Dunkirk 1940

by Tim Lynch

  At the riverbank, he found Captain Gormanston and Private Murdoch preparing to swim:

  I came up to them and halted, I wasn’t sure what to say or do at first. The Captain said to me, ‘Where are you going Flowers?’ I replied ‘I am going to try and get over the bridge sir.’ He then said ‘No time, it’s going up any time now,’ looking at his watch. Nevertheless, I decided to have a go, and made my way to that tantalising bridge. It looked safe and solid; I started to run towards it, there were people running over. I could see their heads over the parapet. That’s why I was running. When I was about seventy yards away it just blew up: I can see it now; There were a series of small explosions along the length of the bridge. I was never a boy any more after that.

  A non-swimmer, Flowers asked if Gormanston could take him across but the captain shook his head, explaining that the fast flowing river would be enough of a problem even for him as a strong swimmer. Flowers began to scramble along the bank to find some way across. After a few yards, he turned to see Gormanston and Murdoch in midstream. A few steps later he turned again. Murdoch was clambering out. Gormanston was gone. His body was never recovered.

  Remembering a western movie, Flowers searched for a log to act as a float and managed to get across the river under fire, to find two soldiers of the Pioneer Corps battalion waiting for him. Soon the group grew to nine, including a Frenchman and two Senegalese infantrymen. They did not know it, but the Senegalese had had a lucky escape. Behind them, six of their comrades had been captured and made to sit at tables outside the village cafe. Each one was shot in the back of the head and as his head fell forwards, it was snatched back and his throat slit.12

  A bit further downriver, Lieutenant Aykroyd and Lance Corporal Armitage were busy setting up a defence line to cover the river crossing. Last to arrive was Lieutenant Clemons, dragging one of his wounded men. He dived into the water and swam across to a rowing boat. Since it had no oars, he then towed it back across and set up a ferry service to shuttle them to safety. Luckily, the Germans were not following too closely.

  A bridge being demolished. The sight would remain with Rex Flowers for the rest of his life.

  Forgotten men. Privates Jack Speight (top left) and Harry Polson (top right), formerly of the Essex Regiment, arrived in France in 1939 as part of a Pioneer Company. Private Val Thomas (bottom left) was separated from the KOYLI and Private Sékou Diaf (bottom right) from his Senegalese unit after the destruction of the Pont de l’Arche bridges. All four died in battle at the nearby village of Criquebeuf.

  Downstream, Flowers was attempting to discourage a young Frenchman from trying to recover a boat. The man ignored them and went over to get it. As he stood in the boat, a burst of fire cut him down in full view of the two women he was travelling with. Flowers plodded on.

  Meanwhile, Le Manoir bridge had blown five minutes later, taking a number of Germans with it but ‘A’ and ‘D’ Companies had escaped without incident, again their young officers swimming the river to bring back boats for their men. ‘C’ Company was in close contact but managed to get most of its men back. Second Lieutenant Jones then extricated the remaining two platoons and 40 men made their way back to a footbridge across a weir.

  By the time the men regrouped, Colonel Hodgkinson had received orders to pull back to Bernay. 10 men had been killed, 23 wounded and 22 known to have been captured. The toll could have been worse. But many men were now lost.

  Flowers trudged on. More Senegalese had joined them and he found himself fascinated by the Africans and wishing he could speak French. Gradually, as the day wore on, the group split up. One, with a mixture of Franglais and gestures, indicated for the Britons to follow him and led them through the fields to a small village. This was Elbeuf. He was home and from here the British soldiers would be able to get back to Rouen – if the Germans didn’t get there first.

  Val Thomas, the reservist Flowers had admired back in training, had had a similar experience. Together with two former Essex Regiment reservists, Harry Speight and Jack Poulson and a Senegalese soldier, Sekou Diouf, Thomas had begun the long march back along the banks of the Seine towards Rouen. They never made it. Their bodies were discovered weeks later at the scene of a small, forgotten battle in the tiny hamlet of Criquebeuf among those of a French detachment who had stood their ground. All across France allies fought and died together as their superiors bickered amongst themselves.

  The survivors of the 2/4th began their tiring journey back to Bernay but WO2 Brown, with ‘B’ Brigade, was still headed the other way. On the 10th, Brigade HQ moved farther north to Roncherolles-sur-le-Vivier, only to be told to turn around and head back. The Brigade had been moved into enemy-held territory and were completely surrounded but somehow, like the 2/4th, made it back towards Bernay, although, he noted, ‘the brigadier had said he did not expect us to get through.’ Despite his own plight, Brown could still find it in himself to pity the refugees, especially the ‘two little girls carrying their dollies’ and the young mother bathing her son’s blistered feet in a stream. ‘[They] should not be exposed to such horrors and hardships.’

  Gradually, ‘B’ Brigade made their way to Le Mans only to be turned around yet again and sent back up the line to Authou. ‘Lots of men have got the wind up about going back,’ Brown wrote. Spirits were lifted by the cheering of the French civilians as they pushed forward but the men knew there would be no sympathy for them in retreat. In passing, Brown heard that only 128 men of his battalion now remained accounted for as he went forward into Authou to check local cottages for use as billets – ‘a job I despise’ since it involved breaking in. Like many of the sentimental British, he could never get used to the French attitude towards their animals. Dogs were left chained up, cats and cage birds locked inside houses. In Britain, the RSPCA had been inundated with animals brought back by the BEF, 120 dogs being destroyed in one port alone by 5 June.13 One man was even reported to have been found swimming out to a rescue boat clutching a rabbit intended as a pet for his children. This village was no exception; his men toured the area, releasing any animal they could find. Even as they let loose the abandoned pets, the Germans were closing in on them. Very soon, these humane men would be trying to kill other humans simply to survive.

  On the 14th, he pessimistically noted that ‘the job we are on here is a suicide one, if we get out we shall be lucky.’ But there was good news, too. ‘Apparently the vanguard of the second BEF are here.’ It was true. The 1st Canadian Division and the 152nd Lowland Division had arrived and taken up positions in the Cotentin Peninsula. Whatever the suicide job was, it was now cancelled. For the next few days, they would be constantly on the move. On the 15th, he travelled by truck to Pont l’Eveque and recorded his food for the day – two slices of bread, one rasher of bacon and a slice of bully beef. Brown realised at one point that he had not removed his boots for a week (he would later be hospitalised when the blisters turned septic) but it no longer mattered as they kept moving, through Lisieux, Caen, Bayeux, Carentan and finally to Cherbourg and a boat home. Collapsing on the deck, he woke to find he ‘couldn’t understand where [he] was’ and had to walk around the boat convincing himself that he was finally going home.

  The rest of the battalion had followed much the same route. On the 12th, Beauman Division’s medical officer reported that ‘morale of men improving, blistered feet etc’ and on the 13th, Colonel Hodgkinson had been ordered to Le Mans and had not returned. Step by step and line by line they had retreated in good order and sailed aboard the SS Duke of Atholl at 1830hrs on 17 June.

  As they disembarked at Southampton the next morning, they were greeted by a cheering man. When the rest of ‘B’ Brigade had been dispersed to various infantry depots, one man had been left behind to fend for himself. As he stood alone on the quayside, someone had told him that the 2/4th had just arrived. John Brown was home.

  NOTES

  1 Wylly p118

  2 Ibid, p118

  3 CQMS Brown’s Diary. Imperial War Museum Doc
uments P118

  4 Brown quoted in Moynihan, M. People at War 1939–1945 1989 p44

  5 Don Clark. Personal account. Imperial War Museum documents 99/16/1 p34

  6 Brown, op cit p33. See also Moynihan p50

  7 Brown p42-43.

  8 Wylly p120

  9 Rex Flowers. Unpublished personal account

  10 Wylly p121

  11 ‘How we held up a German tank column’ by ‘Eyewitness’ in War Illustrated 28 June 1940 p700–701

  12 James, K. The Greater Share of Honour 2007 p252. A memorial was erected in 2005 to the victims, just some of the estimated 3,000 West African soldiers fighting in the French Army murdered between May and June 1940. In light of the extremely high casualty numbers of Tirailleurs Sénégalais (out of 40,000 African soldiers engaged in combat with German forces, 17,000 were killed or reported as missing in action), this may be an underestimate. See Raffael Scheck’s Hitler’s African Victims: The German Army Massacres of Black French Soldiers in 1940 Cambridge University Press, 2006.

  13 Bradford Telegraph & Argus 5 June 1940

  Chapter Fifteen

  Epilogue

  Amid the hustle and bustle of the Southampton docks on the morning of 18 June, a tall, drawn figure sat slightly apart, pausing now and again to break off some bully beef from his sandwich and feed it to the small grey kitten perched on his lap. He’d found it in the garden of a house in Rouen and it had stayed with him throughout the retreat – a small reminder of life outside the war. Occasionally men would come up to him and offer their thanks but most felt reluctant to intrude on Beauman’s well earned moment of peace.

  Behind them, Operation Ariel was still in full swing. Starting on 14 June, Admiral William James C-in-C, Portsmouth Command had been overseeing the evacuation of British troops from the Normandy ports. At the same time, other evacuations were also being carried out from St Nazaire, Brest and Nantes in the Bay of Biscay led by Admiral Sir Martin Nasmith C-in-C, Western Approaches Command. The operation had been going well until 1548hrs the previous day when Junkers Ju88 bombers of Kampfgeschwader 30 had found the Lancastria, Cunard’s 16,243-ton luxury liner, as it lay off St Nazaire. Aboard, the Lancastria’s acting adjutant was still desperately trying to compile a list of those boarding from the small fleet of vessels ferrying men and refugees out to the ship but it was an uphill task. He estimated that almost 9,000 soldiers and refugees had crowded onto the ship.

  Chief Officer Harry Grattidge, the Lancastria’s second in command, recalled what happened next:

  The smoke drifted and parted and we saw the most terrible sight the Lancastria could offer; the mess of blood and oil and splintered woodwork that littered the deck and the furious white core of water that came roaring from the bottom of the ship in Number 4 hold. I took the megaphone, hearing my voice booming out strangely over the dying ship ‘Clear away the boats now … Your attention please … Clear away the boats now.’ The Lancastria quaked under my feet, a last gesture of farewell.

  The ship lurched onto her starboard side, righted again and then listed onto the port side, sending men skidding across the decks.1

  Walter Hirst of the Royal Engineers was one of those aboard:

  There was panic and chaos. Two soldiers at either end of the ship began to open up with Bren guns on the attacking enemy aircraft. After entering the water a seemingly crazed man tried to remove my lifejacket, but I managed to fight him off. I was in the water for around two hours before being picked up. At one point a large Labrador dog swam past which I later discovered belonged to some Belgian refugee children who did not survive the sinking.

  Report on the sinking of the Lancastria.

  In blind panic, men struggled to survive as German planes returned to mercilessly strafe the sinking ship with machine gun fire. There had been no time for safety announcements. Sapper Cyril Cumbes saw four men whose necks had been broken by the lifebelts they wore riding up as they hit the water. For Ken Belsham of the Royal Army Pay Corps, the abiding memory would be the guilt he carried after having to dive under the water to avoid the clutches of drowning men.

  The Lancastria was not the only loss that day. Churchill had made a last-ditch effort to keep the French in the war by flying to Paris to meet with the French Cabinet but he had failed. On that Monday afternoon, he and his staff flew back from Paris. Aboard the plane, General Sir Edward Spears was looking out of the window at a coast he had sailed two years before:

  … when suddenly I beheld a terrible sight. A great ship was lying on her side, sinking. Hundreds of tiny figures could be seen in the water. It was the Champlain, with two thousand British troops on board. We cut across Brittany. We were flying low and the entire countryside seemed to be on fire, for there was smoke everywhere. I thought it was the Germans burning villages, but was told later they were British Army dumps being destroyed. There must have been many of them.2

  Churchill arrived home to news of the Lancastria. ‘I forbade its publication,’ he later wrote:

  The newspapers have got quite enough disaster for to-day at least. I had intended to release the news a few days later, but events crowded upon us so black and so quickly that I forgot to lift the ban, and it was some years before the knowledge of this horror became public.3

  Survivors still remain bitter about this cover up, claiming, as does Churchill, that it was ‘years’ before news was released. However, the story was known. As details became available, the weekly War Illustrated devoted a centre spread and two more pages to the story in its 9 August issue and more photographs of the sinking itself in later editions. It even hinted at the scale of the disaster with the story of Lieutenant R. Haynes of 50th Company AMPC who boarded the ship with 250 men, of whom just 40 survived. The fact was, stories of ships carrying men from France was old news by now and amid the fear of imminent invasion, the tale of the Lancastria was quietly put to one side. Even today, though, the true story remains unclear. Estimates of casualties range from as low as 2,500 to over 6,000 lives lost in a matter of minutes.

  Don Clark had, quite literally, missed the boat. He had arrived in St Nazaire but during a bombing raid he had been hit in the knee and the last stages of his journey had been painfully slow. He arrived to find the ship had sailed. Along with the few men left there, he debated the pros and cons of returning to camp. There were no boats nearby and at least they would be able to find transport to take them south towards the Spanish border. Later that afternoon, a small convoy drove away. Clark could never remember the name of the port or the ship but somewhere around Nantes, they found a way home. Pushing their trucks off the end of the quay, they passed through a Military Police checkpoint and onto the gangplank. As they boarded, a Rabbi and a group of Jewish refugees asked for spaces aboard ship but was told that the ship could take only British citizens. The Rabbi pleaded for ‘sanctuary’ but was refused. Finally, in desperation, the families offered £1,000 for any British soldier who would marry one of the young girls. Again the Major refused. The group gave up. Clark saw them turn towards the south.4

  The ship left harbour on the 19th and sailed due west for two days, raising Clark’s hopes of a trip to America but on the third day it turned north. News had reached them of the Lancastria and the captain had wanted to be well out to sea and away from the German bombers before the run for home. The ship eventually reached Plymouth on Tuesday 25 June – the last day of Operation Ariel. As the men marched from the docks, ‘there were thousands of women waiting for us. The women lined the two sides of the narrow corridor which had been formed through which we would have to march.’ As the men formed up a car backfired, sending them diving for cover. Embarrassed by this display of nerves, they regrouped and set off through the crowds:

  Many wanted to know if we had seen their husbands, sons and boyfriends while on our way to the coast in France. They held out photographs of their missing loved ones and pleaded with us for news.

  Clark, not knowing the fate of even his closest friends, could only shake his head an
d keep walking. ‘It was a harrowing, unbelievably sad and grief-stricken struggle for us to get through them and up to the station.’5

  By then, over 30,600 men of the 52nd Division and Norman Force had been evacuated from Cherbourg alone during Operation Ariel. Nearly 20,500 men, mainly Canadians, had escaped via St Malo and thousands more through St Nazaire, Brest and dozens of smaller ports along the west coast. A further 11,000 men had been evacuated before Ariel began from Le Havre in Operation Cycle. The British garrison at Marseilles would make its own arrangements to evacuate via Gibraltar and these withdrawals would continue into mid-August. In all, official figures record that 191,870 British, French, Canadian, Czech, Polish and Belgian soldiers left France in the weeks after Dunkirk.6 The last men offering the Germans any resistance at Cherbourg were Major Nightingale and 50 AMPC reservists of 1 Company, N0 10 Docks Labour Company. Armed with rifles and a single Bren ‘which nobody knew anything about’, the company manned the last perimeter until the fighting troops had left. They had arrived on 10 September 1939 ‘without stores or cooking utensils’ and finally left for home on the morning of 18 June – claiming with some justification that they had been ‘first in and last out’. ‘It wasn’t a glorious affair,’ Nightingale later observed, ‘but the Pioneers could at least be proud of their part in it.’7