A rather more mundane incident occurred shortly afterwards, Irwin and a fellow officer (and good friend) threatening each other with pistols as their platoons tried to take up the same position. Both were too tired to think about moving to another spot. In the end, Irwin lost the position on the toss of a coin.
Shortly before reaching Belleghem, Irwin’s platoon passed a gingerbread factory. Some troops had already broken in; Irwin’s men – most of whom had last eaten some days ago – followed. Soon they were sharing crates of gingerbread cakes. And an hour later they were squatting by the side of the road, sharing diarrhoea.
At Belleghem, behind the Escaut, the battalion was expecting to mount a stand. But on the afternoon of 20 May, they withdrew again. This time, however, they understood why; news of the Panzers’ advance had reached them.
Twenty miles away in the village of Froidmont, 2nd Battalion, Royal Norfolk Regiment, was preparing to travel the short distance to the Escaut. That night, the battalion moved to a spot near Calonne, where it relieved the Royal Berkshires. ‘A’ Company took the central position, its front stretching for nearly eight hundred yards; this left the men far too strung out for comfort. Nevertheless, the company commander, Captain Peter Barclay, spent the night making sure that every man had a solid defensive position.
The river was twenty yards wide, giving a measure of protection. All along the company’s front were buildings; one section established itself in a cellar, another behind a garden wall, and a third, on the extreme left, in an old cement factory. Here, Private Ernie Leggett and his comrades had placed themselves on the upper floor. Over to the right was company headquarters, comprising Barclay, Sergeant Major George Gristock and others. A problem faced by the entire company was a long, thin wood on the far side; it offered the enemy some – though by no means total – concealment.
As dawn broke with no Germans in sight, Barclay – a member of the banking family – decided to take a little time off. His batman had spotted rabbits in the grounds of the nearby Château Carbonelle, and had somehow also discovered hounds and ferrets locked up in the chateau’s stables. For an hour and a half Barclay and his fellow officers played at being country gentlemen, until the Germans started sending shells over. Then, says Barclay, he thought he’d better ‘deal with the other situation’.
For some time, all remained reasonably quiet until some Germans appeared on the far side of the river. Barclay instructed his men not to fire until he had blown the hunting horn he liked to keep with him. The Germans wandered off into the wood and started to cut down trees. They were going to try to build a simple pedestrian bridge using concrete blocks that were already sitting in the river. All the while, the Norfolks kept quiet, and as the minutes passed, more soldiers arrived on the far bank, including a black-helmeted SS man. Relaxed, unaware they were being watched, they began putting the bridge together, before crossing over to the Norfolks’ side. There was utterly no sense of urgency – until Barclay blew his horn and the Norfolks opened fire. Every German, on both sides of the river, was killed.
In their cement factory, Ernie Leggett’s section had positioned themselves on the upper floor where they could look out over the wood. Now, 150 yards away, the enemy was advancing with light tanks. A ferocious fire fight began, Leggett hammering away with his Bren gun. The Germans managed to reach the river bank before retreating. They came again, this time advancing over their own dead. Twice more they were beaten off – but Leggett and his comrades were now also under mortar fire, with its tell-tale ‘pump’ followed by a brief but agonising wait for an explosion.
Further along, the headquarters too was coming under shell and mortar fire. Seeing Captain Barclay wounded in his stomach, arm and back, and with all the stretchers already in use, Barclay’s batman improvised by ripping a door from its hinges. Barclay continued giving orders as four men carried him around on the door.
Problems were now developing to the right. On the immediate right flank, the Germans had somehow captured a friendly position, while on the far bank an enemy machine-gun post had appeared. Barclay delegated his sergeant major, George Gristock, to capture both positions, with the assistance of a motley group including a company clerk and a radio operator.
Seconds later, Ernie Leggett looked out from his factory position on the left, to see Gristock crawling on his knees and elbows, inching towards a German machine-gun nest on the Norfolks’ side of the river that had – so far – failed to spot him.
Suddenly, a previously hidden machine gun, with a flank view of Gristock, opened up, raking his legs and smashing his knees. But he continued advancing until he was twenty yards from the first enemy position; there, he leaned back and began tossing grenades, before turning over and firing his Tommy gun. He made sure that all four Germans were dead before dragging himself back to where he started.
At this point, Barclay passed out. Waking up some time later in the chateau, now transformed into a regimental aid post, he found himself lying next to Gristock. In the meantime, Leggett remained at his post. Of the twenty-five members of his section who had begun the morning in the factory, only four remained. There were no wounded; all the others were dead. And as Leggett crossed the floor, preparing to look out to the left for Germans, he received a shock:
The next thing I knew I’d hit the ceiling, and then I heard a loud bang. I came down and hit the floor. I realised that I’d been hit. It was one of those blasted three-inch mortars and I’d been hit. My left leg was absolutely numb, my back was numb from the waist down, I couldn’t move my legs, and all I saw was blood all over the floor. Two others ran across to me, and one said, ‘Bloody hell, Ernie! You’ve had it!’
Leggett was half-carried, half-dragged down the stairs where he was laid down beside a six-inch-high railway line. Naked except for his underpants, he began to pull himself agonisingly along the railway line, sheltered by the rails from gunfire, covered by earth from shellfire, his hands bleeding from the effort of dragging himself along. Hundreds of yards later, he reached the company headquarters where he was placed on a stretcher. He remembers being inside a truck, and a nun leaning over him with a flowery wimple, and a medical officer saying, ‘Just a prick, old boy.’
Despite the ferocious fighting, and two German breakthroughs that were reversed, the battalion held its position. That evening, orders came to withdraw, first to Bachy and then to the Bethune sector – where it was to experience further horror.
A while later, in hospital in England, Ernie Leggett was told that he was going to be all right, despite various wounds including one caused by a piece of shrapnel that grazed his femoral artery before exiting through his groin. And in the next ward was George Gristock, whose legs had been amputated from the hip. Every day, Leggett was wheeled in to see his sergeant major – who was allowed to drink as much beer as he liked. ‘Beautiful!’ he would say as he supped it from a little teapot.
Leggett told Gristock that he had seen what happened to him. ‘Bastards!’ said George. ‘But I wiped them out!’ Every day, they talked about the old days in the regiment, and the early months of the war. ‘And then,’ says Ernie, ‘that horrible morning came when they didn’t come and get me, and I said to the nurse, “Take me through to see my sergeant major,” and she said, “No. Sorry.” He had died.’
George Gristock was awarded the Victoria Cross for his action; it is on public display at the Royal Norfolk Regiment Museum in Norwich.
On 20 May, Lance Sergeant Cyril Roberts* was at Vauchelles, south of the Somme. His unit, 2/7th Battalion, Queen’s Own Royal Regiment, had been brought to France to carry out labour duties, spending the first half of May working under the direction of French engineers at Abancourt, between Amiens and Dieppe. They had not been expecting to fight, having received virtually no training in England over the winter, and none at all in France. They were badly equipped, with just three Bren guns for the entire battalion, not a single mortar or carrier, and only fourteen trucks and one car. And they were almost devoid of com
munications equipment and trained signallers. But they were soldiers – and with the BEF in crisis, they had been ordered forward.
On 18 May, they were ordered first to Abbeville, and from there to Lens, where their train was bombed and machine-gunned from the air. Eight men of another battalion were wounded, but none of Roberts’ comrades were hurt. Very soon afterwards, however, it was realised that a mistake had been made. The battalion should have stayed in Abbeville, so everybody boarded another train and headed back; this was where, on 20 May, the men found themselves, in a small nearby village named Vauchelles, as the Panzer divisions swept towards them. Hitler’s vacillations had not yet significantly affected German progress, and allowed off the leash once more, the tanks raced forward. Cyril’s battalion found itself in the eye of their storm. The result was chaos.
Heinz Guderian’s orders were for 2nd Panzer Division to hold the ground between Abbeville and Flixecourt, clearing the sector of British and French resistance. 1st Panzer Division would take the area between Flixecourt and the river east of Amiens, while 10th Panzer Division would hold the ground further east to Peronne.
On 20 May, once 1st Panzer Division had captured Amiens, Guderian had a walk around the city. The cathedral was beautiful, he decided, but he could not stay long. Moving eastwards, he passed his advancing columns – and spotted a number of British vehicles in their midst, trying to blend in, hoping for a chance to break for the south. ‘I thus quickly captured fifteen Englishmen,’ he wrote.
That morning, Oberleutnant Dietz of 2nd Panzer Division had set out at dawn from the village of Sorrell. His entire battle group was moving forward – the tank brigade, two infantry battalions, tank destroyers and armoured pioneers (engineers in fighting vehicles). They were heading for Abbeville and the sea, and they encountered little resistance on the way. Twelve miles from the town, the giant winding snake halted. All around were the carts and detritus of refugees, mostly Belgians. To Dietz these were men, women and children forced out of their homes by the French and left to their fate. He could neither accept nor imagine any German responsibility for their plight.
For the time being, the tanks remained where they were; they had finally run short of fuel. The infantry now drove forward to capture Abbeville’s western defences. Soldiers fought their way from house to house, supported by the pioneers’ armoured vehicles. The town, like others before it, erupted into flames, and it soon came under German control. The race to the coast, it seemed, was complete – until a message arrived that the Luftwaffe had ordered a Stuka strike on the Abbeville bridges.
To the battle group’s HQ staff, this seemed madness. The bridges had already been secured at some cost; there was no need for any further action. And a retreat would open the town again to the enemy. But when a further message came through that the Stukas were on their way, orders were quickly given to withdraw all men and machines from the town to a distance of several miles.
Orderly officers and dispatch riders hurried through Abbeville shouting the order to move out to the countryside. Tanks – which had now reached the town – roared into life. Their sound was magnified in the tight urban confines. Not unlike the British on the River Dyle, German soldiers who had spent ten days focused on reaching the Channel coast were now being told to retreat away from it. But not everybody was going to withdraw. The bridges would remain occupied by German troops, and the headquarters staff would be staying where they were. The town would not simply be handed back to the enemy – whatever the cost in lives.
At staff headquarters, officers tried to sleep aware of their almost certain fate. But the Stukas never came. Their attack was called off without any message reaching the battle group, and by seven o’clock the next morning, most of the town’s positions had been retaken. During that day, several thousand prisoners – mostly British – were rounded up and sent to the rear.
The decisive phase of the Manstein Plan, crossing the River Meuse, pushing through the area around Sedan and surging north-west for the coast, was now complete. The British army, the Belgian army and the French First and Seventh Armies were trapped in a pocket 120 miles deep and 80 miles wide, all of them cut off from the remainder of the French army to the south. And they would now be facing attacks from every direction. The only reassurance to the British was that the Germans had not yet taken the Channel ports. Until this was done, and the British army had been captured, the war was not lost.
On the morning of 20 May, a platoon of Cyril Roberts’ battalion was on duty guarding bridges in Abbeville. As refugees streamed into the town, the platoon headed out to rejoin the rest of the battalion. Setting out eastwards, progress was slow, and eventually the party was forced to stop, halted by burning air-raid debris. They turned back, trying to find another route.
Passing a farmhouse, they noticed refugees reacting to something, and, a moment later, a machine gun opened up. Some of the party jumped into a ditch, while others stayed on the road. The men in the ditch, thinking the machine gun was in the farmhouse, began to fire at it. At this point, a German armoured column came up the road, led by a tank. One of the men in the ditch, Private Jakeman, watched as his comrades on the road were taken prisoner. Meanwhile another armoured vehicle came up behind him and his colleagues in the ditch. As Germans jumped out with revolvers and submachine guns, Jakeman and friends threw up their hands and surrendered.
The group was sent walking down the road. They were unescorted – but German motor vehicles and sentries were stationed at frequent intervals to prevent their escape. After a mile, the road passed a wood, and Jakeman, sensing a momentary absence of cars and sentries, dodged behind a tree, scaled a fence and ran into the wood. He carried on across country, stopping when he reached a thick copse.
All that day, he lay hidden. He could hear a German anti-aircraft battery firing to the north, and a great deal of gunfire all around him. That night, he carried on moving south-east, until he reached the heights above the Somme. He climbed down, swam across the river, and crossed some marshland, a road and a railway line. At one point, he was fired at, so he hurried on, running into some parked German vehicles. As he fled, dawn was beginning to break. He found another wood, and hid there throughout a wet and miserable day.
That evening, he knocked on the door of a farmhouse in Bettencourt; the family allowed him to stay the night, telling him that the Germans had recently passed through the village. The next day, they warned him that door-to-door searches for Allied soldiers had begun, and the only safe direction for him to travel was south. So he set off, avoiding towns and villages, until he reached Selincourt, where he was told by civilians that the French still held Harnoy, a few miles further on. At Harnoy he was questioned by French officers at a road barrier. He passed their scrutiny, and was soon whisked off in a British vehicle, before finally being transferred to British Northern Command at Rouen.
Private Jakeman may not have been taken off into captivity, but most other members of his battalion – including Cyril Roberts – were not so fortunate. As German air attacks on Abbeville began to strengthen on the morning of 20 May, the battalion came under intense bombardment. They were in open country, with barely any anti-tank weapons or Bren guns; the commanding officer gave the order to withdraw towards Épagne-Épagnette and across the Somme. He wanted to place the river between his men and 2nd Panzer Division. Though these orders were delivered to HQ Company and part of ‘D’ Company, they never reached the other companies.
Major Adams of HQ Company managed to guide a group (consisting of two officers and about sixty men) across the Somme to Blangy. From here, he was able to reach brigade headquarters, and finally Northern Command at Rouen. The battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Girling, meanwhile, led a group for nearly three days on a trek from the outskirts of Abbeville through the abandoned village of Hamicourt and across the River Bresle, to St Pierre-en-Val. The group split up under machine-gun attack, but all its members finally reached Rouen.
Most of the remainder of the battalion,
however, including Cyril Roberts, remained in position at Vauchelles. No orders had been received, and when two officers headed off to gather information and failed to return, confusion reigned. Early on the morning of 21 May, a large formation of German tanks arrived at their exposed position. At a stroke, several hundred men of 2/7th Battalion, Queen’s Own Royal Regiment were taken prisoner.
As the Panzers were arriving at Abbeville, General Edmund ‘Tiny’ Ironside, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, was arriving at Gort’s headquarters with a directive that the BEF attack south-west across the Somme in order to join up with the French in the south. Pownall was furious at the suggestion, sensing Churchill’s hand behind it – ‘a scandalous (i.e. Winstonian) thing to do and, in fact, quite impossible to carry out’, he wrote in his diary.
Gort patiently explained to Ironside that, first, he did not have the troops to do it (it would involve the disengagement of seven divisions currently fighting for their lives on the Escaut), and second, the Germans were now holding the line of the Somme. In short, the attack would leave the seven British divisions fighting desperate rearguard actions at the same time as they went into battle with strong Panzer formations – all the while having to guard their flanks.
Yet while this was a clear impossibility, Gort offered Ironside an alternative. He could mount a limited attack in a southerly direction, carried out by 5th and 50th Divisions, the only reserve divisions available to him. Ironside relayed this to War Secretary Anthony Eden, whose report was duly read to the War Cabinet in London. Yet Churchill’s instinctive optimism remained; he continued believing in the feasibility of a massive southerly attack by the BEF. (Although reality was clearly biting at some level: at the same meeting, Churchill told the War Cabinet that he had asked the chiefs of staff to prepare a study of possible operations if it ‘became necessary to withdraw the British Expeditionary Force from France’.)
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