Dunkirk 1940

by Tim Lynch

  I told them of all my strategic ideas, and I then made an appeal to them to see that their men and transport did not expose themselves to air attack. Anywhere behind the fighting line is the battle line. Nowhere is anybody safe. All must dig in and disperse themselves. This is particularly necessary amongst the Army Service Corps and the Army Ordnance Corps.1

  Once in France, though, Gort turned his back on them – immersing himself instead in trivial issues. ‘I had no confidence in his leadership when it came to handling a large force’ wrote Corps Commander Alan Brooke:

  He seemed incapable of seeing the wood for the trees … his brain was geared to details the whole time. He wandered about scratching the barks of the trees and you could never get him to come out and look at the wood as a whole. The important points, such as the system of defence to be adopted, lines of advance into Belgium, relative advantages of remaining on the frontier as opposed to advancing to meet the Germans, all such and many others he left entirely to his staff, whilst he dealt with details such as platoon log-books, carrying of sandbags, booby traps …2

  The workings and development of the system that would provide him with everything he would need for the coming battle were simply not of any interest to him.

  It soon became clear to de Fonblanque that the men sent to man his supply depots could not work twenty-four hours a day. There was a need for a force to take on the tedious duty of guarding the stores to relieve the storemen and clerks of this extra burden and so, since November, a number of individual Territorial infantry units had been fed into the system to act as guards at designated ‘Vulnerable Points’ such as HQ buildings, depots and airfields as a token gesture to deter the rising incidents of pilfering. On 7 November 1939, the 1/5th Sherwood Foresters had arrived along with the 4th Border Regiment and were soon followed by the 4th Buffs. By February 1940 they had been joined by the 14th Royal Fusiliers and the 9th West Yorkshires. This last, designated a garrison battalion and deployed around Arras as an infantry unit was known – with good reason – as a ‘veterans battalion’. Its commanding officer was by now on his third war and none of his men were below the age of 35 – many were revisiting battlefields they had already seen in the previous war. Private Gordon Smith, for example, already held the DCM and the Belgian Croix de Guerre for his actions in 1918 when he was killed in action near Calais after escaping the encirclement of Arras at the age of 55. In March, another veteran battalion, the 12th Royal Warwicks, arrived and found themselves deployed across Normandy with companies in Caen, Cherbourg, Rennes and Le Mans and in no position to even consider attempting to continue their training programmes. Far behind the expected front line, little thought was given to the idea that airborne troops or Fifth Columnist saboteurs might stage a pre-emptive strike and so no attempt was made to create any form of static defence positions. In fact, most guard duties were deemed routine enough to be performed by ‘stick guards’ armed not with rifles but with pick-axe handles.

  The German invasion of Norway began in early April and by the time 46th Division arrived in France, their comrades in the first line battalions of the 49th Division were already in full retreat there. News slowly filtered through of parachute drops behind the lines but still no thought was given to the possible need to defend depots miles away from the front. From time to time, alerts were put out about possible saboteurs – on 24 April, for example, the 2/6th East Surreys were told that two ‘very young’ Germans in British officer uniforms had landed by parachute near Arras and stolen a car. A few days later, pieces of cut-up army greatcoat were found under a nearby hedge. The excitement soon blew over and was forgotten under the pressure of providing a company each day to work on the docks at Fecamp, another to guard the chemical warfare dump and others to Bolbec and Froberville on tasks ranging from working in the bakery to the groundwork for a new base hospital.3

  Troops of the 49th Division return from Norway. The first line 49th Division had been given priority over the duplicate 46th Division for men and equipment but had been quickly overwhelmed by the German attack through northern Norway.

  Of more concern to the new arrivals were the practical problems of doing their jobs. At their Chateau d’Empremesnil base, the Surrey’s water supply was declared ‘fit for neither drinking nor washing’ and battalion vehicles had to be adapted to ferry water from the village to the camp for chlorination. Rain had left the ‘whole place a sea of mud’ which meant they were unable to dry their boots, which were rapidly disintegrating. There were ‘no spares whatsoever’. A week later, the war diary complained ‘Boot question acute. 600 pairs of good boots handed in prior to bn’s departure to this country and now authority received to draw 20%.’4 Surrounded by the main forward supply depots for the BEF, an infantry unit was unable to find boots for its men.

  Despite the seemingly impressive build up of war materiel, the army in France was still desperately short of even the most basic equipment. When Gort visited the Territorial 42nd (Lancashire) Division, part of his III Corps, he claimed, ‘I never believed it would be possible to see such a sight in the British Army. The men had no knives or forks and apparently lacked mugs. They were eating their meat with their fingers and placing it on the corrugated iron table tops.’ It all demonstrated, he complained to Ironside, ‘a lamentably low standard in elementary administration’.5 Having, like so many others, seen L of C work as a dumping ground for incompetents and virtually ignored it for the past six months, Gort now complained in righteous indignation that it was not working effectively and blamed Ironside for its failures, using it as yet more evidence that he had diverted resources from France to support the Norwegian campaign. In fact, Ironside had been fighting a political battle to avoid just that but by now had fallen victim to the fallout from Hore-Belisha’s resignation after the ‘pillbox affair’ and the widespread whispering campaign against him by elements of the BEF. In reality, the shortages of many items owed much to the British Army’s deliberate policy of stifling initiative on the part of junior officers.

  In marked contrast to the German policy of encouraging its men to adapt plans on the ground as they saw fit in order to achieve set goals, the British followed a very prescriptive battle plan that meant units moved only when told to do so. So ingrained was this that on a 1935 visit to the site of the Battle of Tannenburg, General Dill had asked his guide how the Germans ‘had achieved such success despite the notorious disobedience of the junior officers’ and failed to realise that they had won because junior officers had not blindly followed their limited orders and had instead seized on local successes.6 Nothing, for example, prevented the officers of the 42nd Division from begging, stealing or borrowing what they needed from other sources except the need to account for them formally through the quartermaster (QM) ledgers but this in itself was enough to deter any individual action.7 Against this background of rigid adherence to the rules, the digging divisions found that along with the shortages of basic items they had come to expect, they could obtain neither additional weapons nor ammunition for the training they had been promised. They were not, it was argued, designated as front line troops and therefore did not require a war establishment of equipment. In the inflexible logic of the official mind, what they had arrived with was clearly what they were required to have – no more, no less.

  In early May, with little hope of any real training and even less expectation that they would need it, they went to work. Around Rouen, two of 12th Division’s brigades – 35th and 36th – were fully occupied in building railway sidings and developing a rail centre at Abancourt and its third, 37th Brigade, was sent to build accommodation and huts at sites around the city whilst HQ based itself at Gamaches. Further north, 69th and 70th Brigades of the 23rd Division had been allocated work on airfield construction around St Pol and Bethune, just behind the BEF line. To the south, 46th Division had been sent into Brittany with 137 Brigade around the ports of Nantes and St Nazaire to work on unloading supplies and building new railway sidings whilst its other brigad
es – 138th and 139th – set to work in the area of Rennes, again on railway construction and handling ammunition supplies. The routine varied from unit to unit but among 70 Brigade, the 10th and 11th Durham Light Infantry battalions took turns between the first and second shift each day. Rifle companies worked for four days, had two days of training and one for rest whilst specialists like signallers spent just two days labouring and four training on their speciality. It was badly needed. Of the 2,000 men who made up 70 Brigade, 1,400 had not been trained on the Bren gun and 400 – one in five – had not completed rifle training.8 In the brigade’s other battalion, the Tyneside Scottish, Laidler and his fellow recruits were only now entering their fifth week of basic training and in the entire battalion, only one man, Captain John Dempster, had ever actually fired the Boys anti-tank rifle.

  Despite the news from Norway, for the digging divisions the war seemed a long way away and especially among those fortunate enough to be able to spend time in the local towns and bars in the evenings, apart from the need to wear khaki denims and to march to and from work, for many there was little to distinguish between their army and civilian lives. Disappointed after their initial eagerness to train to fight, the men soon settled into their routines. Enjoying the prospect of a long, hot summer camp and the promise of a return home in a few months, they accepted their lot and set out to make the best of the sunshine and cheap alcohol. Rex Flower would recall with fondness his days spent working under the direction of the Royal Engineers, watching lizards scampering around as the men ate their sandwich lunches, of visits to local towns and drinking white wine sweetened with sugar and the wonder of seeing fireflies in the hedgerows at night. Also at Rennes, Sergeant John Brown, a former solicitor’s clerk from Wakefield noted in his diary how, at the end of one very hot day, he and his friends walked to a nearby village for supper and were joined there by Lieutenant Rawlings. After a good meal, the group split a bottle of champagne before walking home under the light of a crescent moon and starlit sky, playfully making sparks fly as their hobnail boots struck the rough road surface. It was a world away from the grim reality of life in the industrial mining towns of the West Riding and the nearest thing to a holiday most had ever had.

  It was Thursday 9 May 1940.

  Sergeant John Brown. A former solicitor’s clerk from Wakefield, Brown acted as Quartermaster in the KOYLI and Beauman Division and kept a diary of his experiences.

  German map of the Low Countries and Allied deployments, 1940.

  NOTES

  1 Ironside Diaries quoted in Karslake p43

  2 Bryant, Turn of the Tide p80

  3 Edgar, Day of Reckoning p45

  4 War Diary 2/6th East Surrey Regiment (WO167/829)

  5 Colville, Man of Valour: Field Marshal Lord Gort p177–8

  6 von Senger und Etterlin. Neither Fear Nor Hope 1963 quoted in David French, Raising Churchill’s Army p45

  7 This lack of willingness to act without orders showed itself tellingly during the Arras counter attack of 21 May when tanks of the 4th Royal Tank Regiment were delayed on the D60 road because the level crossing barrier was down and, without radio contact with a senior officer, it took some time before the troop commander summoned the courage to break it down. See Richard Holmes, Army Battlefield Guide p192

  8 Rissik, The DLI at War p8

  Chapter Six

  The Matador’s Cloak and the

  Revolving Door

  At 1930 hours on 9 May, as Sergeant Brown and his comrades sat down for supper in Rennes, in Germany Hauptman Walter Koch received a coded message – ‘Danzig’. With that, the specially trained men of Assault Group Koch made their way to two airfields near Cologne and boarded a fleet of gliders, ready to take off at 0430hrs the next day on the mission they had been preparing for since shortly after the war began. In the pre-dawn gloom the men sang as they bumped across the airfield, drowning out the rattling noises until silence descended as they rose behind their Ju52 towplanes. By 0450hrs, 42 unmarked gliders were airborne and under strict radio silence followed a route marked with light beacons until they reached the Belgian border.1

  The Belgians had maintained strict neutrality since the outbreak of war, refusing to even allow Allied officers to visit the country to plan defensive strategies. Its army of 22 divisions stood by behind a line of fortifications along the Albert Canal which included the fortress of Eben Emael – a state of the art defence work widely considered impregnable to ground attack. Although the French commander Gamelin had dismissively claimed that it could hold out for five days at best, memories of Verdun were still fresh in German minds. They believed it could delay their attack by at least two weeks by denying them the vital crossing points nearby that would lead them into the so-called Gembloux Gap where their tanks would be most effective. A ground assault, they reckoned, could cost around 6,000 casualties and take up to six months to reduce the fort completely. The Germans – on paper at least – were outnumbered in men, tanks, artillery and even aircraft and their plan relied entirely on speed. They could not afford any sort of delay. Instead, Koch and his men had been training since November for a special mission. They would land on top of the fort itself and alongside three nearby bridges and seize them in a lightning attack just minutes before the ground assault began. Using newly developed hollow charges to blast open the steel casemates, they were able to land on the roof of the fort and put most of its guns out of action within minutes.

  The German attack came at the worst possible moment for the British. On 8 May, Captain Martin Lindsay, one of the first staff officers to return from the disastrous retreat from Norway, travelled to London and had lunch with Clement Attlee, the Labour leader of the opposition in Parliament. Although a pre-war Tory candidate, Lindsay was furious at the government’s handling of the affair and what he saw as its failure to support the army. By that afternoon, the matter had been raised in the House by Herbert Morrison, who demanded the resignation of Chamberlain and others associated with his appeasement policy. Chamberlain arrogantly accepted the challenge and called ‘on my friends to support me in the lobby tonight’.2 Reducing the serious debate to a matter of personal loyalties, Chamberlain destroyed any chance he had of retaining his position. With a good standing amongst members of all parties, Churchill, who himself shared much of the blame for what had gone wrong, spoke loyally in support of Chamberlain but had already been advised that he should not be too convincing. Harold Macmillan, then MP for Stockton-on-Tees had quietly told him, ‘we must have a new Prime Minister and it must be you.’3

  Report on the attack on Eben Emael.

  As featured in the report opposite, Hitler meets some of the 78 airborne troops who captured the seemingly impregnable Fort Eben Emael on the first day of the war in the west.

  That night, despite the open resentment of the Conservative Chief Whip, almost every Tory MP in uniform – at least one in tears – filed into the Opposition lobby to vote against their own government. Quintin Hogg (later Lord Hailsham) voted in protest at the failure of the War Office to provide for his men’s training or equipment. Another, Captain Roy Wise, explained simply, ‘I voted on behalf of my men.’ Ten minutes after the division bell rang, the votes had been counted – 281 against the government, 200 for. Amid stormy scenes, Chamberlain picked his way through the outstretched legs of his former colleagues and followers but despite this show of scorn he clung to power for two more days and even as German troops crossed the border into Belgium, he sought an alliance by asking Attlee to accept Labour seats in Chamberlain’s cabinet. Attlee, whom Chamberlain had once called ‘a cowardly cur’, rejected the offer, saying ‘our party won’t have you, and I think I am right in saying that the country won’t have you either’.4

  Labour’s preferred choice as replacement (and that of King George VI) was the Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax, and both he and Churchill were summoned to Downing Street at 11am on the morning of the 10th to meet with Chamberlain, who offered Halifax the post. After some thought, Halifax ref
used to accept the leadership, saying that as a member of the House of Lords he did not feel he could serve both houses adequately and would have difficulty commanding the respect of a coalition government. At 1800hrs that day, Churchill attended the King at Buckingham Palace and accepted the post of Prime Minister.

  As the government at home collapsed, the British Expeditionary Force began to respond to the invasion. A French Warning Order had been issued at 0545hrs, three hours after bombing raids on Dutch and Belgian targets had begun and twenty minutes after the first gliders landed on Eben Emael. It took another thirty minutes before Gamelin gave the order to put Plan ‘D’ – the advance to the river Dyle – into operation.5 After months of preparing for this moment, the BEF responded with an air of excitement but also with some trepidation. As there had been no period of alert beforehand, the men were unprepared and Gort was unsure of what to do. As a result, the 12th Lancers, spearheading the advance into Belgium, did not finally receive permission to enter the country until 1300hrs when, fortified by champagne drunk whilst waiting at the border, they roared across with their bugler sounding the charge.6 The ‘happy go lucky’ French plan was under way.

  General Maurice Gamelin. Commander in Chief of the French forces, and by extension of the BEF, Gamelin remained out of touch throughout the campaign, reliant on dispatch riders leaving his HQ on an hourly basis to relay commands to his troops in the field.