Following the tanks came German infantry. They came up the street on either pavement, hugging the walls. The Riflemen, still in their party mood, went out and met them with a cheer. The Germans broke and fled before the close fire of rifles and Bren guns.
Lack of communication imposed a grave difficulty on the defences, and this was largely due to the nature of French domestic architecture. The houses, built back to back, had no rear entrance. Their back-door opened, at best, into a small courtyard. We had no tools with which to open passages through the walls, and the only way of getting from one house to another was to run down the open street. But every street was perilous. The German Fifth Column was gaining boldness, and more snipers were coming into action. There were snipers and observation posts, in almost impregnable positions, on the Lighthouse near the Courgain, on the towers of the Church of Notre Dame and the Hotel de Ville. With their guidance the fire of the German mortars was accurate and very destructive. Their mortars were so accurate that a gunner could, if he chose, lob half a dozen shells into a single window. The enemy used a great many of these weapons, bringing them up into his forward positions.
Regimental Tradition
Our inner perimeter consisted of isolated posts, and the stubborn continuance of defence, in these conditions, was due to the individual quality of the Riflemen and their superb morale. Every man by this time was dog-tired, and most were hungry. Since leaving their home stations at the beginning of the week they had had no proper rest, nothing but an hour or two of exhausted sleep in a casual corner. There was food in plenty at the station on the dock, but for much of the time the station was ringed by a barrage of fire, and the orderly distribution of rations was impossible.
On Friday the Government had sent to Brigadier Nicholson the following message: “Defence of Calais to the utmost is of highest importance to our Country as symbolising our continued co-operation with France. The eyes of the Empire are upon the defence of Calais, and His Majesty’s Government are confident that you and your gallant Regiments will perform an exploit worthy of the British name.” This message, received on Saturday, was sent to all units, but in the circumstances it is doubtful if the motive, admirable though it was, made much appeal to the men.
It rather appears that their staunch courage was inspired by obedience to their very fine regimental traditions. Six or eight men in a shell-rocked house full of tawdry French furniture would fight as if they were defending the Holy Sepulchre because the Corporal in command had told them, “This is where Mr. So-and-So said we were to go.” And Mr. So-and-So had spoken with the voice of the Regiment.
The Rifle Brigade lost their Commanding Officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Hoskyns, on Saturday afternoon. He was on the sea-dyke, just north of the causeway leading from the main quay, discussing with the Commander of the Tank battalion—half a dozen tanks remained in action—the taking up of a new position. Some of his men were in trenches on the nearby dunes. The dunes were under fire, and the causeway was under fire. It was desired that the tanks should cover the causeway, but it was difficult to find suitable positions for them. They would be on a forward slope. There was continuous shelling during the discussion, and before it was concluded Colonel Hoskyns was fatally wounded.
It was decided that the remaining tanks should try to break out along the beach and make contact with the French at Gravelines. In the confined area about the docks, in streets impeded by the wreck of houses, by burning trucks and deserted lorries, they could serve no purpose but to give the German guns another target. They made the attempt.
There was much confusion on the dunes and the beach. There were bewildered refugees, in hiding or flocking idly to and fro. German advance guards were filtering towards the sea. Some men of the Rifle Brigade, cut off from Calais, had been ordered to make for Gravelines. An attempt was made, with the help of a couple of light tanks, to establish blocks and pass them through. There were ragged and desultory skirmishes along the beach.
At nightfall, as on the previous day, the German attack died down, but the diminished garrison could not afford to rest. In such intricate close contact with the enemy they had to maintain a constant watch and continuous patrols. In the ruined forts, over broken walls, in a hot still air that smelt of burning, in a silence troubled by the nightingales—as they had troubled the first foreboding night—our men watched and waited for the last attack. They were encouraged by the personal example of the Brigadier, who, during the evening, made a tour of his whole position.
VIII. Sunday the Twenty-sixth
At half an hour before midnight of Saturday the Government sent by boat, or ordered to be sent, another message to Nicholson: “Every hour you continue to exist is of greatest help to B.E.F. Government has therefore decided you must continue to fight. Have greatest possible admiration for your splendid stand.”
Now at last the true significance of the defence of Calais is clearly seen. The little army in the smouldering streets—weary to the last pitch of endurance, counting like a miser its remaining cartridges—must fight till the very end because an army of nearly ten divisions is in equal peril, and the life of that greater army has become the Riflemen’s charge. This is the classical appeal for heroism. In the valorous deeds of all history, this is the pattern of the greatest fame: that a few men hold the pass, and by their self-sacrifice the many live. There, you will say, is the true reason why the Riflemen, and the fragments of the other regiments that supported them, fought for yet another day—the worst of all—with undiminished hearts. This was the cause that gave them strength.
Indeed it might have done, if they had heard of it. But it is doubtful if Nicholson ever received that last injunction. Certainly the men knew nothing of it. Calais, on the morning of Sunday the Twenty-sixth of May, was not a place in which a General could assemble his troops, explain the purpose of his action, and exhort them to stiffen their sinews. He had to rely on their native quality, and that was the determining factor that held the town till night fell, and its ruined streets were lighted by the flame of burning houses.
Early on Sunday morning the 60th were holding their line on the inner perimeter from the western ramparts of Fort Risban, outside the west wall of the Citadel, and on the north side of the Bassin de Batellerie to the Bassin Carnot. But their defensive posts were known to the enemy, and all had suffered in the bombardment. The Rifle Brigade continued their line in front of the Bassin Carnot to the Porte de Gravelines, and northward along the old ramparts toward the Bassin des Chasses and the dunes.
The Answer is “No”
At about eight o’clock a flag of truce was passed through the British lines, and a demand was made to Nicholson that he immediately surrender. This idle request was not attended by much dignity. The German officer who brought the demand was a little unimpressive man, his eyes bandaged with a very dirty handkerchief. He was introduced by a stout untidy person in the uniform of a Belgian officer, and escorted by two grinning Riflemen who exchanged improper jokes across his head. He was taken to the Citadel, where he saw the Brigadier. Nicholson’s refusal was curt. “The answer is No,” he said.
At the same time the situation was summarised by the Vice-Admiral at Dover. The Germans, he wrote, now held the greater part of Calais-Nord. Quays and harbour, as well as being shelled, were under machine-gun fire. Most of our troops were in the neighbourhood of the Citadel and the Avant-Port. They were short of food and water, and very weary. But the enemy too was tired. It would be very difficult to land stores or guns. In the neighbourhood of Fort Risban there were French troops in considerable numbers—they were fugitives from some other battle area—but they were wholly disorganised, and taking no part in the action.
It was impossible, of course, to obtain a picture true in every detail, and all through the battle there were cases of officers and men who, misled by what was happening in their own or a neighbouring sector, formed wrong impressions of the whole. The Admiral’s information was doubly at fault: most of the inner perimeter was stil
l held, and the weariness of the enemy was not an operative factor, for he was continually being refreshed by new troops.
At nine o’clock the general bombardment began again; and now the German artillery was reinforced from the air. The dive-bombers came. From ten o’clock, or a little before, there was almost incessant low-level bombing till some time in the afternoon, and the damage it did was enormous. The bombers came in nearly continuous relay to attack the inner town, the Citadel, and the docks. For a long time there were always three squadrons of the enemy overhead: one squadron bombing, another circling and waiting to attack, the third, returning for more bomb-loads. New fires broke out, and our defensive positions fell in ruins. The narrow streets were filled with the debris of shattered houses. Someone in the harbour area saw a Major of the 60th—wounded in throat and hand—and the Regimental Sergeant-Major zealously Bren-gunning the bombers: Bren guns were almost our only defence against the Luftwaffe, and they, no matter how valiantly used, were insufficient.
Someone else remembers having seen a despatch-rider, on a motor-bicycle, going towards the Citadel in the heaviest hour of the bombardment. He remembers a wireless-telephone operator using his set in a truck as full of holes as a colander. The air bombardment did not drive the defence underground, did not defeat it. The enemy had to send in his infantry and tanks and mortars.
When the bombers had done their share, the enemy used his medium tanks for close fighting. They served as pivots or moving forts in his attack. The defence was much handicapped by lack of demolition material. A Naval demolition party came ashore and in circumstances of the greatest difficulty prepared certain bridges for destruction. But they do not seem to have been blown. Nor were the moats and canals a sufficient defence against the German infantry, who plunged in and swam across.
Two Riflemen of the 60th were at the upper window of a house. Three hundred yards in front of them was the railway-line with a deserted passenger-train standing on it. They could see some forty or fifty German soldiers coming up the line under cover of the train. They were bringing up a trench-mortar. A position for the mortar had already been prepared, but to reach it the Germans had to leave the cover of the train and cross a twenty-yards gap. The Riflemen were both marksmen, former competitors at Bisley. It took the Germans an hour and a half to get their mortar into action, and in those ninety minutes the two Riflemen killed fourteen.
They left their window just in time: the first shell from the mortar went straight through it.
The Royal Navy was playing a gallant part in the defence. All morning the indefatigable pair of destroyers had been shelling the German batteries, and now, as the fighting pressed close to the harbour, Naval officers who had come ashore to ferry wounded out of the town would muster a handful of soldiers, drivers and the like, and lead them on some desperate small sortie. Of the short hundred of Royal Marines who had come into the town, a detachment was guarding the main gate of the Citadel, the remainder were in the line with the 60th.
On this Sunday morning the Company of Queen Victoria’s Rifles, which till then had held its position at Sangatte, forced its way into Fort Risban. From the very beginning the companies of this gallant Territorial battalion had been widely dispersed, and their eager patrols had suffered heavily. Some were now fighting with the 60th, but a detachment west of Carrière seems to have been isolated in the earlier phase of the battle, and must have been overwhelmed by Saturday morning. Another company had established a forward position several miles to the east of Calais, and then, after fighting hard on Friday on the outskirts of the town, had fallen back to the Rifle Brigade’s share of the inner perimeter. And now the Germans had driven right through this area to the docks.
By now the whole force was desperately short of ammunition, but the Rifle Brigade must have been bankrupt quite. They, because of their unloaded ship, were ill-provided from the beginning. Their strong points were blown to pieces, and there were no other positions they could hold. Tanks were advancing, German machine-gunners were enfilading the streets. By four o’clock the enemy had overpowered what was left of the Rifle Brigade, and occupied all the harbour area.
The Citadel, where the Brigadier had his headquarters, was still held by French troops. It had been very heavily bombed and shelled, and the French had stood up well against these attacks. They were defeated by a sudden infantry assault.
The Brigadier was in the bastion in the north-western corner of the fort. The bastion was guarded by clerks, signallers, and some forty unattached soldiers. At about five o’clock the Guard Commander came down and said, “The Germans are in the Citadel.” Nicholson ran out, followed by two or three other officers, and on top of the bastion met German infantry with light automatics, and hand-grenades ready to throw. He was trapped.
The Last Stand
The fall of the Citadel made Fort Risban untenable, and the right Company of the 60th, and the Sangatte Company of Queen Victoria’s Rifles, had to retire, under heavy flanking fire and by way of the bridge across the lock-gates, into the town. The Courgain, the fishing village that is the oldest part of Calais, lies embedded in the old town as the old town lies in the new. And round the Courgain the remnant defenders established a new perimeter, which they held till darkness came, at nine o’clock or thereabouts. New road-blocks were made, with deserted trucks or anything that came to hand, but they could not be defended. The Riflemen had practically no ammunition left—five rounds apiece, perhaps—and there was no ammunition for their anti-tank rifles. The houses among which they tried to make a stand were in ruins or on fire.
The advancing German infantry, to show their positions to their artillery and supporting troops, were firing white flares. The Riflemen in the Courgain saw in the darkness the rockets coming nearer and nearer. Here was one and there another, till they were lighting the sky from all sides.
This final stand was not only hopeless, but without material value. The survivors could not long defend the Courgain, nor from it keep open the port of Calais. So in the darkness they were ordered to separate into small parties, and look for hiding-places in the ruins of the town, from which they might later make their way through the German lines. But so many fires were burning that the night was robbed of real darkness, and escape impossible. The Germans were very numerous, and they seemed to be everywhere.
An hour or two before darkness a party of Riflemen, separated from the main body, had been surrounded and were given their last order: Every man for himself. “That,” said one of them, “was the worst order I ever had.”
He went into a timber-yard, hoping to get from there to the docks, but two wounded men told him that the road was covered by machine-guns and an anti-tank rifle. There were three or four other Riflemen in the timber-yard, but none of them had any ammunition. Then the German equivalent of a Bren-carrier came in, followed by a dozen infantrymen, and they surrendered.
They were marched away to join other prisoners in a square in the outer town. All their equipment but respirator and steel-helmet was taken from them. They were covered by machine-guns and automatic-rifles, and made to stand with their hands up for nearly an hour. They had to clasp their hands across their heads to take the strain off their arms.
When they had been permitted to stand easy, one of their officers asked if they were allowed to smoke. The Germans’ reply was that officers might smoke, but not the men.
They appeared to be surprised when the senior British officer rejected this privilege.
IX. Monday the Twenty-seventh
Very early in the morning of Monday the 27th some Army Co-operation planes appeared overhead, and were met by German anti-aircraft fire. They circled the town, and dropped packages of food and ammunition. But they had come too late, and the supplies fell into alien hands.
The Germans had collected a good many prisoners and were conducting them through the town. They marched along a railway on which there was a stationary train full of dead horses. A German battery had shelled it, and the horses were alr
eady stinking.
The town, the ruins of the town, were quiet now, except for the occasional burst of a mortar shell or the brief chatter of a machine-gun, as the ultimate little groups of Riflemen, still maintaining their hopeless resistance, were silenced at last. Air reconnaissance at noon could find no British troops in the town. The defence of Calais had come to an end.
But on the outermost end of the northern breakwater about fifty men were hiding. While the tide was low they hid among the green and slimy piers of the breakwater, and as the tide rose they climbed a little higher. One of them, when darkness came, flashed seaward with an electric torch an S.O.S. The Navy sent a boat ashore, and took off forty-seven men. The Naval landing-party returned to look for more survivors, but met only the challenge of German sentries, and German machinegun fire.
Less than a week had elapsed since the 30th Brigade ‘and the battalion of the Royal Tank Regiment had received, in England, their orders to go oversea. In these few days the four battalions had been destroyed, but also destroyed was the German hope of reaching Dunkirk in time to cut our Army’s road to the coast, to England, and to renaissance. The sacrifice had not been in vain.
It does not seem that any attempt to reinforce the garrison would have been justified. The German attack was delivered with such strength and speed that, by the time reinforcements were ready, a major operation would have been necessary to put them ashore. And as deterioration of our position at Calais coincided with the general deterioration of our military affairs, this manifestly could not have been undertaken. Nor was Calais, in its isolation, strategically worth such an effort.
The Defence of Calais Page 3