The move was made at night, and despite all efforts by the hard-working Divisional Provost Company to control traffic, the road from Ouville was, in some places, as crowded as the road to Epsom on Derby Day. The French were in retreat, many in total disorder. Not all, indeed, had cast away discipline with hope—before the day was done the Black Watch were to see Frenchmen of a different mettle—but great numbers were in open flight. By good fortune, however, neither Luftwaffe nor German tanks were active in the early hours of the 11th, and by nine o’clock, or earlier, the sides of the box about St Valéry were occupied, and the Highland battalions had begun to dig themselves in.
A Short Left Hook
But the perimeter was never established as a fully defended line. Though there were definite areas of resistance, it was impossible to effect continuity of resistance. There had been no chance to reconnoitre positions, and the Germans were still moving with a devastating speed. They were again exploiting their favourite attack: a left hook, and this time a short left hook. They had not thrust lengthily against Le Havre, but northwards to Dieppe and again to Fécamp. And now the left hook to Fécamp was turning swiftly and snakily to the east.
The Lothians and Border Horse, after shepherding the Allied left along the coast, had retired from Arques to Longueil, where one of the squadrons had some altercation with three stout-hearted Norman farmers who, mistaking them for Germans, opposed the tanks with shot-guns. Now they were ordered to reconnoitre the river Durdent—not, as had been intended, the open bottom of the box, but its western side—and they found the Germans in strong possession of the bridge at Cany, in considerable force near the coastal hamlet of Veulettes; the intervening bridges had been blown.
The squadrons went into action, and though two tanks were lost at Cany, the situation there was stabilised, and a reconnaissance to Bosville, south-east of it, brought news that it was held securely by the French, with no Germans in sight. But on the coast about Veulettes the danger was imminently great. “C” squadron was reinforced and ordered to hold the enemy at all costs, but by eight o’clock at night: it was reported to be withdrawing towards St Valéry, and till darkness the German attack was strongly pressed. The other squadrons fell back on Cailleville.
On the eastern perimeter, in the meanwhile, the 4th Seaforths and the 5th Gordons had been fairly heavily engaged, and had suffered casualties. The 1st Black Watch, at St Pierre-le-Viger, were on a forward slope with little cover and their right flank bare. They had no rations till they found some biscuits in a deserted N.A.A.F.I. dump, but they killed a cow and added half-cooked beef to hard tack. At one o’clock an order came to reconnoitre a line from Gueutteville to Cailleville, to which, it was said, they would withdraw in the late afternoon, and be prepared to embark that night.
At ten o’clock General Fortune had issued to his Commanding Officers the following directives:
“The Navy will probably make an effort to take us off by boat, perhaps to-night, perhaps in two nights. I wish all ranks to realise that this can only be achieved by the full co-operation of everyone. Men may have to walk five or six miles. The utmost discipline must prevail.
“Men will board the boats with equipment and carrying arms. Vehicles will be rendered useless without giving away what is being done. Carriers should be retained as the final rearguard. Routes back to the nearest highway should be reconnoitred and officers detailed as guides. Finally, if the enemy should attack before the whole force is evacuated, all ranks must realise that it is up to them to defeat them. He may attack with tanks, and we have quite a number of anti-tank guns behind. If the infantry can stop the enemy’s infantry, that is all that is required, while anti-tank guns and rifles inflict casualties on armoured fighting vehicles.”
In the afternoon Fortune received from Colonel Butler, commanding Le Havre garrison, a very dubious confirmation of the arrangements for evacuation. A letter informed him that the Commander-in-Chief at Portsmouth was prepared to send ships to the neighbourhood of St Valéry or to any other place that Fortune might prefer. The Admiral wanted to know the present location of the Fifty-First, its possible location on the following day, Fortune’s strength, and his intention. But the letter was brought by a warship whose commander had been instructed to look for the Division at Ouville, ten miles to the east of Fortune’s new Headquarters at Cailleville; and the lack of communications which imposed this lack of knowledge—of position and of intention—was a constant reminder of the frailty of plans and projects for joint action.
The Fighting French
The two forward companies of the Black Watch at St Pierre-le-Viger fought stiffly during the late afternoon against ever-increasing German pressure, and by six o’clock some fifty men were wounded or dead. The Commanding Officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Honeyman, had gone back to Brigade Headquarters, and was prevented by machine-gun fire from returning. German tanks appeared at half-past four, and the Signal Officer went to the Battalion’s rear Headquarters to bring up the anti-tank platoon. But he, too, was cut off. The Colonel found a way to his other companies, about three-quarters of a mile distant, which at seven o’clock were attacked by numerous tanks. The attack was beaten off, but it was renewed at dawn and the companies were overrun.
The forward companies were latterly commanded by the Adjutant, Captain B. C. Bradford, but senior to Bradford was a French cavalry officer who had arrived in mid-afternoon with a squadron of hard-bitten old soldiers who fought with the utmost gallantry and determination. They picketed their horses in a wood and joined the battle as infantry. When first one flank and then the other was threatened, the French moved briskly to meet the danger, and not the most accurate shell-fire could keep their heads down. Their Commandant, an oldish man, had one arm blown off by a mortar-bomb. His face was grey with approaching death, but two troopers carried him round his position and he repeated his orders: they would hold their line till dark.
13. The Defence of St Valéry
All along the eastern perimeter the line was held against a bombardment of infantry-guns and mortars, against tanks that came in behind a curtain of mortar-bombs, and dive-bombers that had no enemy in the sky to hinder them. But though the eastern line stood firm, there were bewildering reports of fighting nearer to St Valéry, and communication with Divisional or Brigade Headquarters became almost impossible because the enemy’s machine-gunners were waking on every road for despatch-riders.
In the town itself there was already more cause for alarm than on the eastern defences: the box had been entered through its western side. The three battalions ordered to hold the Durdent had had no time to reach the river, and Fortune himself had given them an alternative line running southward from the hamlet of Le Tot. The 2nd Seaforths astride the road through Le Tot were in two woods, and a company of the Norfolks was doing its best to fill a wide gap between them and the Camerons. When the German armoured division came in from Veulettes, the Seaforths were in evil plight, for they had left their anti-tank platoon with the Duke of Wellington’s on the other side of St Valéry; and so long as the enemy stayed beyond the effective range of anti-tank rifles, they could do little more than show their capacity for taking punishment. But this, of course, was no new experience. Every battalion in the Division had suffered, day after day, from the inadequacy of their weapons. Firing their little two-inch mortars—few enough even of them—against the infantry-guns and innumerable heavy mortars of the enemy, they had all exclaimed, at one time or another, with the same bitterness of frustration, “If only we could get at them!” But wishes make no headway against superior fire-power.
So the Seaforths took their gruel in the woods of Le Tot, and the tanks went through. Not without loss, indeed, for the Highlanders exacted toll of them, and gunners behind the infantry punished them again. But the Germans broke through. They took from the French, and held it, the bluff hill that shelters St Valéry from the Channel winds, and there was close fighting about the south-western outskirts of the town. Throughout the afternoon it had be
en shelled by guns of small calibre, and bombed at intervals from the air. A good many fires were started, and some French wounded were showing signs of anxiety. But the civil population had either fled or gone to ground in their cellars, and there was no more disorder in the town than the occasional stampede of two or three hundred Army mules which had found precarious freedom in the streets. The only troops in St Valéry, except for a few men of the R.A.S.C. and Divisional Headquarters, were the 51st Anti-Tank Regiment, most of the Norfolks, and a company of the Kensingtons, whose orders were to hold a narrow circle round the outskirts, and cover the final withdrawal of troops from the perimeter.
But the possibility of such a withdrawal was menaced by the appearance, under a heavy smoke-screen, of German tanks and motor-cyclists at the south-west corner of the town; and about five or six o’clock the streets were suddenly filled with the chatter and whine of machine-gun fire. The attack was beaten off, but patrols who went out—signallers from Aberdeen for the most part—found clusters of tanks all round the town, not trying to force an entry, but waiting, sinister and still.
“Take that to your German General”
Final arrangements for evacuation had been made at a conference attended by Victor Fortune, the French General commanding the IXth Corps, and officers of the Royal Navy; and beaches had been allotted to French and British. Embarkation was to begin at half-past ten, and orders were sent round the perimeter that when everything had been destroyed except the arms and ammunition a man could carry, the troops were to withdraw into the town. These orders, however, failed to reach the 2nd Seaforths, who remained in the woods.
At half-past nine Major Rennie, G.S.O. II, and a naval officer reconnoitred the beaches, and both in the town and on the promenade were fired on by machine-guns from the west hill. Earlier in the day the naval officer had been surprised by the German tank attack, and nearly captured. He had arrived in St Valéry with a new code-book, and this, under machine-gun fire, he managed to burn behind a pile of stones. Now, on the beach, he was waiting for a signal from the relieving ships. He waited till about half-past ten, and no signal came. He and Rennie were rather worried.
From St Pierre-le-Viger, Bradford had sent off as many of his wounded as he could pack into his office-truck and a Bren-carrier. They drove across the fields towards St Valéry. The two diminished companies then held their ground till nearly ten o’clock, when with the French they retired to what was to have been their inner line, between Gueutteville and Cailleville. They reached Gueutteville at half-past one in the morning, but no one there knew anything about the 153rd Brigade. The men were dead-beat and could go no farther, so they slept for two hours on the stone floor of a schoolhouse.
About midnight the Lothians and Border Horse, retiring to Cailleville and thence to St Valéry, could see from four miles away their destination marked by two great pillars of red smoke rising far into the sky. They had destroyed their vehicles, and in accordance with the General’s directives were prepared to embark.
The entrance to the town is a narrow way between bluff heights and the men were told they must go quietly and in single file, as the Germans were on both sides. They had orders to make for the station, but there they could find no one to give them further instructions. There were soldiers of all kinds in the narrow twisting streets, and most of the houses were on fire. Chimneypots came tumbling down, and smouldering beams crashed in a shower of sparks. At intervals a star-shell rose and fell with a white glare upon the crowded, smoking alleys. The harbour was difficult to find, and when they reached it there were no ships there.
In fact naval ships had been waiting off the coast since the afternoon of the 10th, and, as already described, had entered St Valéry on the night of the 10th, leaving in the morning. The transports and boats had then assembled north of the harbour before midday on the 11th. They were heavily bombed by aircraft and subjected to accurate fire from batteries on the cliffs, so that orders had to be issued then to move farther off the coast. Later on June 11th the evacuation commenced at Havre and orders to evacuate at St Valéry came from the Admiralty at the same time, but it was then too late. Fog had come down, delaying the return of the ships and obscuring from view all the coast. The tug Fair Play closed the beach about 12.30 a.m. on June 12th, slightly west of St Valéry, and landed beach parties. Heavy fire was opened on them at once and four boats were sunk. The cliffs and the town were securely occupied by the enemy. The destroyer Codrington proceeded to Veulles, escorting some eight vessels. She landed beach parties and began to take men off successfully in spite of heavy machine-gun fire. The sloop Hebe II took off 80 soldiers from the beach close to St Valéry, but she was sunk and lost with her commanding officer. On shore it was reported that a naval tow of four or five boats, trying to enter, had been sunk by gun-fire, and no other ships had come in. The latest news was that no ships were coming.
It had begun to rain. The news was confirmed that there would be no evacuation that night. The patient soldiers, packed tightly in the darkness, took this newest blow, this fearful disappointment, with stoic fortitude. They did not grumble, and if they felt despair they hid it under calm acceptance. They obeyed their orders, and moving into the eastward part of the town, prepared to defend themselves within a small perimeter for another day. There was still some hope—or perhaps only the fiction of a hope—that the Navy would come for them. But stronger than hope was discipline. Discipline was unimpaired.
At half-past three in the morning the Germans sent an envoy to the Seaforths in the woods around Le Tot. He arrived in a tank, carrying a white flag, and brought false tidings; there bad been a general surrender, he said, of the French IXth Corps and the 51st Division. He requested the Seaforths to follow suit.
The Seaforths, uncertain whether to believe him but certainly unwilling to submit, asked for time to consider the demand. They had in the woods a large number of wounded men, who badly needed medical attention. It might be possible, they thought, to get their wounded cared for and mislead the enemy as well. Volunteers were called for. A considerable party of men emerged from the woods and walked—or limped or were carried—into the German lines. The enemy, apparently, believed that the Seaforths had surrendered. But their prisoners were only the wounded and the men who had volunteered to attend them. The remainder of the battalion, and all surviving officers, lay hidden in the wood till darkness came again. Then, dividing into little parties, they scattered and tried to break through the German ring. But very few had any luck, and only a handful finally escaped.
Elsewhere, and nearer to St Valéry, another demand for surrender had been more flatly rejected by an officer of the 1st Gordons. Second-Lieutenant P. B. Hay, in charge of his Battalion’s transport, had spent much of the day on shell-swept roads, striving with dogged valiance to maintain communication between his Headquarters and the transport echelon. Cut off at last by increased shelling and the ever-tightening congestion of traffic, he brought his command to the outskirts of St Valéry—some hamlet on the edge of it, or suburban colony—and found confusion there. The road was blocked. Two big French lorries, overturned, were burning fiercely. There were soldiers there who had lost their units, stragglers, men without leaders. Hay took command of the situation.
With great energy and initiative he organised local defence. He gathered the lost men, formed sections and platoons, established them in defensive positions. His authority was recognised, and when a French officer, some poor renegade, came with a message from the enemy, it was Hay to whom he was taken, and from whom he got his answer. It was brief, it was loud, it was impolite. “Take that to your German General,” said Hay.
Later, when shelling intensified, Hay withdrew his positions, and till late at night maintained his command intact. When he was last seen he was going his rounds, maintaining order where it was threatened, creating order where there was confusion.
Private McCready Writes Home
Private McCready, who has been quoted before, makes a vivid picture of th
e chaos that by now existed in parts of the surrounding countryside. He and some others had got lost the night before, because a truck-driver fell asleep, and after escaping from enemy country they reached Brigade Headquarters by devious routes.
“All the main roads,” he says, “were simply choked with French troops on foot, and refugees, occasionally we passed piles of them dead at the roadside, having been machine-gunned from the air or just rolled aside by tanks. How we ever got out of that was a miracle. We never got back to the Battalion after that. We were stuck in an orchard near Brigade and we just simply waited for things to happen. Mr. Telfer-Smollett went off to reconnoitre new positions about mid-day, and never returned.
“By this time we were being shelled, machine-gunned, and I think all the weapons that could be used were against us, this continued until after dark, and I am afraid I fell asleep at the roadside. Mr. Allison gave out all the cigarettes he had and we just simply lay there. At two o’clock in the morning”—the morning of the 12th, that is—“I was told it was a case of every man for himself, so we all got bundled into the remaining five trucks and I must say I was completely unaware of what direction the coast lay in, or what was to be done, in fact, I was beyond caring about anything.
The Highland Division Page 7