Dunkirk 1940

by Tim Lynch

  8 Moor’s papers. Fenwick’s brother, Arthur, a 35-year-old corporal of the Royal Engineers, would later be a victim of the Lancastria sinking on 17 June.

  9 Blaxland p194

  10 Friesen, B.H. ‘German Flank Guard Actions During the 1940 French Campaign’ Armor Jan–Feb 1994

  11 Ca Ira Vol XII Dec 48 p300

  12 Anonymous and undated account provided via the mairie at Robecq.

  13 Ibid. Report is described as having been published in Signal in 1941.

  14 Ca Ira p302

  15 Blaxland p190

  16 Moor papers, see also Parks report op cit.

  17 Whiting, C. & Taylor, E. The Fighting Tykes London 1993 p206–7

  18 Sydnor, C. Soldiers of Destruction London 1989 p98

  19 Ibid p99

  20 Ibid p99–101

  21 Later that day Harrer’s group were themselves captured. In marked contrast to their own behaviour, Privates Schopfhauser, Radl and Gieck were given clean clothes, cigarettes and a hot meal. They were then provided with British greatcoats to avoid any attack on them by French civilians and marched to the coast. They were able to escape their captors during the chaos of the evacuation. See Sydnor p102

  22 Gawthorpe Ca Ira p303

  23 Rhodes, A. Sword of Bone 1942 Quoted in Hayward, J. Myths and Legends of the Second World War 2003 p37. Hayward refers to Appendix One of the 1942 edition which describes the handling of suspects. Later editions of the book carry no appendix.

  24 Hayward 2003 p38

  25 Ca Ira Op cit p267

  26 The fire caused no casualties among the troops but is reported to have killed two women sheltering in a nearby house. No French record confirms this but the Loock family of Calonne suffered the deaths of 35-year-old Marie and her two children, five-year-old Maurice and seven-month-old Genevieve during a bombing attack on that day.

  27 Moor papers – there are several instances of gas shells reported but it seems likely that these were flares misidentified by poorly trained sentries.

  28 Collier, R. Sands of Dunkirk p32

  29 Sydnor p104-108

  30 Lieutenant R.A. Moor. Personal account.

  31 The local priest of the nearby village of Boeschepe later erected the Chapel of the Sacred Heart in gratitude for what he saw as divine intervention to save his village. It can be found in the centre of the village alongside the D10 road.

  32 Lieutenant R.A. Moor. Personal account

  33 War Diary 2/5th West Yorkshires WO167/853

  34 Shaw p173

  35 Collier p41

  36 Shaw p174

  37 28-year-old Rigby died of his wound on 30 May and is buried at Dunkirk

  38 Thompson, J. Dunkirk: Retreat to Victory 2008 p269. See also Lord, W. The Miracle of Dunkirk 1984 p223

  39 Lord p259

  40 Ibid p241

  41 Reported in the Halifax Courier 27 June 1940

  42 Sebag-Montefiore p365

  43 Jackson, R. Dunkirk 2002 p142

  Chapter Ten

  ‘Heroic but thoroughly unsound’

  As dawn broke on the morning of 21 May, the two battalions of the Dukes could hear the sounds of gunfire which soon died down and they could see armoured fighting vehicles in the distance, but their patrols had returned without any useful information other than that the line back towards Dieppe was blocked. At 0900hrs they were joined by Major King and his men of 271st Field Company RE who, by breaking up some of the train’s trucks, improvised a ramp to unload two vehicles. One, driven by Captain Gerrard and the French liaison officer Thomas de Strahlborn set out towards Eu to attempt to locate any HQ still operational whilst in the other, Lieutenant Kenneth Smith, Intelligence Officer of the 2/7th and his 2/6th counterpart, Second Lieutenant G.W. Smith (no relation) accompanied by their French Cavalry Liaison Officer Stevenson and Privates Morris and Cocker drove off towards Abbeville to check the situation there.

  At a level crossing just outside the town, the truck stopped and the three officers went forward on foot. As they reached the crossing, three Germans appeared on the line and opened fire. Calmly, Private Morris reversed the truck and turned it round as the officers sprinted towards him. A machine gun mounted on an armoured vehicle then opened up on them, killing Kenneth Smith and wounding Private Cocker but somehow Morris managed to get the bullet-riddled truck back to the battalion. With confirmation that the enemy were in control of Abbeville and air activity increasing by the hour, the two battalions moved to the cover of a wood about 3 miles from their now useless train. By this time the men had just a few bars of chocolate and some biscuits between them and foraging parties went out to see what could be found. All around them were deserted farms and unmilked cattle moaning in pain in the fields. The people had fled, taking their food supplies with them.

  After another night in the open, Colonels Taylor and Llewellyn met again to discuss what to do. The enemy were clearly ahead of them. Brigade HQ was missing, presumed captured. No orders were forthcoming from higher authorities although Captain Gerrard had found out that most troops were heading back to Dieppe. As Llewellyn later put it:

  … to stage a forward attack without supporting arms seemed heroic but thoroughly unsound: to remain where we were and hope seemed equally foolish … The only other possibility was to withdraw to a line of general resistance, where communications and commands existed.1

  The two officers agreed that they should follow the tracks back to Dieppe and try to make contact with HQ Lines of Communication from there. The 2/7th would take the west side of the line, the 2/6th the east.

  Abandoned vehicles, Dunkirk beach. Many are civilian vehicles pressed into service at the start of the war.

  Dunkirk harbour after the surrender.

  Wrecked British vehicles and equipment block a street.

  Carrying everything possible, the two battalions set out, with the 2/7th leaving last at about 1100hrs. Marching along the tracks was extremely difficult and made them an easy target so the men were moved into the farmland alongside the embankment but contact with the 2/6th was soon lost in the heavy woods and thickets that lined each field and the 2/7th carried on alone. The rear company took some machine gun fire but there were no casualties and the enemy made no attempt to follow them. They encountered the CO and 30 men of the 2/7th Queens who reported enemy armour in a village about a mile to their right. Soon after, the entire battalion took cover and watched the tanks go by. As the men paused, Sergeant Lees pushed on for another half mile to a wood he had spotted. Finding it to provide ideal cover from both air and ground attack, he reported back to Colonel Taylor, who ordered the battalion there immediately.

  On the approach to the station of Woincourt outside Fressenville, the battalion encountered a mass of train wreckage covering both the up and down lines. Evidently one train had been hit by an air strike and another had simply driven straight into the back of the first, followed by another. The men were awestruck by the destruction in front of them. Arnold Straw saw a cattle truck filled with people that had been crushed to a length of 10 feet. Hanging from the front of one locomotive was the body of a woman wearing just a vest, the rest of her clothing blown off by the explosion. In the locomotive, the driver lay decapitated and in the engine’s tender lay the corpse of a man, still clutching his dog’s lead as it jealously guarded his body. Gently, it was taken from him and travelled with the battalion for the rest of their stay in France. For Straw, though, the worst memory was of finding the bodies of two young children of about four years of age:

  A refugee woman and her children. The German blitzkrieg often deliberately targeted refugee columns in order to create chaos behind Allied lines.

  Abandoned French equipment on the route of the retreat.

  They were lying together, face upwards, and at first I thought they were sleeping. There was not a mark on either of them, their cheeks were still shining and rosy red, but there was a waxen sheen to them which gave them the look of two beautiful dolls.2

  Food and wine w
ere still on the tables and luggage piled high in the racks of the undamaged carriages and the men moved down the train, salvaging what they could. One train was found to have been carrying a French cavalry unit and their horses had been left behind when the men fled. Bandmaster Doyle, acting now as medical orderly, selected a grey mare for his own use and set the rest free. Behind that was a hospital train with the wounded still aboard. For the moment there was little that could be done.

  On a blazingly hot day, the men were short of water and food and Taylor ordered a reconnaissance party to continue down the track to the station at Chepy-les-Valenes in the hope of contacting the railway authorities for help. There, by great good luck, they found Henri Pruvot, a French railway engineer from Rouen in charge of a recovery train attempting to restore order. Pruvot immediately agreed to help clear the track to recover the hospital train but asked the Dukes for help. Colonel Taylor was gratified to find no shortage of volunteers despite the circumstances and a work party of 100 men was gathered, together with others willing to mount an anti-aircraft guard.

  For five hours, interrupted every few minutes by German aircraft passing overhead, the men worked to clear the wreckage. Aware of the impact it might have on the young soldiers, Armourer Sergeant Cavendish took the task of recovering the bodies on himself and laid out ten of the eleven corpses found. Without tools there was no chance of burying them but at least they could be left decently covered. Pioneer Sergeant Allaway, who had supervised the unloading of the trucks on improvised ramps, now turned his attention to working on the railway. Whilst the work was going on, M. Pruvot had directed a party towards the abandoned hospital at St Valery-sur-Somme and their truck returned laden with chicken in aspic and other treats – although as Arnold Straw bitterly recalled, these were not distributed as widely as he might have hoped. In the past two days, he had been given just two cigarettes; small comfort to the non-smoking Straw.

  Finally, at nightfall, the hospital train was freed. A delighted Pruvot handed around a few bottles of beer to celebrate and told Colonel Taylor that if his men could squeeze aboard the few cattle trucks standing nearby, he would get them to Dieppe. ‘We made the grade,’ Taylor later wrote:

  … packed like herrings; few trains have been driven more frantically. On two occasions men fell out going around corners, and at one point the floor of a truck was pulled completely out. The driver of the train was running no risk of being overtaken by the Germans, he drove as if he were on the footplate of the ‘Flying Scotsman’.3

  After more delays, the battalion triumphantly reached Dieppe at 0730hrs the next morning, 22 May.

  After the shock of the events of the 20th, the British forces south of the Somme were in complete disarray. HQ 12th Division and two of its brigade HQs had survived intact but between them they could only locate one battalion of the Queen’s Regiment. Two of its battalions – 4th Buffs and 2/6th East Surreys – were nearby having been halted before they reached Abbeville and another – 6th Royal Sussex – sat in a railway siding south of Amiens. All could easily have been brought back under control had they had any signals equipment, as could the three battalions of 46th Division now cut off from their own HQ and it might have been possible to quickly reform them into a cohesive defence line along the Somme. As it was, the chance was lost simply because they were not aware of each other’s presence. Instead, it was now left to Brigadier Beauman and his Lines of Communication staff to take on the role of managing both the defence and withdrawal of millions of tons of supplies with whatever troops were to hand.

  After many delays, the 1st Armoured Division had finally arrived at Cherbourg the previous day, having originally intended to reach the BEF via Le Havre but being diverted because of the bombing of that port. They were even now on their way to Rouen, the tank crews fitting their machine guns to their vehicles as they rolled along on the flat bed railway trucks bringing them north. Until reinforcements could be sent out from England, Beauman needed to gather whatever he could. The arrival of even a poorly equipped battalion like the 2/7th DWR was welcome news.

  On arrival, Colonel Taylor reported to HQ 12 Division and was directed to the Nissen huts of 101 POW Camp, set up south-west of the town overlooking the docks where his men finally had the chance to get their first meal for three days and a rest, before being set to work constructing roadblocks as part of Liddel Force, another composite unit manned by local AMPC units and the former patients of the BEF’s VD hospital.4 Their task was the defence of the coast road into Dieppe itself. For now, though, the Germans seemed content to stay north of the Somme.

  NOTES

  1 Barclay p203

  2 Straw’s account at www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/stories/50/a2069750

  3 Barclay p252

  4 Colonel Taylor’s report 2 June 1940. Contained in Gawthorpe Papers IWM Documents 78/44/1

  Chapter Eleven

  The Sixth Wheel

  By the time the Dukes reached Dieppe, the British L of C forces were beginning to recover as best they could. Also cut off by the German advance and far to the east, the 51st Highland Division was attempting to rejoin them and facing a difficult task. The Division had been deployed in the Ligne de Contact before the Maginot Line at Waldweistroff when the German assault began there on 13 May. The Highlanders had fought well until a general withdrawal had been ordered on the 15th, and on 20 May they were removed from the command of the French Third Army and put in reserve as the first stage of the pre-agreed plan to return them to the main body of the BEF. By the 23rd, the concentration of the Division at Etain was complete, ready for the next stage of a move towards Paris, but before the troops could continue, new orders arrived sending them instead to Varennes, about 30 miles from Verdun. Contrary to the terms of the Anglo-French agreement and without consultation, the Highlanders had been redeployed to the French Second Army who wanted them as a reserve for the fighting around Sedan. Following the new orders, Major-General Fortune arrived at Varennes on 25 May, only to find that six battalions of his men had been sent, without his knowledge, to Rouen instead. Infuriated, Fortune was then informed that it was no longer possible for him to rejoin the BEF and that he and his men would now fall under the command of General Robert Altmayer’s Groupement A, an improvised force later to become the French Tenth Army. They were to be deployed along the line of the Somme and would be in position by 2 June.

  General Maxime Weygand, who took over from Gamelin on 19 May as commander in chief of French forces. At nearly 70 years of age, his increasingly strident demands that his men fight to the death raised concerns that he was mentally unfit for the role.

  As the Highlanders made their way across France, the wavering Gamelin had been replaced by General Maxime Weygand and a plan to counterattack was taking shape. Gort had already set in motion an attack to be launched near Arras to relieve the garrison there and to threaten the German flanks. As this attack went forward, it was hoped that the French V Corps under General Rene Altmayer (brother of the Tenth Army commander), would attack northwards to link up and cut the German lines. Gort, fearful of his army becoming encircled, refused to commit large numbers of his badly needed men and instead sent a force of two reserve divisions – in reality little more than two battalions by now – and 83 tanks. The attack was a success in that it caused the Germans to hold back their lightning advance, now seen as potentially overstretching the force and exposing vulnerable flanks, thus contributing to the infamous ‘stop order’ issued by Hitler that saved the 2/5th West Yorkshires on the 24/25th. The anticipated French attack, however, never materialised. The liaison officer sent to find Altmayer reported that the general, who:

  … seemed tired out and thoroughly disheartened, wept silently on his bed. He told me his troops had buggered off. He was ready to accept the consequences of this refusal [to go to Arras] … but he could no longer continue to sacrifice the Army Corps of which he had already lost half.1

  Despite this, Weygand now proposed a similar scheme, but on a much grander scale
. Eight British divisions, supported by the French First Army and Belgian cavalry, would spearhead the attack south to link up with the French armies below the Somme. Weygand spelled out his plan at a meeting at Ypres but Gort was not present. The only officer able to deal in detail with the joint plan was then killed in a traffic accident and the plan was doomed. With a command structure incapable of responding to the speed of the fighting, the collapse of the Belgian Army and the lack of support from his allies, Gort’s confidence in the command and fighting abilities of the latter disappeared. From the highest levels, it seemed, the French authorities had accepted defeat and the fall of France was now inevitable. Despite the British government’s orders to co-operate fully with the French, he decided that the time had come to use his discretionary powers and save the BEF by withdrawing to Dunkirk.

  Many in the French High Command, keen to find a scapegoat for the failures of their own staff, chose to portray Gort’s decision to evacuate the BEF as betrayal by ‘perfidious Albion’ and to use it as a bargaining tool as Churchill came under increasing pressure to commit more of Britain’s last line of defence – the RAF’s fighter squadrons – to the battle immediately. French fighter losses had been heavy, but in reality delivery of new aircraft so exceeded their losses that by the end of the fighting, the French air force was actually larger than at the start. These aircraft, however, sat unused far to the south. The need to keep France in the war was urgent, but Churchill had to consider whether the French determination to seemingly defend their country only to the last Briton could be allowed to outweigh the needs of his own people. In France, Fortune and his men would now become the sacrificial gesture needed to prove to France and the world that Britain would support its allies to the end.