by Tim Lynch
When the BEF arrived home from Dunkirk, Police Inspector Richard Butcher had seen sparks flying along the London–Dover line as broken men pitched their weapons out of the window.8 The recently created Local Defence Volunteers scoured the tracks collecting what they could for their own use when the Germans came, as it seemed they inevitably would. Some soldiers contacted their families, changed into civilian clothes and simply walked away. Many more, though, found themselves treated not as a defeated army, but as returning heroes. They chalked the letters ‘BEF’ on their helmets and some even had unofficial shoulder badges made up as they enjoyed a warm welcome home. ‘Enjoy it while you can lads,’ one Sergeant Major advised them, ‘it won’t last.’
By the time the ships began returning from Cherbourg two weeks later, the novelty of the ‘miracle of Dunkirk’ had already worn off. For most of the returning men, homecoming was an anti-climax. They travelled alone or in groups to stations where no-one knew or cared what they had been through. Dunkirk was already a memory and these men were, after all, not the heroic fighting regiments of the BEF that people had read so much about in the papers, they were just the ‘useless mouths’ of the Lines of Communication. When Beauman went to Whitehall to submit his recommendations for awards to men under his command he was greeted by the Assistant Military Secretary of the BEF with a surprised ‘Oh, did you have any fighting?’9 Later, he was interviewed by the Military Secretary:
German tanks and infantry advancing.
In view of the fact that I had just returned from an operation which had proved, to say the least of it, both exacting and difficult, and that he had been sitting in a comfortable armchair at the War Office since the early days of the war I felt that I was entitled to a courteous reception, even if I could not be given any encouragement regarding my future. The Military Secretary was both exceedingly abrupt and discouraging. He finally said that he could see little hope for further employment for me unless there was an invasion and heavy casualties amongst senior officers.10
A year later Colonel Vickery, the former commander of Vickforce, wrote to Beauman expressing sympathy and telling him that he had gained the support of ‘a higher Chief’ who would fight his case. It was clear, Vickery, said ‘that M-C [Marshall-Cornwall] was obviously making you a scapegoat for his deeds.’ A command was being formed and Beauman was, apparently, in the running. A dispirited Beauman noted that the news ‘sounds hopeful but probably too good to be true.’11 Eventually, Beauman got his promotion and command of the North Riding District at Catterick. He was retired again in 1944.
General de Fonblanque, who might have been able to fight Beauman’s corner, had been exhausted by his efforts and died soon after his return. In the aftermath of the evacuation, Dill’s staff complained bitterly that not enough had been done to save precious supplies, ignoring the fact that they themselves had continued dispatching fuel and ammunition through ports in the Bay of Biscay for the second BEF even as de Fonblanque was evacuating the same materials through Cherbourg. In some cases, there were tales of stores being unloaded from one ship only to be placed aboard the ship tied alongside for return to the UK. Around St Nazaire, the 6th Royal Sussex had continued railway building right up until the French surrender before they had downed tools and marched to a waiting ship, their efforts serving only to complete the groundwork for the Germans to finish for their own needs.
Almost immediately, a committee was set up to consider the lessons of the campaign and by early July were ready to present their results. Their recommendations were confusing. The army, they said, should be decentralised and allow its junior officers more scope to use personal initiative, as the Germans did. This, though, was far too radical a change for many senior officers to contemplate so it was tempered with instructions that having achieved a breakthrough, they should immediately be taken back under the control of the divisional commander who would, as one training manual later put it, control his troops much as a conductor controls his orchestra – there should be no improvisation. Vague orders were blamed for the disaster so troops should be given clear written instructions that gave no room for interpretation. The returning men, at Churchill’s insistence, were put through intensive drill to instil instant obedience to orders. Recruits at all levels were told that they were ‘not paid to think’ and the whole resulted in an army that, in theory, valued personal initiative but did everything it could to eradicate it. It was a policy that would handicap operations for the rest of the war, bringing bitter criticisms from Britain’s American, Canadian and Australian allies in all theatres.
The aftermath was also a time when senior officers looked to their careers. Gort, feted as a hero, was never given another operational command and quietly slipped away. Marshall-Cornwall’s memoirs show that his actions in France had been governed by his concerns that he might be court-martialled for a wrong decision and so chose to cover himself carefully. His report published in the London Gazette in 1946 made it clear that he blamed, chief amongst others, Beauman for not being aggressive enough and allowing his men to make their own decisions about withdrawal on the battlefield rather than simply fighting to the end in their trenches as the out-of-touch Weygand had demanded. He seemed to see no contradiction in saying that the division was not a ‘fighting formation’ but then complaining that it failed to act as one. Nor in saying that his job had been to prevent unnecessary casualties but that the Beauman Division was not his responsibility and that more British troops should have been ordered to fight ‘last man, last round’ battles to shore up French lines that had already vanished. In all, he said, too many British soldiers outside of his control were ‘looking over their shoulders for a good abri [shelter]’.12 On his return from France, Marshall-Cornwall was sent to the Middle East to take up another liaison mission and later was given a command of forces in north-west England. He was sacked in 1942 for deciding that he, as local commander in Liverpool, was better able to judge what was needed than his superiors in London.
All that summer, news filtered back about the fates of some of those left behind. Each week, local newspapers carried reports of letters bringing news of men now confirmed killed or prisoners. In many cases it was an agonising wait. On 12 October, the Halifax Weekly Courier and Guardian reported that the family of 46-year-old Arthur Stead of the AMPC were ‘considerably relieved’ by news that he was alive. A week later, it noted that there had been a mistake. He had drowned aboard the Lancastria. So had 26-year-old William Galloway of the 2/6th Dukes and so had Corporal Arthur Fenwick of the Royal Engineers – three weeks after his brother had become the 2/5th West Yorkshire Regiment’s first casualty. Others of 137 Brigade were almost certainly among the casualties but no-one knows for certain. The official search for missing men continued into 1942 as statements were taken from survivors of Pont de l’Arche, Veules-les-Roses and the retreat about who they had seen alive when they pulled out. In 1944, some of the more seriously ill prisoners came home, bringing stories of the missing, the dead. They also talked of the irrepressible Bandmaster Doyle’s prison camp concerts and his unstinting efforts to keep his lads going.
Throughout that summer and autumn of 1940, other men continued to make their way home. Lance Corporal John Warner of the Queen’s Regiment was amongst them. He had surrendered at Abbeville: ‘I felt I was the biggest fool in the army, until next morning we were joined by 10,000 French and 1,200 British prisoners.’ As the prisoners were being marched towards Arras, he managed to obtain some civilian clothes from a Frenchman and made his break. Stopped by a soldier, his poor French was not noticed because the German spoke it even more badly and he was able to slip away, claiming to be going to his wife in Arras. He was given a bicycle by a Frenchman and cycled south to the Spanish frontier. The gendarme on duty refused to let him pass without an exit visa but the police commander pointed out that there was a perfectly safe route into Spain across the nearby hills. Warner reached London in time for his 21st birthday.13
Lance Corporal Downing and Private
Ash of the KOYLI made it into the unoccupied zone of France but were detained by the French and handed over to the Germans when the Vichy government was taken over in 1942. Their comrade Private Winslade was more successful. Without a map, money or any ability to speak either language, he travelled through France and into Spain, making it to Gibraltar and home.14
In the West Yorkshire mess, Richard Camrass walked in after reading his own obituary. Captain Wilkins, last seen outside Robecq in May 1940, was treated to a hero’s welcome when he reached home on 14 August 1941 after over a year on the run.
The escapers were aided by a network of civilians willing to risk their lives to help the British. One such was Maurice Marland. On 10 June, Marland, an employee of the Suez Canal Company, left the British Embassy in Paris for the port of Granville on the west coast of the Cotentin to set up a branch office and liaise with the British Foreign Office. After the ceasefire, Marland discovered that there were 52 British soldiers in the area, mainly survivors of the 51st Division. Local fishermen could not leave the harbour without drawing fire from the German garrison in the barracks overlooking the port but Marland managed to persuade a few to start making the run to the Channel Islands at night. All 52 were evacuated by the 27th. By July, though, the route was no longer viable. When three Scots led by Robert Craig were brought in on 7 July, Marland had no choice but to hide them for almost four years. ‘Bob was not a senior officer, nor one who it had taken much time or effort to train – he was not worth the risk of a speedboat’ was how one member of the group explained it later.15 Marland then continued to act as a guide and resistance leader until his arrest and execution on 22 July 1944, one of many who never accepted France’s surrender.
As its battered units reached home, 46th Division regrouped in the grounds of the Belle Vue Park and Zoo in Manchester. The gaps in their ranks were filled with new recruits – the next registration of men aged up to 28 for military service had begun on 15 June – and, when it reached full strength again, the division was shipped to Iceland to act as a garrison.
In 1942, the division was reorganised. On 20 July, 137 Brigade was taken out and converted to an armoured brigade of the Royal Armoured Corps. 2/5th Battalion The West Yorkshire Regiment was overnight transformed into 113th Regiment, Royal Armoured Corps. The 2/6th Dukes were now 114th Regiment and the 2/7th became 115th. The brigade was not called upon for overseas duties and was disbanded on 26 September 1943. Gradually, the men were whittled away to other RAC units, the Dukes holding on to a few vestiges of their identity in ‘Dukes Squadrons’ but they would never again be the battalions that had left for France in 1940. The rest of the division carried on, taking part in the invasions of Sicily and Italy.
Clark went on leave and came back sporting the unofficial ‘BEF’ badges that had become popular only to be told in no uncertain terms that ‘there’s no bloody BEF here’ and be forced to get rid of them. Weeks later, as a skilled tool maker, he was discharged. Travelling home, by chance he met with his old RSM and records that the man had been found guilty of weak leadership and ‘a lack of moral fibre’. He was on his way home to Southern Ireland. As ever with the army, some men stayed with their regiments for the rest of the war. Some moved on. Major Haughton, who had commanded ‘D’ Company of the KOYLI at Pont de l’Arche, was killed serving with 2nd KOYLI in Burma in February 1942 and Major Clemons, MC, the young lieutenant whose story had aroused so much interest, died at Salerno. WO2 Brown received a commission in 1941 and spent the rest of his war in Burma with the Royal Armoured Corps attached to 33rd Indian Division.
General Alan Brooke later wrote of Weygand that:
like Hitler in a similar position four years later, the seventy-four year old Generalissimo met the onslaught of superior and better-equipped force by the fatalistic expedient of ordering outnumbered units to fight to the death where they stood. The inevitable result was that those who obeyed their orders were either surrounded or killed while the weaker fled, carrying panic and disorder along every highway.16
Writing later of the destruction of the Pont de l’Arche bridges and the stranding of the KOYLI, Beauman said:
I should hesitate to blame the French for blowing the bridge behind our troops on this occasion … Stringent orders had been issued by the French High Comand that regardless of the local situation bridges were to be blown as soon as the enemy approached them … the French officer in charge had justification for his action.17
Rex Flowers, though, took a different view: ‘It looks pretty certain to me that the French sacrificed us.’
In the immediate aftermath, King George spoke for his generals when he said; ‘Personally, I feel happier now that we have no allies to be polite to and to pamper.’18 In the years since then, British and French historians and politicians have argued and criticised each other. Britain, it is said, was let down by the cowardice and incompetence of ‘cheese eating surrender monkeys’. There is an element of truth to this. An aging, unimaginative French High Command in which commanders refused to see the need to have radio communications connecting their Vincennes HQ to forces spread far and wide lost command and control capability within the first few days of the battle. Within five days of the German attack, a France riven by political factions – who sometimes saw German occupation as preferable to life under a left wing government – and where senior commanders viewed their allies with greater contempt and suspicion than their enemies, had lost the will to fight. All that was at the root of the French collapse, along with the almost contemptuous attitude French officers had towards their own conscript army. Yet there were many thousands of brave men who fought well and hard. The North African troops of 1st DINA, for example, having fought from Sedan to Dunkirk, escaped to safety only to return immediately to carry on the battle in Normandy. Their courage should not be forgotten.
For the French, the events of those weeks more than confirmed their belief that ‘perfidious Albion’ had deserted them in their time of need and, as expected, had run for home at the first opportunity. Yet for the villagers of La Herliere that never seemed true. The speed of the German advance had caught many civilians before they could flee so the people of the area knew about Private John Lungley, a 34-year-old Bren gunner of the 5th Buffs. On 20 May he was left alone in a slit trench as the Germans closed in. They broke off their attack and called on him to surrender. He refused. They attacked again. Again he held them back. A tank was called up and he died at his post. That night, and every night, flowers appeared on his temporary grave. When it was decided to take his body to the local cemetery, so many locals turned out to honour him that the angry Germans cancelled the ceremony and buried him at night. No-one at La Herliere believed the British had deserted them.19
A German account of the battle for France records the comments of a sergeant in ‘the Yorkshire Regiment’ taken prisoner at Dunkirk:
My regiment has suffered great losses, every tenth man has been killed. The German artillery is very good, the German infantrist [sic] fights very courageously. Yes, we have great respect for you … We knew that your Division had fought in Poland, and has been called since ‘the bloody dogs.’ That is true. But we will beat you next time all the same.20
A report produced by the German IV Corps described the British troops they encountered as men who ‘did not complain of hardships. In battle he was tough and dogged … In defence the Englishman took any punishment that came his way.’21
The strain of captivity etched on his face, Private James Laidler of the Tyneside Scottish on his release from Stalag XXa in 1945. (courtesy Else Laidler)
A field burial.
Like the rest of the digging divisions, 137 Brigade had arrived in France ‘untrained and virtually unarmed’. They were asked to stand against the combined might of the German air and ground blitzkrieg. With little more than a rifle and bayonet against tanks and artillery, they were told that the fate of their country depended on them standing their ground. So they stood. Knowing that their leaders had let them d
own, that they had not been given the tools for the job, that their allies were running away around them, that the men who should have been in their place were even now escaping, they stood. Because they had been asked to.
Outgunned, outnumbered, defiant and doomed, Lungley’s lonely last stand epitomises the spirit of the forgotten men of the digging divisions.
NOTES
1 This and subsequent accounts are to be found at the website of the Lancastria Association of Scotland at www.lancastria.org.uk
2 Spears. Assignment to Catastrophe, n.d. p619–620
When the SS Champlain was built in 1932 for the French Line she was the largest, fastest, and most luxurious cabin class liner afloat. From the start of the war she had been engaged in transporting thousands of refugees to America. On 17 June 1940, she struck a German mine whilst at anchor in the waters off La Pallice and quickly heeled over. Despite claims that as many as 300 people lost their lives, in fact only around a dozen fatalities were recorded. A few days later a German U-boat fired a torpedo into the hulk, which remained largely above the water. The wreck was eventually cleared in 1965.
3 Churchill The Second World War Vol 2 p169
4 Clark. Imperial War Museum Documents 99/16/1
5 Ibid p91
6 Blaxland p387
7 History of 1 Company. RPC Museum Archives
8 Collier. Sands of Dunkirk p233
9 Beauman p175
10 Ibid p175–6