by Tim Lynch
Behind them, Clark and his party had only just reached the Pont Laviers and crossed the Somme back to the southern bank. Pausing for a rest, they suddenly noticed the refugees scattering as a German motorcycle group appeared less than 70 yards away. Reacting quickly, Clark’s Bren killed them before they could open fire. Then they joined the exodus down the line. Oddly, Clark felt safe in the crowd, almost invisible, ‘like a tiny fish in a gigantic shoal when predators circle around.’5
Collecting points had been set up at Eu and as members of the battalion reached it they were directed to an abandoned hospital at Floques, 2 miles out of town. As the tired men arrived they found clean clothes being issued from the stores and a large Michelin map pinned to the wall – their first indication of where they actually were. All day men limped in, but by nightfall around a quarter were still unaccounted for. Many seem to have been found by the Dukes and rejoined later but it was a long and anxious wait for news of mates. Lacking any information or orders, Lieutenant Appleyard volunteered to go into Dieppe to make contact with HQ. A 40-mile round trip through dark and unlit roads crammed with carts, people and vehicles, Appleyard had chosen a difficult challenge for his first motorbike ride. He got back around midnight with orders to head at once for the station at Rouxmesnil Junction. Once again, the exhausted men dragged themselves to their feet for a 17-mile hike to the station, not arriving until almost midday. There, they were redirected to a camp about a mile away at Arques-la-Bataille to join the Buffs and to extend the defence line along the river Bethune and support the right of the 2/7th Dukes.
As the battalion left for Arques, CQMS Brown was still lost. Captain Taylor had delivered him to Dieppe but had then been told to go to Rouen. Expecting the battalion to arrive soon, Brown and his companions were dropped off by the harbour and were still there when bombers appeared overhead. Brown’s first indication that they were enemies was the huge explosion that rocked the hospital ship Maid of Kent and the piece of flying masonry that struck his knee. For over an hour the men sheltered as bombs rained down. When it was over, they emerged to find Captain Taylor had returned and had found them a place on a convoy leaving for Rouen in just a few minutes. Grateful to be leaving, they climbed aboard.
A short distance outside Dieppe, the convoy passed Colonel Hodgkinson and Lieutenant O’Connor, and Brown’s party jumped off the truck to find approximately 100 men of the KOYLI standing around the station. Anxiously, Brown asked for news of ‘B’ Company but apart from a few men, the company was still mostly unaccounted for. After about two hours with no news or orders, some began to drift away and to climb aboard trucks leaving Dieppe, regardless of the destination. There was, he noticed, ample transport but no apparent effort to do anything with it. At 2100hrs, after the CO had gone into town, Captain Taylor again arrived and told them to make their way to Rouen as best they could. In sections, they moved off on the start of another agonising march without food or water. At one point, a couple of young refugees even carried Brown’s rifle for him. Attempts to force civilian drivers at gunpoint to carry them on the mudguards of their cars failed until, at last, the driver of a lorry crammed with Belgian refugees agreed to make room. At about 2000hrs on the 22nd, after two full days and nights, they reached Rouen and the luxury of a clean bed.
The next day, shuffling around on stiff and sore legs, Brown found some of the KOYLI at an infantry base depot. To his surprise, he found he had been reported killed but was gratified to find he had been regarded as having done well. He was also pleased to find his company commander, Captain Phythian, had made it, although he was clearly tired and shaken and the two men sat talking until late into the night. In the morning, Brown found himself back in the army bureaucracy and tasked with arranging a pay parade for what could be found of the battalion. As he bent to the work, a request came down for two volunteer CQMSs to go to a forward area to act as brigade quartermasters. Brown, feeling it was his duty to go, raised his hand. He had just become the QM of ‘B’ Brigade, Beauman Division.
After arriving at Brigade HQ at Bosc Bordel, about 5 miles west of Forges-les-Eaux, Brown was introduced to the aptly named Major Harrowing, acting temporarily as brigadier, who explained that his motley collection of odds and ends were ‘a last barrier against the Hun’ and that he should expect ‘a fight to the finish’.6 Despite the ominous words, Brown woke the next morning to find all was quiet and, on the following Sunday, he was able to wander down to the local church to admire its ancient wood carvings; the only reminder that this was the front line was the distant sounds of bombing mixed with the thunder of a summer storm.
For the next few days, his existence was a peaceful one interspersed with patrols to chase reports of parachutists or to retrieve shot-down German aircrew in the muddy fields around HQ. On Friday 31st, Major Harrowing told him that the division was being reformed. At that moment, he grinned, their unit consisted of just the two of them. It would soon transform into 2nd Provisional Battalion (Davies Rifles) under the command of the newly promoted Lieutenant Colonel Harrowing.
It was that afternoon that the war returned. Brown was feeling depressed after a week without mail from home and a nagging presentiment of his own doom. The mood was not helped by the court martial of a sentry who had dozed off on duty and the night before, an officer had been shot in the stomach by a suspected parachutist, although no-one had seen it happen. Then, in the middle of the afternoon, a German bombing attack began and planes swooped down to strafe the area. A man was hit nearby and two civilians were killed. The wounded officer died the next day and was found to have been hit by a small calibre bullet but what weapon and where it came from nobody knew.
Over the next few days, the battalion began to move north past Rouen, reaching Bray on 4 June. On the 6th, orders came for Brown to return to the KOYLIs at Rouen. He was terribly torn. Although he wanted to get back to his unit, he also felt it his duty to stay at the front. Harrowing needed him and said so, joking that he would be keeping a close eye on him. There was another reason to stay – on orders that night was his promotion to WO2 and he knew that if he stayed in the post for the next few weeks, he stood a good chance of having it made permanent. The order to return was cancelled by Harrowing.
As the news of his promotion sank in on the 7th, Brown encountered a downed German pilot who would raise his spirits. As the man was brought in, trembling and shaken, Brown found himself moved by pity. ‘My heart which I had thought was cold and pitiless turned to water at the sight of him.’ Getting him a chair and a tot of rum, Brown talked to him. Finding that he had no cigarettes, he gave him some and, in return, Hauptmann Bernhard Mielks presented Brown with his knife. The souvenir ‘which I shall not part with willingly’, was, to Brown, a reminder not of the war, but of his feelings at that moment. Although the knife was ‘a splendid affair’, he wrote that the incident proved ‘more marvellous still, a startling change of heart I am glad to note, which proves conclusively that war has not deprived me of human kindness.’7 That night, 30 men deserted their posts and melted away into the night. On the 8th, Brown crossed the Seine heading north to Neaufles-Saint-Martin.
Far behind him, the KOYLI had spent five days on the Bethune line before being withdrawn. Clark, meanwhile, had become hopelessly lost and had instead used his civilian work skills to attach himself to a mobile workshop of the Royal Army Service Corps at Rouen. After a routine trip to a petrol dump, he suddenly found himself acting as armed escort to a party of nuns and 50 schoolgirls on a bus to Argentan, arriving there in time to see the first of the ‘Second BEF’ begin to move forward. He would eventually be evacuated via St Nazaire late on the 17th, having repeatedly crossed paths with his unit without ever being able to make contact.
Unsure what to do with them, HQ Rouen had sent the 2/4th back to Rennes on 27 May along with the 2/6th DWR. By 1 June they were back at work on the same railway siding they had left a fortnight before. ‘It was a labour that was to prove utterly useless,’ the regimental history records, ‘and th
e time could have been so much better spent employed in marching and training, but this was not allowed.’ Copies of the Continental Daily Mail were available a day late and there they learned about Dunkirk, reading ‘Four fifths of BEF now evacuated’. The men wryly remarked that they were now in the last fifth. Colonel Hodgkinson and the battalion quartermaster, Lieutenant ‘Tommy’ Knott, spent their days trying and failing to obtain the Bren guns their men so badly needed. Instead, the battalion took delivery of 22 butcher’s knives and nine small trucks.8
The loss of Beauman Division’s ‘A’ Brigade to the 51st Division left them without a third of their men at a time when Weygand was demanding an all-out defence of the Seine. So, on 7 June, orders arrived for the 2/4th to join the 2/6th and to head back to Rouen. They were once again part of the Beauman Division. Rex Flowers had made it back to Rennes with the battalion:
It was in the afternoon that the order came. The battalion formed up and we marched in companies and platoons to the railway station, a small one that was nearby. We marched with a light step – we thought we were going home. I mean, everything pointed to it! What difference could we make (we had no illusions) to the situation? Most had gone via Dunkirk, now it was our turn – we thought. It had got to be Blighty! We knew that the battle was lost. We had convinced ourselves, what else could we do? As we waited for the train we could see the QM’s staff coming round giving things away (that was unusual in itself). They were carrying large boxes containing these mystery gifts … As they approached we saw what it was; an emergency ration for each of us. Each was in a gold coloured box, which fitted into a special pocket in our battle-dress trousers. When I received mine, I thought Ugh! and a cold suspicion formed in my mind. Why did we need this for going home? It can’t be! It can’t be!9
Within hours, the terrible truth dawned as the men began to recognise villages they had passed through before. They were headed for Rouen and the front line. Extra weapons had finally been found and brought aboard at the last minute but they were useless, still encased in the thick grease in which they had been packed and which the KOYLIs had no way of removing now they were on the train.
The battalion had been ordered to move to Les Andelys and arrived at the nearby station of Andé, near Louviers at around 1500hrs on 8 June to find the 2/6th DWR already there. For over two hours the KOYLIs sat on the train whilst the two battalion commanders tried to sort out the mess. The Dukes ‘were already in possession and wisely refused to move’, so at 1730hrs, they moved off again, this time to take up positions near Pont de l’Arche.
The orders were that the KOYLI were to hold the far bank of the river from the Pont de l’Arche road bridge and to cover the railway bridge at Le Manoir. ‘A’ Company under Captain G.H. Wilford was on the right covering Le Manoir. Farther north was Captain William Haughton’s ‘D’ Company under the command of a composite battalion of military policemen. ‘C’ Company at Alizay held the centre of the line under the command of Second Lieutenant Jones and Rex Flowers and his mates of ‘B’ Company were on the left of the line at Igoville under 25-year-old Captain Jenico Preston, the 16th Viscount Gormanston and usually referred to as simply Captain Gormanston. The battalion was covering about 4 miles of front and had ‘no supporting weapons whatsoever; no artillery, tanks, mortars, – nothing but rifles, bayonets and a few light machine guns.’10 The men had just 50 rounds of ammunition each.
By the time ‘B’ Company reached Igoville on the north bank of the river, they found it full of French troops ‘so thick on the ground that to put any more would have caused confusion’ so Gormanston kept his men concentrated in the village. To add to the confusion, a company of pioneers were also in the area. Whilst they knew about the KOYLIs, the KOYLIs knew nothing about them.
The approaches to the bridge were covered by anti-tank guns and it seemed a strong defence was planned; they were to be cruelly disappointed. At midnight, French guards refused to allow an officer from Battalion HQ across the bridges to the far bank and all contact with ‘B’ and ‘D’ Companies was lost. The men were told to get some sleep but it lasted only about an hour before they were woken and told to take up positions outside the village. Throughout the night, Flowers watched as ‘for hours troops and guns poured through the village and over the bridge. I thought at the time, why don’t they stop and have a go at the enemy in the morning?’ All that remained as dawn approached were two anti-tank guns and a small group of French engineers but he could see no-one else.
At about 0300hrs, reports began to arrive of German armour approaching and when, ninety minutes later, a column of vehicles appeared, the anti-tank gunners wasted no time in putting a round through the lead vehicle only to discover that it was a refugee group. They were turned away and no sooner had they left the scene than German tanks arrived. The second anti-tank gun fired and scored a direct hit on one light tank. Its two companions withdrew and the three lorry-loads of infantry with them debussed and went to ground in positions overlooking the village to begin reconnoitring by fire, probing the British defences. In a slit trench, Flowers sat by, not reacting to the German fire yet. He needed to conserve ammunition. Their Bren gun had just one magazine.
Pont de l’Arche area map.
Across the battalion front, similar scenarios were being played out but no serious attack developed. Later, the British press would make much of how ‘twenty Yorkshiremen, with one French anti-tank gun in position, held up a German tank column for nearly three hours.’11 The officer, 25-year-old John Clemons from Leeds, described how just after 0300hrs a German light tank was stopped by the anti-tank gun but was soon followed by:
… a light reconnaissance tank and two medium tanks of about thirty-five tons – [which] came well into view, just broadside on from our positions only a short distance away. The turrets of the tanks were open and standing in them were men with German steel helmets on … The French lieutenant opened fire and knocked out the first medium tank. Then he opened fire on the second medium tank and knocked it out in turn. This blocked the road for this long column of vehicles, at least fifty in number, coming down the road closely packed together.
He goes on to describe how the Germans ‘seemed rather demoralised by the sudden unexpected attack from our hidden positions.’ The dramatic account made excellent newspaper fodder but the official history tells a slightly different story. It says that after the first tank was hit, ‘desultory small arms fire’ had broken out.
An artist’s impression of the attack on the German column during the battle at Igoville.
After an hour or so Flowers heard a voice from behind him. A subaltern warned him to ‘Retire to the bridge now, the French will be blowing it up in a few minutes at 6 o’clock’ and crawled off to pass the message along. After putting the Bren out of action Flowers crawled off to his right, ‘down the road into the village towards the main road, about seventy yards away, with a few well-chosen words on the subject of Anglo-French co-operation’. It was not going to be easy. Between the company positions and the river was about three-quarters of a mile of flat, open ground.
The German positions on the high ground now began to tell as the company made their way through the village streets. To get to the bridge they would have to go to the main road and turn right, through part of the village then under a railway embankment and on a further 100 yards to reach the bridge, much of the way exposed to German fire. They had almost reached the road when the first German tank entered the village and began pouring machine gun fire along it in the direction of the bridge. Retracing their steps, Flowers and his section made their way through a line of back gardens, joined now by a couple of French Senegalese soldiers from a colonial regiment that had also been left behind when the withdrawal took place. Together, the men reached a spot where around 40 KOYLI were crouching at the base of the railway embankment.
Captain Gormanston gathered the men together and explained that they would have to move to the right out of the direct view of the enemy and make a dash for it. If
they all moved together, they stood a better chance of getting into cover before the Germans could react:
‘We have got to get over this embankment, we will all go over together when I give the word.’ We spread out along the base of the embankment. The captain said again, ‘When I give the word, all dash over at once and deploy.’ He was a brave man; I can see him now in my mind’s eye. His revolver in his hand, stood up in full view of the enemy on the ridge under heavy fire marshalling his men.
… away we went a bit sharpish. The rails seemed never ending and we had to jump over wires and so on (I was getting a bit sick of railways). I had a prickly feeling in my back but we all got over to the other side without incident. Stretching away in front of us was about a hundred and fifty yards of cornfield that was about knee high, and then there was the riverbank.
French POWs including men of a North African division. Colonial troops from Indo-China, North and West Africa were widely deployed by the French and fought well, but were frequently ill-treated and murdered after surrender. British forces included Indian Service Corps troops, but they did not see action.
About half way across, machine guns opened up and the men dropped into the scant cover of the corn. There was no choice but to keep moving forward in a series of dashes and crawls to within a few yards of the sloping riverbank:
I jumped up and ran towards the river, and I noticed that someone else had done the same and we were running almost side-by-side. We had given the enemy too much time to get his sights on us, I think he had noticed my tactics and was awaiting my next move. All at once tracers were all around me, plucking at my clothing on my arms and legs; I think one or two passed between my legs as I was running. I got to the bank and jumped down, rolling on the floor. It was a twelve-foot drop. I looked up to see how my unknown companion had fared. He was dead; his feet caught in some undergrowth or brambles and hung upside down, an ugly sight. God, I had been lucky. It was a French soldier, probably one of the anti-tank crew.