Dunkirk: The Men They Left Behind

by Sean Longden

  Yet this was just the beginning of the emotional impact of freedom. The realities of life ‘beyond the wire’ of the stalag had yet to grip the hearts of the former prisoners. At first they still existed in a state of euphoria that was soon swept away once they were released from the military’s care and sent on leave.

  Upon arrival at air fields the prisoners were fed, watered, deloused, reclothed and given a medical examination. Then they were allowed to telephone or send telegrams to their families, although some chose to say nothing, preferring instead to greet their loved ones in person. Once the sick men had been sent for treatment, the rest were allowed home. Eric Reeves remembered his return: ‘Getting down from the plane I felt ecstatic – going into the meal I felt wonderful, there was music playing, it was civilized. We were kitted out with uniforms and they sewed on the medal ribbons we were entitled to – which weren’t many! Then I phoned the local police station to see if my parents were still at the same address – ’cause I hadn’t written home for a year.’ Yet despite the obvious elation, Reeves was unprepared for what happened on his first night in England. Due to travel home the next morning, the prisoners were allowed out for the evening: ‘The three of us walked into a pub – we stood inside the door and looked at it – I was terrified. We’d had five years of “effing and blinding” – we’d never spoken to women at all – and the pub was full of women. Everybody stopped and looked at us – we turned tail and fled back to camp! I couldn’t handle it for weeks.’

  Shocked by how captivity had affected him, Eric Reeves made his way home to Reigate where he hoped to be able to settle down to normality. He would soon discover his concept of normality had been swept away by all he had experienced:

  It was a strange feeling coming home. A young man met me at the door in the uniform of the Middlesex Regiment. He put his arms round me! I said, ‘What’s going on?’ He said, ‘Blimey, Eric, it’s me – your brother!’ When I’d left home he was about fifteen. He’d been over on ‘D-Day’ – all grown up! Then my mother cried – Dad came home, through the back door, then just looked at me and said, ‘Hello, you had your dinner yet?’ Nothing else. I appreciated it – I didn’t want anyone falling all over me. That first night I was home my Dad – who was teetotal – took me into a pub. ’Cause I was a local lad word had got around that I was home. I walked in and the landlord said, ‘I suppose you’re going to pay us in Pfennigs?’ I grabbed him and pulled him over. I said, ‘Don’t you talk to me about Pfennigs! You’re gonna get a punch.’ He said, ‘Oh, I’m sorry – some people are very touchy around here’. I told him, ‘So would you be, if you’d been in a bloody prison camp for five years!’ I never liked that landlord after that. It was the smarmy way he said it!

  The reaction displayed by Reeves was a common one. Dick Taylor was the first ex-POW to arrive back in Berwick, having travelled from Odessa by ship. He refused the approaches of the local journalists who wanted to interview him. At night he would go out but didn’t want to do anything – even if he could bring himself to go to the cinema he couldn’t stay more than ten minutes. As he remembered: ‘There was no such thing as a joyous homecoming.’ Returning to his parents’ London home, Jim Pearce was unable to enjoy his six-week leave:

  I was very depressed. I used to sit in the front room, which was normally only used for special occasions like funerals. I just sat there – I didn’t care. There was no one to look after us. I just kept myself to myself. The depression was bad. These days you’d have counselling, but we had nothing. You’d think you’d be glad to be home but it wasn’t like that. My parents realized what I was going through. People came to see me but I didn’t want to see anybody. I think it was easier for my brother because he had a wife to come home to. I’d spent all my best years in a POW camp – I had my twenty-first birthday there!

  For some of the prisoners the return home was particularly shocking. Men from the big cities could hardly recognize them when they got back. When Fred Coster had gone to war in 1940, the East End of London had been a thriving area – full of industry, street upon street of terraced houses and mile after mile of warehouses: ‘I had leave to go home – so all my relatives went to the various stations I might arrive at. I got off at Aldgate East and my Uncle Joe was there. I was very thin but he recognized me. I looked along the Commercial Road at where everything had been bombed and all the buildings had gone. I said, “You had a bit of a smacking around here.” Joe said how rotten it was. But I told him, “Don’t worry, the Germans had it a hundred times worse.” That helped ease him.’

  Coster’s fellow gunner, Gordon Barber, had joined the army in 1938 to earn a decent wage and make something of his life. With his first week’s army pay he had bought himself a new outfit, then a few weeks later he even got a new suit. When he came home in 1945 he was ready to make use of the suit again. There was one problem: just as she had done all through the 1920s and 1930s, Barber’s mother had pawned his only suit. He had to give his mother the money to get it out so that he could go out in something other than uniform.

  Efforts were made by the War Office to ensure the mass of returning prisoners could be slowly eased back into civilian life upon discharge from the army. Although the War Office realized that discontent was inevitable, rehabilitation units were established in which the former POWs were given the opportunity to readapt to life in the UK. The camps were named Civil Resettlement Units – CRUs – and courses lasted between four and six weeks. They were not obligatory. However, since they did not count against the soldier’s terminal leave, they were an attractive prospect. Part of the reasoning behind the establishment of CRUs was the fear that the ex-prisoners would not return to the army after the initial period of leave given to all men returning from captivity. The hope was that by offering activities that appealed to the soldiers the units might prevent them going AWOL. As one officer described it, the camps were ‘halfway between the Army and civil life’.1 Those who lived close enough were even given ‘sleeping out’ passes and others were free to go home at weekends. As Jim Reed recalled: ‘We had girls feeding us in the morning and officers waiting on us. We were learning how to dance and how to mix with people. We needed it – we didn’t know how to mix with women. It was the only good idea the army ever had.’

  For men used to the basic facilities of the stalags – or pre-war British Army barracks, for that matter – these camps were a dream come true. There were sheets on the beds and mattresses with springs – no more sleeping on straw. Meals were even served in a dining room. Furthermore, the men only had to wear uniform between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m.; for the rest of the day they were free to wear civilian clothing.

  These units offered advice on future employment, educational courses, legal advice, medical treatment and assistance with providing clothing. There were visits to factories and visits to Ministry of Labour training centres to discuss courses. Of the activities initially on offer, drill was the least popular. As one man passing through a resettlement unit commented, any regimentation was unlikely to be viewed favourably by former prisoners: We know what war is like, don’t treat us like recruits.’2 In the post-war period the only parade the men had to attend was the weekly pay parade. Film shows and sports were the most popular of the activities. Also popular were lectures and discussion groups, as one soldier put it: ‘Too many of us didn’t think enough before the war.’3

  Despite the efforts made to ease the former POWs back into society, many complained that it would simply be better to discharge them from the army. The CRU was only available once the man was due to be discharged from the army. Prior to that, the returning prisoners were subject to normal army discipline. As Jim Pearce, who remained in the army for two further years, remembered, it was like being a recruit all over again, being trained on weapons like the PIAT and Sten gun, that had not even been invented when he was captured. However, Pearce found one good thing about returning to the army after leave: ‘At the time I cursed going back, but it did me good. It brought me back a bit �
� otherwise I’d have stayed depressed and remained that way most of my life. Going back into the army I had to do what I was told. Otherwise I’d just have stayed sitting there in my Mum and Dad’s house. It was the best thing for me. Of course, I didn’t think that at the time!’

  Jim Reed also recalled life in an army camp while attempts were made to retrain the ex-POWs: ‘We’d changed and the army had moved on. At the first camp an NCO said we were going to be disciplined and someone just said, “Shut yer gob!” There were about fifty of us. They said to us, “There’ll be no weekend leave and you will show military discipline!” No one took any notice. Come the weekend, you’d be surprised if there were a dozen blokes in the camp. We cut holes in the fences to get out at night.’ As Fred Coster remembered it, the ex-POWs were ‘forgotten men’ who were told they were being retrained to fight the Japanese: ‘Our experiences were ignored – everything we had learned and done. It was against all decency. Thank God for the Atom Bomb! I think the boys would have revolted rather than go and do it all again.’

  In the end there were so many complaints about the camp Jim Reed was stationed at – including letters to newspapers – that it was closed down. Reed found himself sent to Scotland, to a holding camp for the Seaforth Highlanders. Once there, his attitude did not change:

  After breakfast I used to walk out, get on a train and go into Glasgow for an hour or two. All thoughts of soldiering had gone out of my mind. I didn’t take too kindly to being told what to do by someone who didn’t know what he was talking about. At Christmas I just got on a train and went home. After one week I thought there was no point going back since I was due for a week’s leave at New Year. So I went back after a fortnight but no one ever said anything. I was never missed!

  At Fred Gilbert’s camp, the former prisoners also took little notice of discipline:

  From Plymouth I could get back home to Coventry – with or without a pass. It depended on who was on the gate. If you were on duty, fellas would come towards you and you were supposed to check their pass – but you didn’t. It would be a nod and a wink and the lads would go through the gate. You’d get on a train and there were too many people for the guard to be able to check you. So you didn’t need a pass. At the station I’d wait until there was a crowd going through the barrier and I’d push past with other soldiers. You’d be gone before the guard could stop you. Other lads would get passes to go home – they’d give their address as towns in the north of Scotland. That meant they could get on a train and go anywhere they wanted to. All they had to do was get on any train – if the guard said they were on the wrong train they’d just get off. So they travelled all over the place. Some even got passes to go as far as Belgium. When you’ve been locked up for five years, you want to get out a bit.

  The behaviour displayed by the former POWs stemmed from the fact that many felt they had ‘done their bit’ for their country, then wasted five years of life. This sense of disillusionment was recognized by the War Office: ‘The suggestion of discharge is undoubtedly related to the apathy and war weariness of men whose morale was damaged beyond complete repair by the general situation at the time of capture – Dunkirk.’4

  The failings of the British Army during the battles in France seemed to underpin the disenchantment of those who had paid the price of defeat. They had witnessed the effect of pitting a force with the weapons and tactics of 1918 against an army ready for 1940. They had witnessed the superiority, in both numbers and quality, of German tanks and aircraft. They had seen the Allied armies outmanoeuvred by the advancing Germans, then watched as the rift between the British and French grew until the two armies had gone into captivity as virtual enemies. The celebration of Allied unity they witnessed in 1945 was lost on men who had watched French soldiers marching into captivity in full kit, or who had fought Frenchmen for food during the march into Germany. Above all, there was a sense that they had been let down by a government that had sent them to France in 1940 ill-prepared for modern warfare. As one noted: ‘the returned POW has lost the respect he had for his senior officers. He has been in tight corners with them and has seen the way they have acted – some were fine but that was a minority.’5

  There was one group of returning prisoners for whom resettlement into society was a particular burden. Regular soldiers who were due to return to service after their leave faced issues that were of little concern to the wartime soldiers. As one asked: ‘How do you think I will stand up to fire when I next go into action?’6 Yet their concerns went deeper than this. By the time the Dunkirk prisoners returned home the army looked different, carried new weapons, and used tanks and other vehicles that would have appeared fanciful back in 1940. Officers and NCOs who had spent five years behind barbed wire had seen their career opportunities swept aside. While they had been languishing in the stalags a whole new breed of soldiers had taken their place. By 1945, the man whom Ernie Grainger had replaced in 1939 had actually reached the rank of brigadier. As Grainger remembered: ‘When I came back I was made to feel out of place in the sergeants’ mess. I was virtually thrown out. They’d been there all the war – settled in, they had their wives and girlfriends. They didn’t want the likes of me in there, they thought we were after their jobs. They did their best to get rid of us. I was an outsider among those who’d stayed in the UK.’

  Men who had never imagined themselves as soldiers were occupying the promotion ladder. War had seen the advancement of officers who had been schoolboys during the Dunkirk evacuation. Now many of the newcomers were senior to men who had spent long years in the army, men who had earned their pips and stripes through years of square-bashing and service throughout the Empire. If that was not galling enough for the old-timers, the newcomers also had a far better understanding of the modern battlefield than men who had been captured in 1940. While they had been enduring German captivity the British Army had been relearning so much about war.

  Despite the general desire to get away from the army as soon as possible, the mental effects of captivity led some men to make the decision to stay on as regulars. The impact of five years of captivity was such that they dared not yet return to civilian life. David Mowatt was among them:

  My mind was all over the place. I was terrible. I’d been to three different rehabilitation camps. Physically, I was all right, but not my mind. They put up a notice asking for ex-POWs to attend the Nuremburg trials, but you had to sign on for four years. That’s it – that was the get out for me – I wasn’t looking forward to ‘civvy street’ at all. So I signed up. It was the best decision I ever made in my whole life. It was five wonderful years. I couldn’t handle being a civilian. I couldn’t have gone back to the farm. Life was quite different after five years away. When I went home on leave, I couldn’t go on a bus, I couldn’t go on a train – I couldn’t even go into a pub unless I knew one of my mates was going to be in there. I didn’t want to meet civilians – people asking me all sorts of questions. Lots of other boys said the same.

  As the prisoners returned home there was a general lack of understanding of what they had endured. The world had become obsessed by the eventual victory. Even Dunkirk was turned into a victory, eulogizing the escapers and ignoring the rest of the BEF. Whether it was the soldiers surrounded at St Valery, the men who received disabling wounds during the battles, or the men who had been plucked from the sea following the sinking of the Lancastria, the plight of those left behind at Dunkirk seemed like a footnote in history.

  When Geoff Griffin returned home he received just a 15 per cent disability rating giving him a pension of 13 shillings a week. His return to civvy street was hampered by the discovery that many vacancies advertised by firms had immediately and mysteriously been filled as soon as he showed his disability card. He remained jobless for some months and was disgusted with the reception he received. He was also unhappy that officials did not intervene to assist him with finding work.

  When the repatriates were followed home by the mass of prisoners, the psychological sympt
oms they displayed were similar to those displayed by the wounded men. The returning men were unable to switch off the ‘stalag mentality’ that had been essential to their sanity during five long years of captivity. They were found to be restless, irresponsible and irritable. They had a deep disrespect for authority. They displayed a fear of confined spaces and disliked being in the midst of crowds. They were also cynical, embarrassed in polite society and quick-tempered. It seemed they suffered a collective crisis of confidence, something summed up by one returning man: ‘It’s fantastic – me, a sergeant major and I can’t cross the traffic in Shaftesbury Avenue.’7

  For some returning prisoners, the five years away from home had an irreversible effect. They had lost their youth and felt out of step with the post-war world. Peter Wagstaff recalled the effect on one of his friends, a very bright man who was tormented by a deep fear of mental illness: ‘A very good friend of mine had spent his time as a prisoner writing a long, long novel. He came back and tried to sell it but he found it was completely out of date. He committed suicide within three weeks of coming home. A lot of us did that – or turned to drink.’