old Tony Bartley heard his flight commander, Paddy Green, tell him over the R/T, ‘Stick to my tail and for God’s sake keep a look out behind.’ The son of an Irish scholar who had joined the Indian Civil Service for health reasons, Tony had been born in Bengal and then sent back to England and to boarding school. Good-looking, charming and a decent sportsman, Tony had left school fully expecting to follow his father into colonial service. This, however, required an apprenticeship at a firm of London chartered accountants, which he found soul-destroying to say the least. Quitting after a year, he was then playing rugby with an air force officer whom he greatly liked and admired and who suggested Tony join the RAF instead. After eight hours flying Tiger Moths at West Malling Flying Club, Tony was hooked. By May 1939, he was at No. 13 Flying Training School in Drem, Scotland.
By the time he was awarded his wings, shortly after war was declared, Tony looked set to join either Coastal or Bomber Command. This had been a great disappointment, but then, to his surprise, he was posted to 92 Squadron, a fighter unit then flying twin-engine Blenheims. Things improved further when, at the beginning of March, 92 Squadron had been re-equipped with Spitfires. So he was a single-engine fighter pilot after all and flying what he truly believed was the most perfect flying machine ever created.
Now, at around 11.45 a.m., Tony was given the chance to test the Spitfire’s performance in combat. The first he knew about any enemy aircraft was as they crossed Cap Gris Nez and someone shouted over the R/T, ‘Look out, 109s!’ At the same moment, Tony saw a flight of eight 109s from 1/JG 27 and then they were swooping down upon them. Singling out one of the Messerschmitts, Tony closed in upon it but it then turned into a tight circle. Following him, Tony could see the German pilot crouched in his cockpit, looking back at him. With the enemy fighter filling his gunsight, Tony pressed down on the firing button and felt the Spitfire shudder as his eight Browning machine-guns began spitting bullets. They were hitting the fuselage and tail-plane of the 109 but then bullets were thumping into his own aircraft and another 109 flashed past. He had forgotten Paddy’s warning.
Now his flight commander swung in front of him, opening fire on the 109 still in front. Bits of the Messerschmitt’s wings flew off and then the pilot flick-rolled his plane and dropped out. Tony was close enough to see the German pilot’s helmet fly off, and his face and billowing blond hair. ‘He didn’t pull the rip cord,’ noted Tony. By now low on fuel, he radioed to Paddy that he was turning for home when he suddenly saw one of their own Spitfires blazing earthwards.
Also embroiled in this first dogfight was Pilot Officer Allan Wright. Tony may have been a gregarious extrovert, but Allan was a quieter, more softly spoken young man, equally popular within the squadron, who appreciated his gentleness and wry sense of humour. Fiercely bright, he had won a Prize Cadetship to the RAF College at Cranwell in 1938, commissioning with his wings the previous October. He too had got in a long burst of fire at one of the enemy planes although he was not sure whether he hit it or not.
He had also seen a burning Spitfire plunging to the ground but it was not until they were safely back at Hornchurch that he learned from fellow pilot Paul Klipsch that the stricken aircraft had been that of Pat Learmond, his best and closest friend. No-one had seen a parachute. Still dazed by the adrenalin of the first combat, Allan could barely take it in. In any case, all too soon, having rearmed, refuelled and had their damaged Spitfires hastily repaired, they were ordered to fly another patrol. This time they ran into a larger formation of enemy aircraft – some twenty Me 110s protecting a formation of fifteen Heinkel 111s and, above them, 109s.
Despite their being hugely outnumbered, their CO, Roger Bushell, ordered them to attack. Paddy Green’s flight were to protect them and defend them against the 110s while Bushell and the rest went for the bombers. Tony Bartley managed to get on to the tail of one Me 110 that had shark’s teeth painted under its engine cowling. The rear-gunner opened fire at him, but on Tony’s second burst, the Messerschmitt flipped over on to its back and spiralled out of the sky, engines on fire. The 110s now formed a defensive circle with the Spitfires wheeling and circling and trying to get inside it. Allan Wright shot at about five different aircraft. The air was filled with tracer, arcs of flashing bullets streaming and criss-crossing the sky. Tony found himself crouching lower in his cockpit to make himself a smaller target. Allan meanwhile had latched on to one Messerschmitt, opening fire and following him down until both were hedge-hopping across France. Out of ammunition and low on fuel, he eventually turned for home.
By the time the squadron had landed back at Hornchurch once more, they were without a further four of their pilots. Roger Bushell had been shot down, although he had managed to belly-land east of Boulogne, where he was captured. Flying Officer Gillies had bailed out and was missing. Paul Klipsch had been killed, and Paddy Green had been wounded in the leg, and, having made it to Manston, had been taken to Shorncliffe, where he joined Arthur Hughes. Tony Bartley had scored his first confirmed kill, but his Spitfire looked like a colander. ‘Back in the mess,’ noted Tony, ‘we downed unconscionable pints of beer.’
‘It has been a glorious day for the Squadron,’ the duty officer wrote in the squadron diary, ‘with twenty-three German machines brought down, but the loss of the Commanding officer and the three others has been a very severe blow to us all.’ It was as well they did not know the real score for the day: four aircraft and pilots lost and a fifth wounded and damaged in return for five enemy aircraft – that is, honours even.
Allan left the beer-drinking to the others and went and had a bath. It was only then, as he soaked in the comfort of the hot, steaming water, the enormity of what had happened and the terrible loss of his friend, Pat, began to hit home. He could not accept that his clever, brilliant friend, who had such a promising, fulfilling life ahead of him, was now gone. A desperate feeling of helpless loss swept over him. ‘And then I broke down and wept,’ says Allan. ‘I wept in a way that I never had before or have since.’
*
That same day, the three Staffeln of I/JG 52 were also flying over Dunkirk for th
e first time. The 2nd Staffel had only reached Charleville that morning, having had a frustrating fortnight flying in support of Army Group A. ‘I am doing very well,’ Leutnant Ulrich Steinhilper had written to his parents on 15 May, ‘however, I have not yet managed to get any Frenchies in front of my guns.’ The next day he wrote again. ‘Still no contact with the enemy.’ Nor was there the day after that. Then orders arrived sending them into France. ‘Now everybody is full of hope again,’ he noted.
They finally reached Charleville the next day, but with no ground support or supplies Ulrich and some of the other pilots had decided to explore the town. Ulrich had been stunned by how empty the place was – the entire population seemed to have gone. Virtually everywhere they looked, notices had been pasted with ‘Nicht Plünderen’ and warning that any pillagers would be shot. When Ulrich’s friend Kühle picked up and began looking at a pair of shoes, he began to feel a little uneasy. Then a guard came over and told them the rule applied to officers too. Apparently two privates had stolen some shoes, and were caught, summarily court-martialled and then executed.
By the afternoon, their groundcrew had caught up and the Gruppe were ordered on their first mission to the Channel coast. The pilots were all briefed beforehand, and warned that the British pilots and their aircraft were not to be underestimated. The weather was poor and visibility bad, and by the time they reached the coast, they had just fifteen minutes before they needed to turn back.
Even so, as they approached Dunkirk, the visibility improved and there ahead of them they saw the mass of smoke drifting up from the port. Ulrich could see Spitfires and Hurricanes attacking Stukas. ‘It was immediately clear,’ he noted, ‘that we were up against very tenacious opposition.’
Ulrich was twenty-one, from Stuttgart, the son of a teacher. His had been a happy enough childhood, but the family had never had much money. Then, early in the summer of 1936, his school had been visited by officers from the Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe. Both did good sales pitches, but Ulrich had been electrified by the possibility that a poor boy like himself could learn to fly. Immediately applying to join, to his great thrill he was asked to then attend the selection centre in Berlin, where he would undergo three days of tests. Confident he had done well enough in the examinations in speech and debate, he was less sure about the physical tests – kidney problems a few years earlier had excused him from sports and he knew he was not as fit as he might have been. Nonetheless, after two and a half days, ten names were read out, and his was one of them. He was in.
The Battle of Britain Page 24