The Battle of Britain

by James Holland

  Churchill had scored a great personal victory and in so doing had greatly increased his previously fragile authority. Britain was still in great peril but at least she now had a chance to fight on, to pit herself against the best that Germany could throw at her. The battle might have been lost in France, but the war was not over yet. In Britain, one major crisis, at least, had been averted.

  19

  Dunkirk: In the Balance

  ON THE AFTERNOON of 28 May, Lord Gort had moved his command post to the Belgian King’s summer palace overlooking the dunes and sea at La Panne, just inside the Belgian border and some nine miles east of Dunkirk. ‘And so here we are back on the shores of France on which we landed with such high hearts over eight months ago,’ jotted Henry Pownall that night. ‘I think we were a gallant band who little deserve this ignominious end to our efforts.’ It was incredible to think they had been pushed back to the sea in just three weeks. ‘For myself,’ he added, ‘I am still stunned. It seems all a bad dream from which I hope to wake.’

  At least he had reached the beaches, which was more than could be said for the majority of the BEF. Most, however, would be on the move that night. Sid Nuttall and the 1st Border Regiment, still at the bottom of the British corridor to the north-west of Lille, had been given orders to withdraw by thinning out companies and then to rendezvous at Ploegsteert with the rest of the brigade using lorries abandoned by the Royal Engineers. Sid and his mates in ‘C’ Company still had no real idea of what was going on, although it hadn’t taken much to realize things were going badly wrong. The battalion had also suffered a number of casualties and was, like everyone else in the BEF, struggling with the lack of ammunition and rations.

  At around 3 p.m., the battalion began pulling into Ploegsteert, the trucks covered by a screen of Bren gun carriers from the Carrier Platoon. There was, however, no sign of the rest of the brigade, so it continued onwards to Poperinge, a few miles to the west of Ypres. There the troops found an artillery regiment. ‘Whacking great guns they were,’ says Sid. ‘They were shooting their ammunition off because they were going to destroy the guns.’ The battalion learned that the RV for 42nd Division was now Killem, a village just to the south of the Dunkirk perimeter. With the artillery booming and offering them cover, the men set off again. It was now evening and they finally learned that they were headed for Dunkirk. ‘We began meeting more and more people,’ says Sid, ‘and seeing more and more abandoned vehicles.’ These were the trucks, carriers and cars that had made the BEF one of the best equipped armies in the world – but they could not be taken back across the sea, so orders had been given to abandon them either at or near the perimeter of the Bergues–Furnes Canal, and then to destroy them. It was the men who needed to get home – soldiers with as little kit as possible. ‘Some had been sabotaged and some hadn’t,’ says Sid. ‘People were shoving sand and earth in and then running them, trying to ruin the engines.’ A few were setting them on fire but that ran the risk of attracting enemy aircraft.

  The battalion reached Killem some time after 9 p.m. and abandoned the trucks, but then, as darkness began to fall, Sid lost sight of his MT sergeant. ‘So it was just me,’ says Sid, ‘and a chap called Middleton, the other vehicle mechanic, and “C” Company.’ They crossed a bridge over the canal and then kept going until, at dawn, they found themselves at Bray Dunes.

  The men of 4th Division were also moving back. It seemed that no sooner had the 2nd Royal Fusiliers safely crossed the River Lys than news had arrived of the Belgian surrender. With it came new orders to retreat, this time towards Dixmude. The problem was that many of the battalion’s vehicles had been put out of action. For Second Lieutenant Norman Field, the battalion adjutant, this was a difficult time. Verbal orders – the battalion had no radio or telephone links – were issued for an immediate withdrawal but delivering them was tricky because enemy troops had managed to occupy some houses near the battalion’s farmhouse HQ and now began peppering the building with small-arms fire. The British managed to subdue these troops, however, so that by 7 p.m. the battalion had pulled back successfully with hardly any casualties.

  Its immediate rendezvous was on the Poperinge road, but it now seemed that half the BEF plus countless civilians were also using the road. Nonetheless, the battalion managed to reach the town, more or less in one piece. The guns Sid Nuttall had seen earlier were now silent. Abandoned vehicles littered the roadside, as did bomb craters. Through this mayhem, the soldiers marched onwards until early the following morning they found the 12th Brigade commander, Brigadier Leslie ‘Ginger’ Hawkesworth, standing at a crossroads some five miles south of Furnes, issuing company commanders with their new orders, which for the Royal Fusiliers, was to hold the perimeter line around Nieuport, just inland from the coast. This was the easternmost point of the British defensive line. The problem was getting all the men there. ‘We weren’t very cohesive,’ says Norman. ‘There was so much traffic on the roads and all nationalities. Some people got lost.’ By daylight, the entire battalion numbered just 280, about a third of its strength on 10 May.

  Gunner Stan Fraser and the 4th HAA were among the last to fall back to the coast. On the 27th, they had been on the hills around Menin, providing cover for the retreat. They were not large hills, but on the flat plain of Flanders Stan had been able to see for miles – as far as Dunkirk and the fires and columns of smoke billowing above the town. He had also watched waves of bombers fly overhead. Mercifully, they had not dropped any bombs on them, but rather, it seemed to Stan, mostly on defenceless civilians trudging along the roads. In fact, the only thing to fall on them were leaflets, on which there was a map and the lines, ‘British Soldiers! Look at this map: it gives your true situation! Your troops are entirely surrounded – stop fighting! Put down your arms!’ In fact, the map showed a considerably larger stretch of coastline than was the reality; it had clearly been printed before the Belgian surrender. Stan and his mates had just laughed.

  The following morning, he was up at dawn to deliver rations to the batteries, which were a few miles from Regimental Headquarters. Passing through a village that had just been bombed, he and his mate found an abandoned stash of rations and cigarettes in the village square. Helping themselves, they then continued on their way, successfully reaching the battery. On the return journey, however, they were caught in an endless stream of convoys – horses, lorries, guns, ambulances, troops, all making for Dunkirk. When Stan and his friend eventually reached their HQ camp, rumours abounded of another imminent move. Soon after, firm orders came not only to pack up but also to dump and burn everything except spare socks and a few other essentials. Everything, apart from their three trucks, was to be abandoned.

  By mid-morning the trucks were loaded and the men were on their way. ‘God helped our retreat by sending a thunderstorm to darken the skies,’ noted Stan, ‘and although it made our journey rather uncomfortable, we were really thankful for this protection against the bombers.’ Stan was shocked by what he saw as they trundled north: even more abandoned vehicles, stores littered across the road, corpses lying in fields and ditches, houses and buildings bombed and blazing. The journey became slower and slower as they joined more traffic, troops and refugees. Eventually, near the perimeter, they were forced to ditch their trucks. With rifles, one Bren and one Boys anti-tank rifle, plus as much food and ammunition as they could carry, they began marching.

  Eventually, they reached a farmhouse where the colonel had told them to rendezvous – Stan and six others had remained behind to destroy the vehicles and other equipment. They were still not sure what they were doing but the Assistant Adjutant, now the senior officer, gave them a talk. The Germans, he told them, were now very close on all sides. He called for a vote of confidence and told them to be ready throughout the night to defend the farm until there was not a man left to do so. The men, although utterly exhausted, agreed.

  But while the majority of the BEF were successfully falling back within the main perimeter and the defence line along
the River Yser, some were not so fortunate. As those at Calais had sacrificed themselves in an effort to delay the advancing Germans, so too had the 2nd Gloucesters and 4th Ox and Bucks at Cassel and nearby Ledringhem. For three days they had fought off one attack after another. Although they had been eventually surrounded and cut off from the rest of the BEF, they had fought on, holding up large numbers of German troops and with it their advance, and thus enabled many more troops behind them to fall back than might otherwise have been the case. On the night of the 28th, the survivors attempted to break out, and although a few small groups eventually managed to reach Dunkirk, most were caught and taken prisoner. However, their epic defence proved what could be achieved when troops stood and fought with grim determination rather than fleeing in panic.

  ‘Apparently the lack of news was not a good thing,’ noted Daidie Penna, after hearing the news of the Belgian surrender. She wondered how the BEF could possibly be saved. ‘Nothing short of a miracle,’ she added, ‘could save the situation on that part of the front now.’ Nonetheless, Daidie sensed a renewed feeling of determination – not just within herself, but amongst everyone. And she was enjoying the reports of the RAF’s ‘wonderful’ performance. ‘The daily bag of enemy planes,’ she scribbled, ‘is now almost a commonplace.’

  Certainly Fighter Command had been playing its part in covering the evacuation. Air Chief Marshal Dowding had placed tactical control of his fighters with Air Vice-Marshal Keith Park. It had been an obvious step, because any fighters operating over Dunkirk would have to be based at airfields in the south-east of England; Fighter Command was divided into four groups – 10 Group in the south-west, 12 in the middle, 13 in the north and Scotland and 11 in the south-east, of which Park was commander. A New Zealander, Park was the son of a Scottish geologist. In the previous war, he had served in the artillery at Gallipoli, but later joined the British army and was moved to the Western Front. Wounded in October 1916, he recovered and applied to join the RFC. Accepted, he began life as a spotter then became a pilot, later commanding 48 Squadron, and finishing the war with fourteen victories, a couple of MCs, the DFC and the Croix de Guerre. One of the comparative few to receive a regular post-war commission in the RAF, he later served as Dowding’s Senior Air Staff Officer at Fighter Command before being given command of 11 Group in April.

  Tall, with a lean face, trim moustache and twinkly eyes, he was nonetheless a rather stern, austere figure: a tough, exacting man who suffered no fools – in many ways not unlike Dowding. He was also a great thinker and had done much to develop fighter tactics and the defence system during his time as Dowding’s Chief of Staff. The two both liked each other and worked extremely well together. For Dowding’s part, Park had repeatedly proved his competence. As a commander and leader, he trusted him implicitly – and with good reason.

  For covering Dunkirk, Park had sixteen squadrons at his disposal out of the thirty-six now left in Fighter Command, the rest remaining as both a reserve and to protect other parts of the country. Like Kesselring, Park was also faced with the problem of range, although not so much from lack of fuel (although his fighters had a limit of forty minutes over the French port) but because it meant operating outside Britain’s defensive system. There was no radar cover over Dunkirk so he was forced to rely on inefficient and exhausting standing patrols.

  From the Admiralty came demands for constant fighter cover around the clock. Park was not sure this was the best use of his fighters, however. Flying over Dunkirk himself in his Hurricane, and then talking to pilots, he quickly became convinced that it was better to send over two squadrons for some of the time rather than one or half a squadron to provide non-stop cover. He was undoubtedly right, and by 29 May he got his way, Dowding authorizing him to use his aircraft as he saw fit, rather than how the Admiralty was demanding. It was one of the many benefits of the two men’s close working relationship.

  In order to try to keep all his squadrons at reasonable strength, Park also made sure he rotated them regularly. 92 Squadron, for example, had flown two missions over the French coast on the 23rd and one on the 24th, and then one Channel patrol on the 25th, before being posted to Duxford and out of the fray, while those who had earlier served in France, like Pete Brothers’ 32 Squadron, were kept out of it altogether.

  Squadrons were also moved around from other groups and placed temporarily under Park’s charge. One of these was 616 Squadron, which until 27 May had been based in Leconfield in Yorkshire and hence part of 13 Group. That morning, the squadron had made the one-hour flight down to Rochford in Kent, relieving 74 Squadron. That same afternoon it had set off for a patrol over Dunkirk but had engaged nothing. Not so on its second patrol the following morning when, at around 9.45 a.m., it ran into around thirty Messerschmitts of JG 26.

  The first Hugh ‘Cocky’ Dundas saw of these enemy aircraft was as the squadron approached the coast. Two Skuas of the navy’s Fleet Air Arm were swooping past him in the opposite direction, clearly in a hurry. As he craned his neck, he saw why: five 109s, their black crosses and swastikas as clear as day, were diving away and behind to his right, and from the lead Messerschmitt came thin trails of grey smoke as the pilot opened fire. In a trice, the group had faded to specks, disappearing beneath the dense smoke cloud that rose above Dunkirk and spread like a shroud down the Channel as far as the eye could see.

  Cocky had only the briefest moment to absorb his first view of this fearsome enemy because suddenly his section commander, George Moberley, was wheeling in a climbing turn. Following, Cocky heard the confusion of garbled voices over his R/T. Then there was another 109, curving round with a bright yellow nose. More feathery trails of smoke spat from it and lights of cannon fire flashed from the propeller hub. Red flashes of tracer arced lazily towards them then seemed to suddenly accelerate as they streaked above Cocky’s wing. With a sudden stab of pure fear, Cocky realized he was being fired upon, so he banked his Spitfire hard into a tight turn, the blood draining from his head from the force of negative gravity. The aircraft began to judder on the brink of a stall, but as it straightened out his head cleared and ahead of him he saw a mass of twisting, turning planes. More bullets and cannon shells seemed to be hurtling towards him, so he instantly flung himself into another turn. Coming out of it once more, a 109 sped across his windscreen and instinctively he opened fire, his plane juddering as his eight machine guns rattled.

  Cocky felt close to panic in that first dogfight. Instinct made him keep turning and twisting his neck, but rather than a compelling urge to shoot down the enemy, it was a desire to stay alive that drove him. At last, he felt it safe to straighten out and was amazed, as so many pilots were in the first few engagements, to discover a sudden inexplicably empty sky. Panic now gripped him again and finding himself over the sea some miles north of Dunkirk his training and nerve deserted him. Rather than calmly thinking about the course he needed to take to get back to the Thames estuary, he blindly set out in what he thought was roughly the right direction. Driven by an overwhelming urge to land back on dry land, he pressed on, all calmness and good sense gone. He knew he was heading north and that that was the wrong direction so he turned around, vainly hoping that by returning to Dunkirk he would get his bearings. The sight of the French coast and two ships steaming below kicked some sense into him, however, and forcing himself to work out this simple navigational problem he managed to set a course west and soon the English coastline appeared ahead of him.

  As he flew low down the estuary and past Southend pier, he realized he was soaked with sweat. And as he touched down at last, the abject fear and panic were, in an instant, gone, replaced instead by a sense of jubilation and exhilaration that, at the age of nearly twenty, he was now a fighter pilot who had tangled with the enemy – and survived.

  And it was the young man back on land who wrote to his mother a few days later with the kind of nonchalance becoming of a fighter pilot. ‘Dear Mummy,’ he scrawled, ‘No more major excitements since I last wrote to you. We are doing
lots of offensive patrols over the battle area, always going across with all the machines we can get into the air and in company with several other squadrons: in fact, the air becomes black with Spitfires and Brother Bosche is not so ready to bomb our troops and ships.’ He then gave her a breathless description of the action – ‘he dived like a rocket and I pumped a lot of lead into his starboard mainplane’ – and finished his letter telling her there was no need to worry about him or his older brother, John, who was also a fighter pilot. ‘I am quite certain that our Spitfires are the finest machines flying over Belgium now,’ he added cheerfully. It is unlikely she felt very reassured.

  While the vast amount of smoke was helping the British cause, so too was the weather. After weeks of largely fine, dry weather, a front was now inching over the Channel and northern France. By the evening of Tuesday, 28 May, visibility was deteriorating and with it came rain. Heavy cloud and rain – but no wind. The Channel remained flat as a board. The weather gods were smiling on the British.

  Nearly 18,000 men were evacuated that day – almost 12,000 from the east mole, and nearly 6,000 from the beaches. Yet most of these had been lifted from the Dunkirk end, and now more and more men were pouring on to the beaches further along, particularly near Bray Dunes. Bill Tennant heard that there were now around 5,000 milling around the dunes and beaches there, so sent two of his officers and fifteen men to see what they could organize. They were staggered to discover not 5,000 but some 25,000 men already there, most exhausted, thirsty, hungry and leaderless. And there were nothing like enough boats offshore. ‘I must stress the need for boats and motor launches at Bray,’ they signalled. ‘Much provisions for troops also needed.’