Dunkirk: The Men They Left Behind

by Sean Longden

  The stretcher-bearers were the vital link to rapid treatment, and of all the medical staff were the men in the greatest danger. They were the ones, like Les Allan at Hazebrouck, who crawled out into the open to pull the wounded men to safety. They were the men who braved incoming fire to save the lives of soldiers who were no longer able to save themselves. Theirs was an intense world, one in which they had to face everything the enemy threw at them without having the means to protect themselves. As the BEF fell back on Dunkirk, these front-line medics were among the hardest pressed of all the troops. They had to face the harsh reality of saving men to whom they could sometimes offer little more than the most basic first aid. It was combined with the realization that when the wounded could not be moved someone would have to stay behind to assist them. At the Mont des Cats this had cost the medics dear. As the troops retreated from the hill they had to watch the enemy blasting the monastery and the aid posts within.

  As possibly the only survivor of this final bombing of the convent cellars at Hazebrouck, Les Allan – despite his wounds – soon found himself joining the march into Germany. He was not alone. As the Germans began to round up prisoners across France and Belgium there were plenty of instances of wounded men being refused transport on the journey into captivity. Outside Arras a group of walking wounded were sent on a twelve-mile (twenty-kilometre) march, without food, that lasted twenty-four hours. In one group of marchers was a sergeant with a shattered arm and a private with a wounded foot. Their officers found a German officer who spoke English and requested that food should be given to the men and transport provided for the wounded. As soon as they had completed their request the German turned and walked away without reply.

  Another group of walking wounded found themselves abandoned in the middle of a French village. For three days they waited for the Germans to come to offer them medical treatment. When treatment finally came they were roughly treated by the German doctor, who pulled off their bandages, causing them to cry out in pain.

  One of the wounded men who was forced to join the march into Germany reported that such were his injuries that he could hardly walk and had to hobble along supported by his mates. As he was so slow he was beaten across the back by the guards who marched with the column. He was later given transport into Germany but arrived at his final destination to be left outside in the rain, despite his wounds, sleeping on the bare earth.

  These were not isolated incidents. When Captain Derick Lorraine was wounded in the leg he was moved by ambulance towards Cassel. However, the ambulance was captured by the enemy and the driver was taken away as a prisoner – itself a clear breach of the rules concerning medical staff. With the driver gone, the four wounded men inside were left without treatment for two days. When the Germans eventually returned to the ambulance Captain Lorraine was not offered immediate assistance, instead he was taken away to help force the surrender of a British unit holding out nearby. Lorraine insisted he was too badly wounded to walk but the Germans refused to accept his excuses, waving a revolver at him to demonstrate the consequence of his refusal.

  Realizing any resistance was futile, the captain – covered by the rifles of the German soldiers – made his way to the position, a large concrete blockhouse that was holding back the enemy advance. He shouted to the men inside not to reply to him, hoping they would continue to defy the enemy and not see his actions as treacherous. Using Lorraine as cover, the Germans then approached the blockhouse and poured petrol into the rubble, igniting it with hand grenades. Despite the efforts of the Germans, and the blackmail enforced on Captain Lorraine, the platoon within the blockhouse continued to resist. They eventually surrendered after four days of hard fighting. For three of those days they had no food and for the last thirty hours of the siege the building was on fire.

  The unfortunate captain was not alone in being denied treatment. All across Belgium and France those patients within aid posts, casualty clearing stations and hospitals were given a cursory inspection by their captors to see whether they were really in need of further treatment. Anyone whose wounds were not considered deserving of further care was told what they should do – in no uncertain terms. Cyril Holness, a company runner, was wounded during the retreat through Belgium. His introduction to battle was violent and bloody:

  I was crawling along a trench and I can remember my officer jumping on top of me when we were bombed. All the young soldiers outside the trench were killed by blast. It was terrible to see. Two of my colleagues were shot down beside me. I was wounded in the neck by shrapnel; it wasn’t too bad but I thought it was my ticket home. We were in makeshift beds in the aid post. My pal Jimmy Bryant was next to me, he’d been badly wounded – he’d got a fractured leg and everything. I was waiting for the ambulance to come back for me. I thought our pals would be coming to take us home. But it never came. Next thing I knew there was a German with a great big revolver shoved up my nose. I thought I was dead, that they would bump us off. My mate looked up and asked him for a fag. The German went berserk. I said, ‘You’ll get us shot, Jimmy!’ The German looked at my neck, said, ‘Nix’ – nothing – and ripped the dressing off. That was the end of my treatment.

  With aid posts being overrun, the men within them and the field ambulances which transported the sick were increasingly in danger. With the Wehrmacht driving through the Allied positions there was no longer a definite front line behind which the medical staff could feel protected. As a result the staff of the field ambulances faced some of the greatest dangers on the battlefield. In the flat lands of Belgium and northern France this left them hopelessly exposed as they rushed their patients from aid posts to field dressing stations. As one observer noted, the ambulance crews found it difficult to maintain the balance between keeping out of the range of the enemy’s field guns and keeping in range of the casualties. Furthermore, like so much of the BEF, the RAMC had gone to war with ambulances that were often unfit for their purpose. Many were mechanically unreliable and unable to cope with the weight of travelling fully loaded. Some of the RAMC stretcher-bearers were forced to march towards the front line since their vehicles could not carry them. It was a less than auspicious start to a violently dangerous campaign. A further problem was that some ambulances had nowhere to store a bedpan during their journey. Nor were there sufficient bedpans to allow one per ambulance.

  There were other problems for the staff of the ambulances. Such were the realities of war the Red Cross symbol was not respected by everyone on the battlefield. Some soldiers even reported seeing German doctors armed as if ready for battle. John Forbes Christie later wrote of seeing German ambulances being used to ferry fully armed troops into battle prior to the defeat of the Highlanders at St Valery: ‘From the British point of view the idea of pushing forward armed infantry in ambulances with Red Cross markings would be “just not on”, even though winning the battle depended on it. In the language of the day such a move would have been classed as “just not cricket”. War never was and never will be cricket.’4

  If ambulances could be used as weapons of war they could also become targets. Wounded men from the Warwickshire Regiment were killed when the ambulance they were travelling in came under attack. There was no mercy shown to the stretcher cases. The ambulance doors were slammed shut by the Germans, trapping them inside. The ambulance was then set on fire, killing all of those within.

  The experience of being targeted while within an ambulance marked the turning point in one young medic’s war. Norman ‘Ginger’ Barnett was a Territorial soldier serving with 133 Field Ambulance, attached to 133 Brigade of the 44th Division. Barnett had never planned to become a medic; quite simply, circumstances had thrown him into the job. He had joined the TA only because a friend had suggested it would be a good idea. Their main concern was that if conscription was introduced they might be sent to work in a coal mine. Anxious to avoid this fate, Ginger and his mate had tried to join the Royal Artillery, only to find the local TA unit was full up. Then they visited their local barr
acks and offered their services to the Queen’s Regiment. Again they were told there were no vacancies. Eventually they were told to volunteer for the RAMC, whose local unit was based in a wooden hut in a Croydon back streeet. Their fate was sealed.

  Just a year later Ginger Barnett found himself in Flanders, where he and his fellow ambulance men were soon introduced to modern warfare:

  The first casualties I ever helped pick up were in an air raid on Béthune. We were just shipping men to aid posts and taking civilians to hospital. We were ‘blooded’ there. There were some horrific wounds coming through. I can remember the first one we picked up. It was a civilian woman. The whole of the muscle on her leg had been torn away. You could virtually see the bone. But after that you quickly got used to it. Later on we were seeing bullet and shrapnel wounds. You just put M&B693 powder on it, slapped a field dressing on and got them back as fast as possible. Some of them took it well, but some didn’t – crying that they were going to die.

  With the 44th Division falling back, Barnett and his comrades continued their bloody tasks, until they were in the shadow of the Mont des Cats. Here, like so many from that division, Barnett and his comrades faced their final action. By that time the Mont des Cats was in enemy hands, giving them a perfect vantage point from which to observe the surrounding area. Barnett was travelling in a loaded ambulance when it reached a crossroads. Instructions were swiftly given for them to take one particular road to avoid the enemy: ‘Sod’s Law – we went the wrong bloody way!’ From nowhere small-arms fire began hitting them as they came under fire from SS troops:

  In the end we were surrounded. We had stopped and bullets were coming through the canvas sides of the ambulance. I said to the sergeant, ‘C’mon let’s get out of here!’ But he told me to wait for orders. I thought ‘You’re joking!’ He told me to pile all the blankets up the side of the lorry. But it didn’t stop the bullets – they were firing tracers through the side of the ambulance. They set fire to the ambulances. So we slit the sides of the ambulances and dived out into a ditch. It was every man for himself, you just got out and ran after the bloke in front of you, hoping to get to some sort of shelter.

  As the ambulance crew dived for cover there was nothing they could do to help those wounded trapped within the burning vehicles: ‘That was the first time I’d ever smelt burning flesh. It was bloomin’ horrible.’

  Crawling to safety, the shocked medics reached the cover of a farm where they awaited their fate: ‘The first German I saw had a tommy gun, he had bandoliers of ammo round himself and a steel helmet. Was I frightened? Christ, was I? Oh yeah, I was scared bloody stiff. I was “tom titting” myself! I really thought it was going to be the end of me. My mate said to me, “Well Ginger, I think this is going to be our lot.” Christ, I was frightened.’

  With war raging across the front, British medical staff found themselves swamped by the casualties who had safely escaped from the front lines. At one hospital 1,200 patients were received in a single day. The surgeons worked in four teams, each undertaking eight-hour shifts. Even when off duty the surgeons had little time to relax, since they still had to eat and were supposed to scrub up for an entire ten minutes prior to operations, plus they found themselves continually interrupted in their endeavours as they scuttled for shelter during seemingly endless bombing raids. When one hospital was finally ordered to evacuate, the senior surgeon was found to be finishing off an operation while wearing an unsterilized tin helmet.

  One of those who became well acquainted with the realities of surgery under battlefield conditions was Ernie Grainger. A pre-war insurance surveyor in the City of London, Grainger had joined the Territorial Army in 1938, a period when junior staff in the City were encouraged to serve their country: ‘It wasn’t compulsory, but God help you if you didn’t.’ Having originally dreamed of being a doctor, joining the RAMC (CCS) was a simple choice – life with 10th Casualty Clearing Station was the closest he would ever get to realizing his ambition. Thus he had trained as an operating room assistant (ORA), a position in civvy street that would be held by a theatre sister. Their role was to assist the surgeons, mopping up blood as the surgeon worked, holding clamps in place and generally fulfilling whatever tasks the surgeon found for them.

  The clearing station was established in the Belgian town of Krombeke, just miles from Dunkirk, when it began to receive casualties. For the next few weeks Grainger and his eighty or so comrades worked incessantly to save the lives of the wounded of every nationality on the battlefield:

  We were well trained – we were like para-medics. In the BEF medics were pretty thin on the ground, so you had to take over and do lots of work you didn’t expect. We were permitted to do a lot more than civilians could do during surgery, like stitching up wounds. We were also allowed to administer morphia without a doctor’s permission. Sometimes the surgeons were so busy that they did the essential part then left us to clear up – they didn’t have time. They were doing amputations, then they’d take out some shrapnel and leave it to us to stitch it up. We weren’t concerned with the cosmetic aspects of surgery, we were just keeping them alive. It was crude – but it was effective. We were so busy, but of course on top of all the wounded we’d still be getting people with appendicitis! While we were doing all this, clerks were labelling the wounded to keep a record of them.

  There were men shipped straight from the front lines by the field ambulances, whose staff had done little more than staunch the blood flow with bandages and hastily applied tourniquets:

  We were in a few old houses, we had a few tents and a marquee as an operating room. That was all. During the retreat we were treating men from the units who were retreating and the men who were fighting in the rearguard. The Germans had the 88mm gun. It was a vicious weapon. When the boys got hit with that they really got cut to pieces. So all of a sudden you’d get fifty or sixty casualties in an hour coming in. It wasn’t a surprise to see a man with his leg amputated or with a load of shrapnel in his stomach. We just expected it. We thought we’d be frightened of blood, but for some reason we weren’t.

  Alongside the British wounded, 10th CCS also accepted large numbers of French and Belgian wounded. Although they might have expected a language barrier, there were no problems – most of the wounded were too badly hurt to be able to worry about what was happening. All that mattered was that they were being treated and might therefore survive: ‘If they were in pain, we gave them a shot of morphine or some chloroform, knocked them out and got on with the job.’

  Despite the urgency of their surgical work, all the staff at the clearing stations had another vital task to fulfil – to prevent the spread of infection in wounds. Though they could not always work in aseptic conditions – after all, who could keep the interior of a marquee full of men direct from the battlefield spotlessly clean? – but they could make sure infections were spotted and dealt with as early as possible. There was no shortage of such infections arriving with men who had been wounded in the fields of Flanders: ‘The biggest problem was gas gangrene. It’s caused by soil infected with animal waste getting into wounds. It was terrible. There was nothing you could do about it – they were immediately an amputation case. It didn’t take long to set in. You could smell it a mile away. Once you’ve smelt gas gangrene you can never forget it. The smell stays with you.’

  Grainger and his fellow medical staff worked around the clock, cutting men open, extracting shrapnel, cleaning wounds, removing amputated limbs, stitching wounds – hardly able to care about anything that was taking place outside the green marquee that had become their home. Sometimes with three or four surgeons working at once, they were doing operation after operation, just stopping for a brief rest after every few patients, then returning to continue their bloody tasks. Grainger and his fellow ORAs, doing work reserved for surgeons in more peaceful days, were forced to learn the job quickly.

  Hour after hour, day after day, the teams worked to save the lives of their patients so that they could be swiftly ferri
ed back to the general hospitals established in the rear areas:

  Eventually we found ourselves in the front line. We were absolutely knackered. We were with the Norfolk Regiment and they really hammered the Germans. So much, that when they captured the Norfolks the Germans shot a lot of them. It was pretty vicious, it wasn’t a gentleman’s war by any stretch of the imagination. But we were so busy we never knew what was happening outside our tent. We never knew anything about being defeated. It came as a big shock. We didn’t even know they were near us. We were at work in the operating theatre and all of a sudden a German medical officer came in, said, ‘For you the war is over’ and then watched us working.

  Though shocked by the arrival of the German doctor – who arrived with a stunningly modern mobile operating theatre that was towing a trailer used for x-rays – the staff of 10th CCS could not stop to worry about their fate. Instead they carried on working, treating whatever wounded arrived, and working side by side with the German medical staff. As Grainger recalled: ‘We carried on for five days, working side by side – it was just medicine. Yes, we knew they were Germans and we weren’t very happy about being prisoners, but the German doctors were very efficient. We stayed there until they decided the war had passed by and then we were treated as prisoners.’

  Despite the efficiency and speed with which Grainger and his fellow medical staff had worked, the carefully planned system of swiftly passing wounded men down a chain of aid posts and hospitals to ensure their rapid and effective treatment could not function perfectly. With the BEF and its allies retreating at speed, the medical staff were met with all manner of difficulties. Quite simply, at no time was the BEF holding static positions long enough to put the system into complete use. Some medical units found they had hardly reached the front line before they were forced to pack up and move backwards. To avoid this problem many of the hospitals were positioned further away from the front lines than had been intended. At the forward dressing stations the question was how long should they keep working before closing down and joining the retreat? If they waited too long they faced treating all the wounded but being captured. If they withdrew too soon they would condemn some among the wounded to death, but would also ensure they were available to function at the next battle. It was a difficult choice for any commander to make.