A few British units fell into disarray on the retreat, an early taste of what was to come for many others; as they retreated through the Forêt de Soignes, an artillery unit became disjointed, eventually arriving at the positions of 2nd East Yorkshire Regiment ‘in a state of considerable shock and alarm’.
The Belgians who had welcomed the British as honoured guests were bitterly disappointed to see their guests moving backwards so quickly. ‘How can the French armies to the south possibly be expected to hold if the British keep retreating like this?’ Anthony Rhodes was asked. He in turn spoke to a local brothel keeper, who told him that she would get by perfectly well. ‘The Germans,’ she said, ‘are very good customers. They are the best of all. I ought to know because I was here in the last war.’ As 1st Battalion, South Lancashire Regiment retreated near Brussels, they were fired on by a Belgian unit which mistook them for Germans. A fierce fire fight took place, resulting in far more Belgian casualties than British. ‘It was regrettable but we were rather pleased,’ says one South Lancs soldier. ‘That was our first action at close quarters, and we had come out of it well.’
Almost all the British troops were struck by the hordes of Belgian refugees streaming away from the German border, hour upon hour, day after day. Near Antwerp, Peter Hadley compared the scene to the road leading from Wembley Stadium ten minutes after the end of a cup final. They came in cars or horse-drawn carts and on bicycles, but most trundled on foot with bundles on their shoulders and suitcases in their hands.
One of these refugees was thirteen-year-old Louis van Leemput. On 10 May, in bed at home near Antwerp, he was woken by the sound of German aircraft swooping low over the house. The radio soon told the family what was happening, and Louis’s father, who worked for the Belgian Military Arsenal, had to leave immediately. The rest of the family, Louis, his mother and his seven-year-old brother, packed a few things, locked the front door and set off towards Ypres, together with their neighbours. Like everybody else on the road, they were trying to get away from the Germans, and they carried their meagre belongings on a cart pulled along the cobbled roads by one of the neighbours while the others pushed from behind.
‘It was just terrible walking to Ypres,’ says Louis. The journey took a week. Food had to be found every day, usually bought from farms. The refugees were scared, says Louis, and there was little conversation; just pleasantries about where people were from. He saw no trouble, though if they had been on the road for much longer, he believes, fighting for food and water would probably have broken out, so scarce were both.
Hortense Daman, meanwhile, was a young Belgian girl whose family would later work for the Belgian Resistance. Betrayed by an informer in 1944, Hortense would be sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp, to become the subject of Nazi medical experiments. But on 10 May 1940 in Louvain, she can remember seeing a German aeroplane falling out of the sky. As it screamed towards the ground, her friends cheered its imminent demise – until it released a bomb and soared upwards again. It was a Stuka. At that moment a man came along, picked Hortense up under one arm, her sister under the other, and started to run. All was chaos, and half of the street was flattened by bombs.
‘We thought the war wouldn’t last long and we’d defeat them,’ says Hortense. She, her mother, father, grandfather and two aunts left their house that day, and began walking, like Louis van Leemput’s family, away from the German border. After a while, someone observed that they had brought nothing with them – no food, no clothes, no blankets – so her father and grandfather headed home to fetch things while the women waited in a field. But even when the men returned, they had forgotten to bring any money. Her mother was furious.
Hortense remembers confrontation on the roads. ‘The panic was terrific,’ she says. ‘The panic and the fighting and the screaming! You couldn’t believe your eyes!’ She can remember cows screaming in the fields, and her grandmother stopping to milk them to relieve their pain. And she remembers a young man in British military uniform being badly beaten after someone shouted that he was a spy. The police took him away – but Hortense thinks that the man was a genuine soldier, a victim of spy hysteria.
Louis van Leemput has bitter memories of German attacks from the air. Every time an aeroplane appeared, his group would dive into a ditch by the side of the road. He remembers the tuck, tuck, tuck sound made by bullets on cobblestones. Each evening, Louis’s group found a farm where they could sleep, on straw or hay. One night, they were chased away by equally tired Belgian soldiers, and they walked on until daylight. ‘That day,’ says Louis, ‘I was so exhausted, I fell down at the side of the road and had to lie there. I didn’t have the strength any more.’
Eventually, they settled down for a week on a farm near Ypres with other refugees. Louis was in the outhouse one day when he saw a flock of birds coming towards them. As the flock increased in size, he realised that they were Stukas. He leapt to his feet, pulled up his trousers in a hurry, and ran into the barn shouting ‘Stukas!’ But by then, they were already diving: ‘The sound alone scares the hell out of you, and then you hear the bombs screaming, and you hear the people screaming – and we were so lucky. The bombs missed our farm and exploded next to it. So as soon as we could, we wrapped up our things and got back on the road with the horse cart.’
British civilians were experiencing a different war. A Mass Observation report compiled on 14 May noted ‘a heavy increase in disquiet’, particularly marked in London, but widely observed. Attitudes ranged from: ‘He’s [Hitler’s] having a great smash up, isn’t he? If we can only hold him for a little time it will be all right. If he can’t get through he’ll be done for,’ to: ‘Nobody could think anything but bad. My opinion is, it’s the worst thing that’s happened in history.’
Yet the increased unease had a positive corollary, as a tidal wave of volunteerism swept the nation. People started giving their time and energy in a communal drive to boost Britain’s ability to defend and organise itself. Myriad organisations came to the fore. Among them were the Women’s Institute with its jam making and rosehip collecting, the Women’s Voluntary Service with its mobile canteens and evacuation assistance, and the Citizens’ Advice Bureau with its welfare guidance. But on 14 May, the Secretary of State for War, Anthony Eden, announced the formation of a voluntary organisation for men aged seventeen to sixty-five – the Local Defence Volunteers – that was intended to serve as a civilian army to resist any future German invasion.
The name ‘Local Defence Volunteers’ did not survive very long. In July, Churchill insisted it be changed to the more punchy ‘Home Guard’. But whatever the name, the organisation served a series of important roles, and its instant popularity – a quarter of a million men signed up in the first week – reflected people’s desire to work together, and to resist the Nazi enemy.
Two early volunteers give a sense of the LDV’s eccentric diversity. Private Standish Vereker was the brother of Lord Gort, the commander-in-chief of the BEF. Private Gebuza Mungu, meanwhile, was the son of Umundela Mungu, a Zulu commander at Rorke’s Drift. Mungu had been a circus lion-tamer for eight years, before moving to south Wales to become a steel worker. Despite being sixty-three years old, he was said never to miss an LDV parade. (And he claimed the odd ‘distinction’ of having once been horsewhipped by General Smuts’s father.)
In this early stage of its life, the LDV’s military role was negligible. Members had armbands instead of uniforms, no pips or chevrons, they drilled with broom handles, and they carried out plenty of spurious guard duty, with mixed results. When one officer challenged a private on guard duty, they shared the following exchange:
‘What is your job?’
‘Don’t know, sir.’
‘Who is your platoon sergeant?’
‘Don’t know, sir.’
‘Who is your platoon officer?’
‘Don’t know, sir.’
‘Who is your company commander?’
‘Don’t know, sir.’
‘Who am I
?’
‘Don’t know, sir.’
‘How long have you been in the company?’
‘Three months.’
‘How often do you parade?’
‘Five nights a week, sir.’
The private was subsequently discharged as mentally deficient. But for all its early military limitations, the LDV had an important propaganda role to play. Not only would it offer citizens a sense of useful involvement, it could also calm the growing fear of airborne invasion. Most of Anthony Eden’s speech focused on German parachute troops, and the role that the new organisation could play in countering them. ‘We are going to ask you to help us,’ Eden told the public, pre-empting John F. Kennedy – in polite English fashion – by over twenty years.
Over the months and years to come, the LDV (and Home Guard) would become more professional, better organised and far better funded, but in its earliest days it was a homespun organisation, in which most developments came from members rather than the authorities. Antiques (including an ancient Chinese bronze cannon) were removed from museums to supplement arsenals, while many units made their own Molotov cocktails. Bexley LDV collected old whisky and soft drink bottles (beer bottles were considered too thick), before filling them with a blend of tar and petrol that had been carefully heated to allow the ingredients to mix, and then placing them in specially made canvas holders. Each member could then defend the Kentish border armed with twelve cocktails.
One LDV unit that stands out during these early days was the Upper Thames Patrol. Operating on the non-tidal waters of the River Thames between Teddington and Lechlade, a distance of 125 miles, the patrol consisted of owners of motor launches charged with guarding the river and its banks, and with protecting its bridges, locks and weirs from sabotage. In the event of invasion, the patrol would be responsible for blowing up the bridges. Three of the patrol’s boats – Constant Nymph, Surrey and Bobell – were to play a significant part in the Dunkirk evacuation.
Another notable unit (although not formed until early July) was the First American Motorised Squadron. Made up of United States citizens living in Britain, mainly businessmen and professionals, the squadron was created by Charles Sweeny, a wealthy financier and society figure, who wired his even wealthier father in the States of the need for weapons and ammunition. One hundred Tommy guns and 100,000 rounds of ammunition were promptly delivered. With its dozens of well-connected members, their fashionable American cars repainted in military colours, and a brigadier general in command who had served under General Pershing in the last war, the squadron was a uniquely well-equipped and well-organised unit, able to hold its own in manoeuvres against elite British army units.
Churchill, keen to entice America into the war, took a special interest in the squadron – while, tellingly, Joseph Kennedy, United States ambassador, disapproved of its formation. It stands as confirmation, though, that some Americans at least were committed to the war effort long before December 1941.
The sheer number and enthusiasm of Local Defence Volunteers, in the meantime, stands as evidence that British volunteerism, in its many guises, was keeping the nation busy and involved, a crucial tool in the government’s struggle against civilian complacency and dissatisfaction.
Across the Channel, meanwhile, the BEF’s withdrawal to the line of the River Escaut was complete by the night of 19 May. But Lord Gort realised the growing danger that the Germans would outflank this position, so he began creating emergency forces, amalgamations of existing units, to move into vulnerable areas. Macforce – made up chiefly of 127th Infantry Brigade – was sent to guard the BEF’s southern flank along the River Scarpe between Râche and St Amand. In effect, Macforce was insurance against the collapse of General Blanchard’s French First Army, a prospect that now seemed eminently possible. Petreforce, meanwhile, consisted mainly of untrained digging battalions (as well as an elite battalion of Welsh Guards), which were moved into position to defend Arras.
Gort has received heavy criticism over the years for his conduct of the campaign. Some of the most damning came from Montgomery, lightly sprinkled though it was with the faintest of praise. Monty described Gort as a most delightful person and a warm-hearted friend who was not clever, did not bother about administration, and should never have received the job in the first place. ‘He knew everything there was to know about the soldier, his clothing and boots,’ wrote Monty, but ‘the job was above his ceiling.’
Monty’s biggest complaint concerned the state of confusion at Gort’s headquarters. ‘It was difficult to know where anyone was,’ he wrote. The problem stemmed from Gort’s desire to be close to the action, causing him to divide GHQ into three echelons rather than the usual two. The result was an exasperating communications breakdown. ‘Communications would be established only to find that the officer or branch required was at one of the other places,’ wrote a member of I Corps staff.
In his role not only as commander-in-chief of the BEF, but also as an army commander answerable to several layers of French authority, Gort’s job was huge and complex; efficient communications were crucial, both for the performance of the BEF and in order to monitor French actions and intentions. Nevertheless, Gort’s creation of his improvised forces demonstrated his willingness to react to situations; the movement of troops south would prove important in the days to come. And during discussions with Pownall on 19 May, an idea arose whose consequences remain with us even today.
As Gort saw it, the BEF had three options. It could take part in a counter-attack launched simultaneously from the north and the south to cut off the advancing Germans and maintain a defensive line. It could attempt to withdraw to the line of the River Somme, keeping its supply lines open. Or it could take the third, apparently most drastic but probably only sensible option. It could head north-west, protected by canal and river lines, towards Dunkirk where it could be evacuated back to Britain.
Such an audacious move would almost certainly mean leaving most of the BEF’s weapons and equipment in France. It might well be viewed as treachery by the French and Belgian allies. And it would probably be resisted by those at home who did not appreciate the severity of the BEF’s plight. Sure enough, when Pownall telephoned the War Office to inform the Director of Military Operations of the plan, the response he received was ‘stupid and unhelpful’.
All the same, with his determination that Britain be protected at all costs, his force’s administrative shortcomings, and his lack of faith in the French to resist the armoured divisions, Gort and his staff began planning for a retreat to Dunkirk.
Five
Fighting Back
Winston Churchill’s doctor, Lord Moran, once wrote of his patient that ‘without that feeling for words he might have made little enough of life.’ Perhaps, but Churchill’s instinctive ability to enthuse beleaguered minds was badly needed when he made his first broadcast to the nation as Prime Minister on 19 May:
. . . the British and French peoples have advanced to rescue not only Europe but mankind from the foulest and most soul-destroying tyranny which has ever darkened and stained the pages of history. Behind them – behind us – behind the Armies and Fleets of Britain and France – gather a group of shattered States and bludgeoned races: the Czechs, the Poles, the Norwegians, the Danes, the Dutch, the Belgians – upon all of whom the long night of barbarism will descend, unbroken even by a star of hope, unless we conquer, as conquer we must; as conquer we shall.
The response was positive. ‘You have never done anything as good or as great,’ wrote Anthony Eden. ‘Thank you, and thank God for you.’
Behind the scenes, however, Churchill could not afford much confidence. In a telegram sent later that night to United States President Franklin Roosevelt, he made an implicit threat; if America failed to assist Britain, and she was forced to surrender, then the Royal Navy would pass into German hands. The consequences of this were left for Roosevelt to ponder, as Churchill signed off with the words, ‘Once more thanking you for your goodwill.’
Shortly afterwards, Irwin’s company was dispersed around the edge of an orchard when the members became emotionally involved in a one-sided aerial battle between a virtually defenceless RAF Lysander,* with a top speed of 212mph, and six heavily armed Messerschmitt Bf 109s with top speeds of 350mph. The company watched as the 109s took turns in diving at the Lysander and pulling up to attack her again on the way back up. Each time this happened, the Lysander throttled back and jinked, and every 109 overshot her. As the final attack missed her, one watching soldier burst into tears. And then, when the 109s changed their tactics and attacked her simultaneously from different directions, the Lysander went into a deliberate spin before straightening up low over the company. The 109s were not giving up, however. They chased her down – but as they flew low towards Irwin’s company, every Bren gun on the ground opened fire.
The first 109 hit the ground in flames, and the other five pulled up and flew away. But they soon flew back in formation, looking to take revenge on the company with their machine guns. At that moment, however, three RAF Hurricanes appeared and chased them away. All the while, the Lysander flew serenely on.
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