The Battle of Britain

by James Holland

  Amongst those attacking were Unteroffizier Hellmuth Damm and his men. Just the day before they had passed a number of freshly dug German graves and it had sent a chill down their spines. Neither he nor his men were under any illusion that the attack that day would be a walkover. It was now around 9 a.m. on the morning of the 30th. ‘When we moved into the assembly position to attack,’ noted Hellmuth, ‘we saw Bulscamp and its church towers in the morning mist, roughly three kilometres away, in the uncanny silence.’ Hellmuth was now company leader for the attack. His CO, Hauptmann Krusche, gave him company documents, maps, lists and orders. He put two stick grenades into his boot legs, checked his rifle and ammunition pouches and was then given the order to get into Bulscamp and establish a company command post as soon as possible which could then become the battalion CP. As the attack began, the infantry sped forward, running with covering fire, then falling behind any cover they could find, before moving forward again. Hellmuth’s heavy machine-gunners still had to follow closely behind, giving the immediate fire support the infantry needed. As leader, however, Hellmuth was at the front of his men, and was surprised by the vast amount of abandoned material as they approached the town. Equally surprising was the lack of enemy fire.

  Reaching the edge of the town, the accompanying artillery observation officer clambered into a church tower and Hellmuth followed him hoping to get a better view. Nearby was a large building, perhaps a monastery, he guessed; at any rate, it looked ideal for the new battalion command post. Back down on the ground, he and one of his NCOs inspected the building. It looked as though it had been a field hospital until recently – bandages and medical equipment were strewn everywhere. Hellmuth was not sure it should be the new CP, however, as it was facing west, towards the British, with large windows, and rather exposed. He was back out in the yard and was about to open a large garden door when artillery shells started hurtling over. A gable of the building was hit and Hellmuth was struck on the side. Immediately, he asked his comrade whether he had been hit by a brick on his back. ‘No,’ came the reply, ‘but you have a hole in your jacket.’ Reaching inside his breast pocket he felt blood, so rushed to find the medical officer. Ripping his jacket off, he saw blood running down the left side of his chest. The doctor grabbed some dressings and pulled him down on to the floor as another shell crashed into the chimney. The room was now full of choking smoke, dust and grime. The doctor began bandaging him and, as he did so, Hellmuth reached back behind him and pulled out a piece of shrapnel as big as his thumbnail. ‘The shot had gone through my pay book, song book and machine-gun target data sheet,’ he noted, ‘all of which were in my left breast pocket, as well as through my jacket, jumper, shirt and left shoulder, without damaging my heart, lung or ribs.’ He had been lucky indeed. The doctor pinned a wounded note on his shirt, ‘Shot through chest.’ Still able to walk, Hellmuth got up and hurried back to Hauptmann Krusche. ‘I was hit,’ he told him.

  ‘How am I going to find another company leader?’ Krusche asked him. ‘You are already the fourth.’ Hellmuth handed back the company documents. ‘Find an aid station,’ Krusche told him, ‘then come back!’

  Gingerly, Hellmuth went in search of the aid station, which he found in an abandoned restaurant across the street. There he rested in the basement with four other soldiers and a few civilians all afternoon until the firing at last began to die down and he hoped it was safe to leave the town and head back to the rear echelons. Hellmuth and the other wounded men staggered out into the street, and, taking bicycles, headed back out of town, dodging debris as they did so. ‘I had a hard time of it,’ noted Hellmuth, ‘because I had to press my left arm on the wound and the bandage. I ignored the pain.’

  Eventually picked up by an artillery unit, they were taken back to Regimental Headquarters, where they were given some hot pea soup and then taken in to the 56th Division Field Hospital. By late evening, Hellmuth was in the operating theatre. Injecting a local dose of anaesthetic around the wound, the doctor probed around the mess of his wound, until pulling out a wad of bloody pulp. ‘I’ve seen many things,’ he said, ‘but I’ve never had to pull a man’s pay book out of his body before.’ With the wound cleaned, disinfected and dressed, Hellmuth was at last given a bed and the chance to sleep. For him, the battle was over.

  It was not, however, for Lieutenant Norman Field. The 2nd Royal Fusiliers were now defending Nieuport, with their battalion HQ in an old German blockhouse from the last war that stood within a strip of woodland running west from the town and some 300 yards north of the Nieuport–Furnes Canal. It seemed solid enough, although they were now facing the enemy from the reverse side of its original design. Either side, the men had dug slit trenches. The previous night, German patrols had pushed forward, firing short bursts of submachine-gun fire, tempting the Fusiliers to respond and thus reveal their positions. By morning, the German guns had opened fire.

  Heavy artillery, mortars and small arms were all firing upon their positions. From the outset, the only way for the battalion B Echelon to reach the forward positions was by Bren gun carrier. The Carrier Platoon had also been busy patrolling their right flank until the 1st East Surrey Battalion arrived to plug the gap.

  Tragedy had already hit the Fusiliers that morning. Norman had been in the blockhouse with the remains of HQ Company and the Officer Commanding, Lieutenant-Colonel Allen. All had been desperately short of sleep, but Colonel Allen had dropped off and then, in a sleep-induced trance, had suddenly jumped up and yelled, ‘Follow me! We’ve got to see these bloody Germans off!’ and then run out of the blockhouse and started down the road to Nieuport. In seconds, a sniper had shot him in the head. ‘He fell flat on his face on to the road,’ says Norman. ‘We got hold of his legs and pulled him in.’ Allen was still alive, but only just – he would die two days later. It was a huge blow to the battalion; Allen – brother of the England cricketer Gubby Allen – had been a popular commanding officer. The men trusted him and looked up to him. Major Jack Lotinga, one of the company commanders, took over, but it was clear to everyone that they would be lucky to get out of there. The artillery behind them had just sixty rounds left per gun, while their own Bren and rifle ammunition was getting horribly low. It was only a matter of time before the Germans overwhelmed them.

  In many ways, the 20,000 British soldiers now manning the perimeter were on something of a suicide mission. Short of supplies and, as the casualties mounted, increasingly short of men, their task was to keep the enemy at bay for as long as was humanly possible. It was a vital task: with every hour that passed, more soldiers were escaping from the mole and beaches. All along the front, epic stands were now taking place as the Tommies dug in behind the canal as the Germans shelled, mortared and shot at their positions. ‘We were having a pretty tough time,’ says Norman. ‘They knew where we were and they were giving us hell with the shelling.’

  Meanwhile the RAF was determined to do its bit to help the boys on the ground, despite the weather. Bomber Command Blenheims had been sent off to disrupt the Germans threatening the Fusiliers at Nieuport, but owing to the weather had been forced to abandon the mission. Later, they tried again and this time had more luck. Fighter Command also flew a number of patrols, including one by twelve Spitfires from 609 Squadron. David Crook was not amongst them – he had sprained his knee and was currently off flying – but John Dundas was. They saw little – there was ten-tenths cloud over the coast – but on that first combat patrol it was the weather that did for them. John was in Yellow Section and all three lost their bearings on the return trip. Desperately short of fuel, he and Joe Dawson eventually landed at Frinton-on-Sea in Essex, while Frankie Howell made it to Rochford. George Oakley was not so lucky, however. Although he reached the coast near Harwich, he then spun in and crashed, killing himself instantly. It was a sobering start.

  On the beaches, some engineers from the 250th Field Company were using their ingenuity to create a makeshift pier off the sea at Bray Dunes. At around eight that morning, while the ti
de was out, they began collecting abandoned three-ton lorries and driving them out across the sand, and with the help of other soldiers created a 150-yard-long jetty. Bullets were fired into the tyres to anchor them, sand was shovelled into the back of them and the canvas covers were stripped from the superstructures and lashed to one another. Finally, decking panels from a bridging lorry were placed along the top of the trucks to create a walkway. More planks were found at a nearby timber yard. As the tide came in, smaller vessels were able to moor alongside it. Military Police ensured that only around fifty men used the jetty at any one time, but it was soon working very effectively.

  Stan Fraser was not one of those being shepherded on to the lorry-jetty, but he and his mates were now down at the water’s edge. One of their officers kept them all together but when it became apparent that it would be an impossible task to get them off in one go, they decided it was a case of every man for himself. There were officers now all along the water’s edge, with Tommies all around them, eager to get on the next little boat. Occasionally they would threaten the men with revolvers, but by doing so managed to keep a semblance of order.

  Stan managed to find himself allocated into the next two boats that were now approaching them. In their eagerness to get on, they all began edging forward into the sea, then a bit more. Stan thought they might have a surge on the boats but it did not happen. Instead, he joined them in wading out to the boat, until the water reached his waist. With the Staff Sergeant, he held the stern while the others jumped on, then they pushed it off and pulled themselves over the side.

  An officer shouted at them to head over to a destroyer waiting out at sea. When they got there, officers on the ship yelled to them that they were full, but seeing the scrambling net was still down, Stan leapt on to it and clambered over the side. He had made it.

  ‘Now, this is where the trouble starts,’ muttered one of the ship’s officers, gazing skywards as he did so. But the cloud was still thick, there was not an aircraft in sight, and soon they were away from France and steaming, untroubled, towards Dover.

  Stan might have been safe, but those still defending the bridgehead were continuing to suffer under the now relentless German assault. Just west of Nieuport, the 2nd Royal Fusiliers were still desperately clinging on to their positions, however, even though by evening the enemy had lengthened their barrage and were now shelling the battalion rear areas as well, killing a cook and a Fusilier porter and destroying half their cooking equipment. There was, however, some cause for cheer. First, one of their second lieutenants turned up with three Fusiliers, and then so too did Captain Malcolm Blair. ‘He was always the life and soul,’ says Norman Field. ‘He had everyone laughing. A marvellous man.’ Malcolm, a former policeman and rugby player, had become separated from the battalion and had ended up at Dunkirk, where he had been ordered on to a destroyer. Whilst on board he had heard that the battalion was at Nieuport and still fighting so had got himself off again, waded ashore and then walked back to rejoin it.

  As darkness fell the German guns were still once more. ‘Very quiet night,’ Norman jotted on a piece of notepaper. ‘Had a good sleep.’ He was up at first light, however, and had been sent to an alternative headquarters further back for messages. On his return, at around 5.30 a.m., the German shelling began once more. Taking cover in a slit trench, Norman could hear the shells landing around the blockhouse up ahead. When it finally lifted, Norman hurried back to the blockhouse. Outside in the slit trenches, he saw several men crouching as though sheltering from the rain. ‘They had been caught by the shell blast,’ says Norman. ‘Still sitting there, but dead.’

  The blockhouse had also taken a direct hit. As the Fusiliers now discovered, the rear of the building – the part now facing the enemy – was only made of brick and plaster. Inside, Captain Kit Bowring looked ashen. Malcolm Blair was dead. He’d been beside Kit when the shell had exploded. He had suffered only a slight wound, but Malcolm had been killed instantaneously. ‘Tears came to my eyes when Kit told me about Malcolm,’ says Norman. ‘It was bloody awful.’

  21

  Dunkirk: The End

  LORD GORT WAS NOW preparing to leave. He didn’t want to; he wanted to stay to the bitter end. But he received a personal message from Churchill. ‘On political grounds,’ Churchill told him, ‘it would be a needless triumph to the enemy to capture you when only a small force remained under your orders.’ Before he departed, Gort was also ordered to make sure more French were evacuated – in fact, on a fifty-fifty basis from now on. After a cordial meeting and farewell with Admiral Abrial in the depths of Bunker 32, Gort then saw Fagalde and Général Blanchard, offering them both a chance to join him on the journey to England. Both declined; then they shared farewell toasts and promised to see each other in France soon, and Gort returned to La Panne.

  There, Gort summoned Major-General Alexander, commander of 1st Division, who, he had decided, was to take over from him after his departure. Brooke had already gone; so too had Adam. General Barker, the commander of I Corps, whom he had originally had in mind, had seemed nervy at a conference the previous evening. His hands had been shaking and he’d made a bad joke about soon having dinner in a Schloss overlooking the Rhine. Alexander, on the other hand, was utterly imperturbable, as he proved when told of his new task. He would be serving under Abrial, Gort told him, but also gave him an important get-out clause: should any order which Abrial issued seem to him to be likely to imperil the safety of his men, he could make an immediate appeal to London.

  Even before Gort had left, Alexander went to Bastion 32 to see Abrial, who was insisting on holding the perimeter indefinitely. He was also suggesting a different perimeter, in which French troops would hold a line from Gravelines to Bergues, and then a combined French and British force would hold a reduced line up the Belgian border. Alexander was taken aback by this suggestion to put it mildly. To start with, Gravelines had fallen four days earlier, and secondly the British were already in Bergues and all along the line to Nieuport in Belgium. In any case, a reduced perimeter in the east of the line would expose the beaches to German artillery, while holding the line indefinitely would be impossible because already those manning the bridgehead were suffering appalling casualties and running out of ammunition. Abrial was being urged to make this pointless stand by Weygand, who was even more out of the loop than Abrial was in his bunker. Calmly, Alexander instead proposed holding on to the existing bridgehead for the next day and then pulling out completely on the night of 1/2 June. Abrial, however, baulked at this suggestion and threatened to close the port entirely if Alexander did so. Already, it was time for Alexander to invoke his appeal.

  By noon on Friday, 31 May, 165,000 men had been lifted from Dunkirk, as Churchill cheerfully told the French War Council in Paris on his latest trip there. It was an incredible number, achieved in part because of the still intact east mole, but also because of the determined resistance around the perimeter, and because the Luftwaffe had been far less effective than had been imagined by either side.

  For the pilots and crews of the Luftwaffe, the poor weather the previous day had provided them with something of a respite. Most were now exhausted. ‘I don’t know what day of the week it is,’ scribbled Siegfried Bethke the day before. He had just completed his fiftieth combat mission. He had now flown a number of sorties over the port. ‘Dunkirk is all one firebrand,’ he noted. ‘Many ships on the beach, bombs, fires, anti-aircraft fire, Stukas.’ All pilots were now familiar with the indelible images of destruction and carnage below. Julius Neumann, in 6/JG 27, was flying his seventh mission over the beaches around midday on the 31st. ‘I could see Dunkirk from many miles away,’ he says, ‘the smoke from the oil tanks was burning continuously.’ Cocky Dundas was also now all too familiar with the sight. That same day, he flew his sixth sortie there. ‘The black smoke rose from somewhere in the harbour area, thick, impenetrable, obscuring much of the town,’ he wrote. ‘As it rose, it spread in patches, caught up in layers of haze and cloud. But
still the greater part thrust upwards to a height of between twelve and fifteen thousand feet, where it was blown out in a lateral plume which stretched for many miles to westward, over Calais and beyond, down to the Channel.’

  After the terror and exhilaration of his first combat sortie, Cocky was now finding these missions increasingly frustrating. The Squadron always seemed to arrive just before or just after an enemy raid. Sometimes he saw other planes, but swirling spectrally around in the haze it was hard to tell who or what they were. When they were engaged, they were short, sharp fights in which the squadron became split up. And, so far, Cocky had still not shot down a single enemy plane.

  Back at Rochford, they had met some of the soldiers who had been evacuated and had been shocked to find that instead of thanks and praise they had been met with open hostility. ‘Where the hell were you?’ noted Cocky, ‘that was the question we were often asked in a tone of anger and contempt.’

  Of course, the reason the men on the beaches had not seen them was that they had been too high, often inland, and often up above the smoke and cloud. But they were there and suffering for it too: twenty aircraft had been lost on the 26th, for example, thirty the following day, twenty-five on the 28th and thirty-three on the 30th; 108 aircraft in just four days, most of which were from Fighter Command. It was a toll Dowding could not afford.

  Yet the Luftwaffe was suffering too. In the same period, the Luftwaffe had lost ten more aircraft and 191 pilots and aircrew. Those figures were about to rise, as both Hajo Herrmann and Siegfried Bethke were soon to discover. Hajo and the other men of KG 4 had been operating almost continually since the offensive began and not least over Dunkirk, although their casualties had been slight compared to some other units – just two aircraft lost in the past five days. Hajo’s vast experience had been put to good use a few days earlier. Flying a lone mission late over the port, by the light of the moon he had spotted a number of ships alongside the mole, with one just casting off. Banking, he positioned himself for an attack at right angles, with the moon ahead of him. Setting the fuse on his first bomb, he dived, and when almost over the target, pressed the release button and then pulled out. His rear-gunner reported the bomb had been ten metres short. Releasing bombs one at a time rather than in a cluster was considered far too risky – the rule was to strike hard and quick and then get away. Still, it was a trick Hajo had learned in Spain and he knew a bit more about operational flying since those days and, with the cover of darkness, fancied his chances.