by Tim Lynch
The affair had, however, highlighted the need for more work to prepare the BEF for the coming battle. The French transport infrastructure could barely cope with the traffic it carried and new roads, railways and base depots were desperately needed. At the same time, existing facilities needed to be guarded and the demands on the troops manning front line positions were too much to bear. Individual battalions of TA troops continued to arrive into February 1940 to act as L of C troops but Gort still pressed for more. With a more compliant Secretary of State for War, he was at last able to exert the power he felt due to him.
In France, the Lines of Communication had been spreading fast and far in excess of the original estimates. Major General de Fonblanque, in overall command of the BEF supply lines, had made use of every channel port and the Auxiliary Military Pioneer Corps (AMPC), formed to act as a labour force, were stretched to the limit. The removal of experienced ex-regulars from the AMPC to reinforce the Norwegian expedition and bolster units still at home had had a significant impact on the work being carried out. It was put to the War Cabinet that the morale of the TA units still in training would suffer less by being deployed to France than by remaining on scattered guard duties in the UK and training on inadequate equipment. Finally and reluctantly, General Ironside, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, bowed to political pressure and agreed to release three embryonic TA divisions – the 12th (Eastern), the 23rd (Northumbrian) and the 46th (North Midland) – for service in France. Not only would this provide around 18,000 men for labour duties, it would also allow British politicians to tell their French counterparts that Britain had supplied three more infantry divisions towards the promised nineteen by the end of the year.
As labour troops, these men would not need their artillery and signals support and would proceed overseas with only what they needed to complete their basic training. ‘Their War Office instructions were cut and dried: a straightforward coolie job until August, building airfields and pillboxes, back to England for stiff training, a gradual return to France as front-line soldiers.’30
For the men of the TA the news was greeted with mixed feelings. ‘Welcome news had arrived during March’, wrote one historian. ‘The greater part of the 46th Division was to proceed to France for a three months’ period of intensive training interspersed with guard duties on the line of communication. This was a step in the right direction, although there seemed little immediate prospect of fighting.’31 ‘Yet it was sour reward for patriotism’ noted Gregory Blaxland, ‘for most had joined in response to Hore-Belisha’s appeal, and although the senior battalions may have skimmed the cream in the process of doubling, there was plenty of fine material among the men who had joined to be soldiers and been given the role of labourers.’32
Painfully aware of their lack of equipment and training, Ironside insisted on an assurance from Gort that the three divisions would be allowed as much time as possible for training alongside their labouring duties and that none would be used in an operational role until they had at least been issued their full scale of equipment. The promise was duly made.
NOTES
1 Rissik, D. The DLI at War 1939–45 Durham: Depot DLI c1952 p321
2 Don Clark. Personal account IWM Documents 99/16/1
3 Rex Flowers. Unpublished personal account Courtesy of Kim James
4 Hingston, W. History of the KOYLI Vol 5 Never Give Up 1919–42 London: Lund Humphries 1950 p55
5 Gawthorpe, J.B. ‘137 Brigade: A Formation of the TA in the First Year of War 1939–40’ In Ca Ira, the journal of the West Yorkshire Regiment Vol XII June 1948 p223
6 Arnold Straw. Personal account. BBC Wartime memories Project http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/stories/50/a2069750.shtml
7 Edgar, D. The Day of Reckoning London: John Clare Books. (Not Dated) p28
8 Ibid p12
9 Rissik p321
10 Hingston p112
11 Sandes, E.W.C. From Pyramid to Pagoda, The Story of the West Yorkshire Regiment (The Prince of Wales Own) in the War 1939–45 and Afterwards London: FJ Parsons. 1951 p251
12 Halifax Courier 8 June 1940
13 2/4th KOYLI War Diary. National Archives file WO166/4375
14 Edgar, p15
15 Hingston p110
16 Ca Ira; West Yorkshire Regimental Journal Dec 1939 p331
17 Ibid p111
18 Gawthorpe p223
19 Bryant, A. TheTurn of the Tide London: Collins. 1957 p74–5
20 For details see Derry, T.K. The Campaign in Norway London: HMSO 1952.
21 Hingston p57
22 Ibid p111
23 Rex Flowers. Personal account
24 The story of Val Thomas is told in James, K. The Greater Share of Honour Leicester: Troubadour Books 2007
25 Pile, Gen. Sir F. Ack-Ack London: Harrap 1949
Quoted in Against All Odds: The British Army of 1939–40 National Army Museum 1990 p59
26 Laidler, J.C. A Slice of My Life: The War Diary, Letters and Photographs of Private James C Laidler Private Published document. Wakefield Library “Smithy” is believed to refer to 2759795 James Smith, son of Charles and Emily May Smith of Gateshead, the only Smith listed among the battalion’s casualties for this period. His age is recorded as 20 on his headstone at the Ficheux Cemetery.
27 Benoist-Méchin, J. Sixty Days That Shook the West: The Fall of France, 1940 Translated by Peter Wiles and edited by Cyril Falls New York: G. P. Putnam. 1963 p39
28 Wilkinson, R. ‘Hore-Belisha – Britain’s Dreyfus?’ History Today Vol 47 Issue 12. December 1997.
29 Kelly, D. (Ed) Time Unguarded: The Ironside Diaries, 1937-1940 New York: D. McKay 1963 p33
30 Collier, R. The Sands of Dunkirk London: Fontana 1974 p78
31 Sandes, Op Cit p251
32 Blaxland, G. Destination Dunkirk London: Wm Kimber & Co 1973 p58
Chapter Four
Leaving Much to be Desired
The first British troops sent to France when war was declared were the advance elements of the planned Lines of Communication network sent to Cherbourg on 4 September to prepare the port for the arrival of the BEF. By the middle of the month, some 30,000 administrative troops had been deployed simply to co-ordinate the movement of the fighting forces due to begin to arrive soon after. Among the first to be deployed was Brigadier Archibald Bentley Beauman, hastily recalled after being made redundant earlier in the year under Hore-Belisha’s purge of officers and who only now learned on board the destroyer taking him to France that he was to command the Cherbourg area and the main entry point for the entire army. It was a daunting task and as Beauman later recalled, it got off to a poor start. With no catering facilities aboard ship, the advance party had been allocated just one pork pie per officer to sustain them on the journey and found that no arrangements had been made to feed them on arrival. Only the efforts of the British Consul and his wife meant that bread and ham was found and at the hotel allocated to them, only full colonels and above had been given beds – anyone below that rank simply slept on the floor.
The following day, parties began to disperse to their allocated areas. The lucky ones travelled by train, others by buses provided by the French. As Beauman later wrote, all the buses provided were:
… in the last state of mechanical dissolution and were quite unable to surmount the mildest hill. Whenever a rise was met the passengers had to get out and walk, with the result that some officers took three days to get to destinations 150 miles away. Our early impressions of French organisation were not entirely favourable.1
The initial impression was not improved when Beauman began to seek accommodation for the 5,000-strong garrison under his command. ‘We found that the minor staff officers were far less helpful than their chiefs, while the civil authorities were definitely obstructive. However after endless trouble we got shelter of sorts for all the garrison, though some of it was distinctly primitive.’2
Having found accommodation for his own men, Beauman now needed to prepare for the arrival of thou
sands of troops aboard the civilian ships commandeered as transports. These ships were to operate a shuttle service, turning around immediately and leaving their passengers on the dockside with anything up to a sixteen-hour wait for trains to their destinations.3 Drivers might arrive several days before the ships carrying their vehicles and so shelter from both the weather and possible air attack had to be provided along with catering and sanitary facilities around the Gare Maritime. Unlike combat operations, he later commented, the ‘difficulty of Lines of Communication work is that most of it has no counterpart in peace, and as a result, commanders and staff come to it inexperienced and untried.’4 Nevertheless, applying the skills that had made him the third youngest brigadier in the First World War, he set about the intricate task of negotiating French bureaucracy and setting up his reception centre and transport facilities.
Brigadier Archibald Bentley Beauman. The third youngest brigadier of the First World War at the age of 29, Beauman fell victim to Hore-Belisha’s purge and left the Army early in 1939 only to be recalled to command the Northern District of the Lines of Communication.
If the British impression of the French was poor, so too was the French impression of the unskilled labour force provided by the hurriedly created Auxiliary Military Pioneer Corps – a mixed group of reservists and newly recruited civilians. The reservists resented not being allowed to rejoin their old regiments whilst the civilians were recruited without any selection and sent to France without training; Beauman:
The civilian element recruited directly from life in particular was inclined to give trouble. These men had been put hurriedly into uniform and were sent to France without any training or knowledge of military discipline. As a result both their deportment and their behaviour left much to be desired.5
The poor discipline of these civilians in uniform soon manifested itself in trouble in the bars around the town. The French commanders, unable to distinguish them from the trained men, soon came to regard them as typical of the British Army and this negative judgement would affect relations throughout the coming campaign. Gradually, though, a working relationship was built up so that by April 1940, Cherbourg was a busy and slick operation handling up to 6,000 arrivals per day and moving thousands of tons of supplies and ammunition to the BEF.
From the start, the whole administrative operation was under the command of Major-General Philip de Fonblanque from his HQ at Le Mans but the huge expansion of the operation, quickly outgrowing the original plans, meant that by now the Lines of Communication covered ports from Dunkirk in the north to Marseille on the Mediterranean coast and spread over hundreds of miles of France. It was decided that it should be subdivided into Northern and Southern Districts, each with four sub-areas, and in March Beauman had been given command of the Northern District from a headquarters at Rouen. Despite the massive size of the task – ammunition dumps alone covered an area of some 36 square miles around the city – he found just two officers and a clerk with which to run it for the first two weeks. Responsible now for huge numbers of men, equipment and even a top secret poison gas store, it was a relief to find that two of the newly arrived digging divisions, the 12th and 23rd, would be assigned to his area as a labour force. The 46th, meanwhile, would be assigned to duties in the Southern District around Brittany.
Pioneers at work.
A top secret warning order had reached the units of 137 Brigade on 9 March giving three weeks notice to move overseas for ‘important national work on the lines of communication’. No details about their destination were given but one clue came when the order helpfully explained that a table of rank badges of the French Army would follow shortly.6 The next day the same orders reached 138 Brigade and later 139 Brigade were also warned to make ready. Even as these orders reached them, the three divisions remained unsettled as the constant flow of men in and out of their units continued. A week after the order arrived, for example, 182 Reservists rejoined the KOYLI at Dewsbury from the Field Force already in France to bolster the battalion. This was offset by the end of the month with the loss of another 64 men to various other destinations. On the 19th an under-age recruit was discharged from the army and another arrived from a training course. So it went on with men coming and going so quickly that even within the tight knit communities of the regimental system, it was difficult for men to keep track of their friends or even their own future in the battalion. No-one, it seemed, knew for certain what was going on and even if anyone did; they could not say anything for fear of falling foul of draconian censorship measures. As the editor of the Duke of Wellington’s regimental association journal Iron Duke noted in February 1940:
Sketch map of Northern France.
The fog of war has descended on THE IRON DUKE with a vengeance … Here we are in the thick of historic and epoch-making events, yet scarcely permitted by the censor even to allude to their existence … The last IRON DUKE achieved a distinction unique in its distinguished career; it was classified as a secret document; it could only be obtained on signature and read at the recipient’s peril. No two authorities agree as to what may or may not be published, and the wretched sub-editor must steer a perilous course between the Scylla of sheer drivel and the Charybdis of criminal indiscretion.7
With information at a premium, men were now told that they would be going overseas, but not where or when as in the last days of March embarkation leave was granted to all units. In the KOYLI, ‘A’ and ‘B’ Companies went first after a stern lecture from Colonel Hodgkinson on ‘secrecy and discipline’ and by the end of the month the other companies had followed suit. Secrecy in the military is one thing, secrecy in a small town something else altogether. ‘April came and rumours started that we were soon going to France’ wrote Rex Flowers, ‘I was virtually told so at my dental appointment.’ Training began in earnest in the first week of April and was made all the harder by the effects of the last minute typhoid and paratyphoid injections. ‘I got my jab at the drill hall’, he recalled:
Instructions for journals 1939.
… and just had time to get down to our billet down the road before I was very ill indeed. We all were. I was sick all over my blankets, which I had to clean later. Had a temperature and spent a very uncomfortable night. We soon got over it though.8
Speculation was rife. Most assumed they would go to France but the Norwegian campaign was still underway and the possibility of a trip to the Arctic could not be ruled out. Men began to look for clues about where and when they were going. The relative exchange rates of French francs and Norwegian krona were discussed at length and some made efforts to brush up their schoolroom French. Five weeks after the order to move had arrived, an unofficial war diarist for the 2/5th West Yorkshires noted:
14 April. York.
There is an air of expectancy in the Bn. Something is in the wind. Something big. That much has become increasingly clear in the last few weeks. Officially, we know little; in fact, we seem to have deduced a great deal from guarded hints dropped quietly from High Quarters. [The Quartermaster’s] features are largely our barometer in these uncertain days. They wear a variety of expressions not unconnected, one gathers, with the mounds of strange stores which fatigue parties are daily assembling and dismantling on the Drill Hall floor … He has become much more accommodating of late, which is taken as a significant sign. He discharges equipment with a lavish hand and requests which a week ago would have elicited nothing more than the cynical smile of the disillusioned Quartermaster are now, miraculously, treated with all seriousness. Clearly some tremendous upheaval is foreshadowed.
The Commanding Officer has gone so far as to advise us to prepare against a possible move ‘to camp’, but we are packing and buying last-minute necessities as though our days in civilised parts were strictly numbered …
Someone knows the answer to our queries: we sent an advance party (led by Captain C Jason Wood, OC D Coy) off into the blue a week ago. Are they, we wonder, regaling themselves in some isolated estaminet which will shortly hum to the
activity of Bn HQ … shivering somewhere amid the snows of Norway … or what?9
After the departure of advance parties, detailed movement orders began to appear with more clues about departure dates. ‘Immature’ was now defined as any man who had not reached his nineteenth birthday by 15 April. Immediately, the 2/4th lost another 77 men, including four lance corporals with yet another 24 men now assessed as unfit. Just ten days before their actual departure, the 2/6th Battalion of the Duke of Wellington’s Regiment (DWR) based in Keighley, received an intake of 124 men fresh from the training depot and ‘lacking the most basic equipment such as respirators’. Thirty-seven of them had not even been medically graded.10
Those who could afford it, used the time to buy in extra items of equipment. In 12th Division, Donald Edgar’s Adjutant gave him funds to buy as many large-scale maps of France as he could.11 Others bought binoculars, compasses and after the order was issued that ‘.45 revolvers will not be taken – if the officer possesses a .38 revolver this will be taken, otherwise he will proceed unarmed’,12 some found handguns privately to make up for the shortages in every unit. Every day brought new, sometimes conflicting instructions.
On 19 April, the West Yorkshires’ diarist noted that all bedding was to be handed in to stores by Monday 21st and that instructions had been issued to read the gas and electric meters and record the amount of coal available for heating ‘which we take to be clear indication that the move will come Monday night at the latest’. The disappointment in his next entry is almost palpable as he notes ‘yesterday’s instructions are cancelled’. By the following Wednesday, however, ‘Rumour and counter rumour crystallised tonight at the weekly Company Commanders’ conference into hard fact at last. We leave for France on Saturday night … That we are marked out as a working unit is clear. What that work will be is less certain.’13