Anthony Irwin sailed home on board another Isle of Man ferry. When the ship was shelled from the shore, an incontinent officer began screaming for everybody to move to the far side. ‘The men, already wetting themselves, lost all semblance of control,’ writes Irwin. Fortunately, some level-headed members of the Royal Tank Regiment held the men back while an army chaplain smacked the officer over the head with a lead stick. But as soon as order was restored, six Messerschmitt 110s flew over the ship, machine-gunning the occupants. The scene on deck in the aftermath was gruesome. Next to the gangway was a pile of bodies eight feet high. Irwin and others pulled the dead away and tried to help the wounded. A tank corporal with sixteen bullets in his chest and stomach refused morphine, saying that he still had a lot to talk about. He died three hours later.
There was plenty of more prosaic chaos on the large ships. The cook on board Medway Queen remembers a crush at the galley doors, and a sudden rush of soldiers pushing billy cans and mess tins in his direction, all expecting to be fed. ‘These were not peckish men,’ he says. ‘They were starving animals, most of them too desperately hungry to be polite.’
Yet politeness and gentility were also evident. Captain Humphrey Bredin boarded an Isle of Man ferry berthed on the mole. To get on board, he had to step over a dead man on the gangplank while bombs fell all around. Once inside, he found himself a corner and settled down. A while later, he was surprised to find a man neatly dressed in a white coat standing over him.
‘Are you a steward?’ asked Bredin.
‘Yes, sir,’ said the man. ‘Can I do anything for you?’
‘Well, would it be possible to produce a glass of beer for me?’
‘By all means. But you do know the rules, sir? I can’t supply you with alcohol until we’re three miles out.’
Once the ship was beyond the reach of licensing laws – if not of Stukas – the steward brought Bredin his beer. ‘How could we lose the war,’ he laughs, ‘with people like this around?’
The stewards, it is worth noting, were not all men. On board the Southern Railway ship Dinard, now a hospital ship, was fifty-nine-year-old Amy Goodrich. And on the Southern Railway steamer Paris was Mrs Lee, a train carriage cleaner from Brighton. After Paris was bombed and sunk on 2 June, Mrs Lee was machine-gunned in the water and picked up by a lifeboat, only to be thrown back into the water when another bomb landed alongside. After another hour and a half in the sea, she was pulled aboard a tug and finally brought back to Dover. Evacuated with her was Gladys Seeley, a nursing sister, who had been badly wounded by shrapnel in an adjacent lifeboat.
The hospital ships all had five or six QUAIMNS* sisters working on board. ‘They worked like Trojans,’ wrote Captain John White, medical officer on the Isle of Guernsey, adding that his job was made easier as none of them ever had to be told what to do. It was made a great deal harder, however, by the Luftwaffe’s relentless attacks. The hospital ships were painted white with large red crosses – but not only did this fail to deter the Germans, it seemed to attract them. In his diary, White complained that the red crosses were making the hospital ships sitting ducks. ‘Why not paint us grey and put some guns on board?’ he wrote.
Isle of Guernsey was attacked while berthed at the mole. As the bombs fell around her, she loaded a thousand men, 490 of whom were stretcher cases. In the chaos, White noticed fit men climbing on board, but he decided not to interfere. As Isle of Guernsey sailed away, every bed was full, and the floors, passageways, dining saloon and cabins were crammed with stretchers. Alongside the physically wounded were men suffering from shellshock, ‘whose brains had snapped after days and nights of strain, privation and terror’. These men were placed in a guarded cabin and given sedative injections.
Some hospital ships could not get near the mole due to the bombing. Josephine Kenny, a sister on board St Julien, travelled to Dunkirk on six occasions, but was unable to reach the mole on four of them. ‘We all felt helpless and depressed on the empty trips back,’ she writes, ‘so different to the elation felt when every inch of deck space was filled with terribly wounded soldiers.’ Her words, a strange conflation of exultation and misery, seem to reflect the intense extremes of Operation Dynamo.
Isle of Guernsey, meanwhile, was responsible for picking Flying Officer Ken Newton out of the sea. Newton was an RAF pilot who had bailed out after a dogfight. Like the character Collins in the film, he was helped out of the water by sailors. The sailors were killed, however, by German aircraft raking them with machine-gun fire as they leaned over the side to pull Newton aboard. An account of a hospital ship being machine-gunned as it helped a downed airman surely serves to deflect any suspicions that Hitler was allowing the British to escape. There is little evidence in stories such as these of a golden bridge being built in May and June 1940.
There were, however, a few soldiers who managed to do what Tommy and Gibson attempt to do in the film – take a stretcher on board a ship and remain there to be taken home. Corporal Charles Nash of the Royal Army Service Corps was ferrying stretchers onto the mole when suddenly a military policeman shouted, ‘Here! We’ve got room for a few more! Who’d like to come aboard?’ Nash clambered onto a fishing boat, and a few hours later was home. Carrying stretchers was a difficult job, however – particularly given the damage sustained by the mole. Members of the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry were given the job of loading a hundred stretcher cases onto the corvette HMS Kingfisher. Like Tommy and Gibson, they had to carry their stretchers across a narrow plank bridging a large hole in the mole, even as the bombing continued.
On the evening of Thursday 30 May, William Tennant and Frederic Wake-Walker dined at Lord Gort’s headquarters at La Panne, in a villa described by Wake-Walker as a pretentious house overlooking the sea.* The men shared Gort’s last bottle of champagne and rounded off the meal with tinned fruit salad. Wake-Walker was infuriated by Gort’s comment that while the army had successfully fallen back intact, the navy was making no real effort to help it escape. He tried to underline the difficulties involved, but was interrupted by Brigadier Oliver Leese who spoke of the ‘ineptitude of the navy’. Wake-Walker could do little but seethe. Several days into the evacuation, there was no sign of a miracle.
Nine
A Miracle
By the end of Thursday 30 May, the total number of men evacuated stood at 126,606 – almost three times as many as the Admiralty had predicted. The latest news from the perimeter, still held by several thousand men of the rearguard, was that it would probably hold for forty-eight hours. Low visibility had brought respite from the Luftwaffe. And the day had seen, for the first time, more troops embarked from the beaches (29,512) than from the mole (24,311).
In some ways, the beaches were the best place to be. Sand had a curious effect on bombs. If a bomb lands on a hard surface, the shrapnel scatters, and injuries are severe and widespread. ‘But going into the sand,’ says John Wells, an anti-aircraft gunner aboard Princessa, ‘there was a thud, and you’d get covered in clods of sand but that was about it.’ Arthur Lobb, of the Royal Army Service Corps, remembers a bomb exploding in sand as a strange experience, causing a slow movement of the earth beneath you.
This is not to suggest that the beaches were a safe environment. Many men were killed by bombs on the sand, and as Robert Halliday of the Royal Engineers remembers, it was difficult to find shelter there from a strafing aircraft. And it could be equally difficult getting away from the beaches. There were often no inshore boats to be seen. Sergeant Leonard Howard of the Royal Engineers waded into the water in the hope of getting a lift on 30 May, but soon gave up. There was nothing coming. Even when boats did arrive, soldiers often struggled and vied with one another to get in. When Arthur Joscelyne brought his Thames barge close to shore the same day, troops rushed to get aboard. ‘We could have capsized at any moment,’ he says. But then a naval officer stood up in the bows, took out his revolver and threatened to shoot anybody who embarked before he gave permission. Like children waiting for an adult
to take control, the soldiers calmed down and boarded in an orderly fashion. ‘They were in such a state that they just lay down anywhere and slept,’ says Joscelyne.
Leonard Howard watched a similar situation escalate. A small boat came inshore, and troops piled onto it so haphazardly that it seemed about to capsize. A soldier was doggedly gripping the stern, and the sailor in charge ordered him to let go. The soldier kept hold of the stern. So the sailor shot him in the head. In Howard’s view, this was the right thing to do, however awful it was to watch. ‘There was such chaos on the beach,’ he says, ‘that it didn’t seem out of keeping.’
This is not an isolated account, and most examples involve men driven to uncharacteristic extremes of behaviour. The troops were living through an extraordinary ordeal where even the incidental details reminded them of their possible fate. On Thursday, the same day that Leonard Howard watched the shooting take place, Colin Ashford of the Highland Light Infantry remembers seeing the bodies of dozens of young men wash up on the shore. ‘There they were, all lying in different attitudes. Some still clutching their rifles. Hundreds of them. As far as you could see.’ They came, he believes, from a paddle steamer that had been sunk nearby.* In another man’s recollections, the most disturbing aspect of the evacuation was the sight of dead soldiers in the water, moving in and out with the tide. The scene is imagined in the film as a character calmly pushes a floating body away.
Equally disturbing were incidents of premeditated malice. An officer had managed to secure a rowing boat, and he stood up to his waist in water, guarding it, as he waited for his men to arrive. But before they appeared, he was ambushed by a group of soldiers who took the boat from him at gunpoint, grinning as they pushed him away. It is important to remember stories such as these. The whole world was on these beaches, the bad as well as the good, and received wisdom should never obscure that fact.
For at least one officer, however, the situation was quite different. Captain George Ledger of the Durham Light Infantry was queuing on the beach on 1 June. ‘You’d think there’d never been a war,’ he says. He saw no disorder – although he did notice that, when an aeroplane came over, soldiers ran from the queues to the apparent protection of the sand dunes.
It is certainly true that better organisation led to better behaviour and increased confidence. Twenty-three-year-old Vic Viner was a naval beachmaster, sent to Bray Dunes to ‘create order out of chaos’. His job, simultaneously executed by others up and down the miles of beaches, was to keep control of a queue of men. He was told to use his revolver if anybody started to misbehave – ‘Shoot to kill, son!’
Viner encountered some trouble in his queue when an officer jumped out of line and began yelling, ‘I’m a captain! I’ve got to get in the front!’
‘Stay where you are!’ said Viner.
‘Who the hell do you think you’re talking to?’ shouted the officer. By this time, Viner had his revolver out, and a large sergeant was offering the captain some advice. ‘Do as he bloody well tells you, sir, or you will die!’
The officer stared at Viner, and Viner stared back. The whole queue was watching. Eventually, the officer backed down and returned to his original place.
Twice more Viner was forced to draw his gun, but, as he says, ‘They were shell shocked and they wanted to go back to England.’ Throughout the days he was on the beach, Viner says, nobody in his queue had to wait more than three days to find a ship – although they sometimes had to spend as much as ten hours in water up to their chests. There were times, he remembers, when the sea became rough and boats could not take soldiers on board. The Stukas usually attacked two or three times a day, although they might strike more frequently. Viner concedes that he was more fortunate than those at other points within the perimeter, for Bray Dunes was not being shelled by German guns.
There is one image that particularly haunts Viner:
So many of them committed suicide. They walked into the water. ‘Come on, join up!’ ‘No, I’m going!’ ‘Where are you going?’ ‘I’m going back home. England’s over there.’ I said, ‘I know, but if you walk into that water you’ll drown . . .’ And they just did it . . . They were exhausted and demoralised. It’s with me now for ever.
This story painted such a striking image that it served as some inspiration for a scene in the film. And it is a story confirmed by others. Leonard Howard describes men running into the water, overwhelmed by the experience of the beaches. ‘They were under terrific strain, and one couldn’t do anything for them.’
Sometimes these men were seen swimming far out to sea. On board a lifeboat offshore, troops spotted a fellow soldier swimming towards England with most of his heavy gear still on. Seeing the lifeboat, the soldier started shouting for help – and the troops begged the skipper to pick him up. But the skipper refused. Turning back, he said, would have risked the lives of everyone on board. The soldier was left to his fate.
Though the beach queues increased a soldier’s chances of being lifted, not everybody wanted to join them. While Robert Halliday was building his raft from the floorboards of abandoned trucks, all manner of other activities were taking place on the beaches. George Wagner, the young Royal Engineer whose passion was dancing, remembers most people just lying about in the dunes, passing time. He himself found a motorcycle, and drove it up and down the beach. Colin Ashford, an enthusiastic artist, drew a sketch of a destroyer lying offshore.* Rather than join a queue – ‘I didn’t see the point in it’ – Norman Prior spent his time helping others by pushing small boats, already loaded with troops, clear of the shallows where they risked being grounded.
About the most productive thing that any soldier could do was to help build one of the truck piers, another fine example of forced improvisation. It is not clear whose idea these originally were, but there is no doubt that the first one was constructed on 30 May at Bray Dunes. Abandoned lorries were driven down to the shoreline, where they were filled with sandbags and their tyres were shot out. They were lashed together, bonnet to tail, and planks were laid across their roofs to form a walkway. When the tide came in, the chain of vehicles stretched far out to sea. At least ten of these piers were built, some fitted with rails along the walkway, and as a result the rate of rescue was dramatically increased.*
Some surprisingly touching behaviour was observed on the beaches as older men counselled their nervous younger comrades. ‘We knew the ordeal these weaker-willed boys were going through,’ writes an NCO, ‘so we helped them as much as we could.’ One grizzled old sergeant was even spotted cradling a younger man’s head in his lap.
Inevitably, a great deal of fear, anxiety, and downright oddness was exhibited. A terrified officer was seen putting a champagne cork between his teeth every time an aeroplane came near. Should a bomb drop, he explained, he would experience less pressure if his mouth was open. And fear often led to prayer. Some did it privately. George Purton of the Royal Army Service Corps was not religious, but he prayed nonetheless: ‘Please God help me!’ Others took part in organised services on the beaches. Norman Prior was singing a hymn when an aircraft began machine-gunning the congregation. ‘I don’t know what happened to the padre,’ says Prior, ‘but we scattered and those that were on the slow side, caught it and were killed and wounded.’
Some gave up trying to get away. Known as dune dwellers, these men made little homes in the sand, digging holes and covering them with corrugated iron and salvaged bits and pieces. In numerous ways, people tried to avoid reality. Dune dwelling was one way, madness was another, suicide was a third. Arriving on the beaches, Patrick Barrass of the Essex Regiment found a fourth. Having discovered an abandoned ambulance on the sand, he climbed in, lay down and went to sleep. ‘I left the rattle of war outside,’ he says. The beaches were a rabbit hole down which the British army was trying to escape, if not to England then somewhere less tangible.
One notable feature of the retreat and evacuation was the formation of a meritocracy where natural leadership and force of person
ality won out over rank and hierarchy. Everybody had been reduced to a similar physical condition, they were wearing similar battledress, they were eating similar food, and they had the same prospects of survival. Nowhere is this clearer than in the encounter between a private and Major General Harold Alexander, commander of 1st Infantry Division.
‘You look like a big brass hat! Maybe you can tell me where we get a boat for England?’ said the private.
Alexander thought for a moment, pointed, and said, ‘Follow that lot, son!’
‘Thanks, mate,’ said the private, ‘you’re the best pal I’ve had in a hundred miles!’ In the land of Dunkirk misrule, the private felt emboldened to speak to Alexander as an equal. And because Alexander possessed both confidence and an air of natural authority, he was able to answer the soldier without feeling threatened.
Many officers, however, were less formidable than Alexander. With the normal order of things set aside, Dunkirk exposed their lack of substance. George Purton refused to obey the instructions of an officer at Dunkirk. ‘Normally I’d have been court-martialled,’ he says, ‘but that didn’t happen.’ It may not have lasted very long, but for a period, within the perimeter, the usual rules simply did not apply.
Yet for all the strangeness and danger of their existence, were the soldiers of the British Expeditionary Force scared?
George Wagner claims to have had no fear. ‘I always had the feeling that I would get home,’ he says. Ted Oates was extremely philosophical: ‘When I was on the beaches, I remember thinking, “Well, if I’m taken prisoner, it will be a chance to learn German.”’
Dunkirk Page 22