The Highland Division

by Eric Linklater

  “Well, we moved off. I was in the back of the 8 cwt. with somebody sitting on my head. We had only gone half a mile when we were ambushed, by machine-gun. I scrambled out somehow and dived into the ditch, then the enemy started using Very lights and picked the men off with tommy-guns as they jumped off the truck. I owe my life to the fact that I was in the last truck. I managed to scramble out of the ditch and along the bank. I almost got a burst into my back. They were using tracer and they almost burnt my ears with the heat. I came on a party of R.E’s at the roadside and they immediately scattered into the fields. I saw Mr. Allison there, he was all right, he followed some R.E’s who went off to the right.

  “I waited a few minutes, and then made off after the ones who went to the left. We were spotted in the light and murderous fire broke out again, I don’t know how far I crawled on my stomach, it seemed hours before that gunner got fed up, so with his last burst we gave him a volley from our rifles and it evidently disposed of him as the going was comparatively easy for a bit, until we ran into an enemy motor-convoy on the road. It was stopped, and I thought it was French. They must have got a surprise because we were well away when they opened fire on us. I don’t think they hit anybody as it was fairly misty and that coupled with the darkness helped us. After that it was fairly easy to the cliffs.”

  The Black Watch See it Through

  At a quarter to four the Black Watch roused in their schoolhouse and continued their march to St Valéry. During the night it had begun to rain, and now it was raining hard. After a mile or two they were halted by an almost impassable mass of deserted transport. Bradford found a bicycle and made his way to Cailleville to look for the rest of the Battalion. But Cailleville was deserted. He collected two waterproofs and a tin of chocolate biscuits from deserted staff cars, and was about to return to his companies when he discovered that someone had stolen his bicycle. He found another, and presently met Major Dundas, second-in-command of the Battalion, who told him that the order to hold the Cailleville line had been cancelled. Dundas had forty men, Bradford a hundred. They found a ration dump, and issued bully-beef and biscuits.

  At a quarter to eight they encountered a Brigade Major who told them to take up a position on high ground near a cemetery about a mile and a half north-east of St Valéry—on the ground that Fortune had chosen for his last stand, that is. The command was organised, and a search of the hundreds of deserted trucks that littered the nearby roads produced Bren guns, anti-tank rifles, ammunition and rations. Stragglers were collected and armed. The rump of the Black Watch, well-found and fed, were again ready for action, and had not long to wait for it. Presently they were being mortared from front and rear, and tanks came in upon their left flank. They could see some French officers with white cloths pinned to their backs, but thought only that this must be some eccentric form of identification. It was still raining.

  Elsewhere on the eastern skirts of St Valéry, Camerons, Gordons and Seaforths, with discipline and native resolution to combat mortal weariness, had in like manner organised their last resistance. But confusion by now was more typical of the scene than order, and discipline prevailed as islands in a fearful chaos. The white clouts on the French officers’ shoulders were more significant than the Black Watch had thought. The French had already surrendered. At some time during the night of the 11th a French artillery regiment had told the Kensingtons that the war was over, and at eight o’clock on the morning of the 12th our Allies capitulated.

  The Braver Choice

  There was indeed no reason, save honour, for fighting any longer. The Germans were in St Valéry. They had established their light field-pieces, their heavy mortars and machine-guns, about the harbour and in commanding positions overlooking the port. The Navy could not enter. Through the rain over the Channel no one could see the promise of a White Ensign. The hope of escape had vanished.

  But Victor Fortune had still to make his decision, and it was not easy. The hard core of the Fifty-First was fighting still, and would fight till its last platoon was overwhelmed. Was it possible to organise a counterattack on the German positions about the harbour, and still maintain outward defence against the day’s new pressure from east and west and south? Was there any hope, any chance at all, of regaining the town and holding it for another night?

  The men were weary to the very bone. Since the first week of May they had had no proper rest. There had been no chance to refurbish and reorganise the battalions after their fighting on the Saar. There had come instead the long march across France, and then the hurried advance to the Somme and the days of fighting before Abbeville. Then the contested retreat, with rearguard action by day and the dive-bombers screaming from the sun, and by night the forced marches over roads that were a nightmare of lost souls and bewildered traffic. His Highlanders and their English companions-in-arms had left their dead in every Norman field from the Somme to the little Durdent, from the Cambron woods to the trees about the cemetery where the Black Watch were now at bay. Only a fragment of the Division remained, and those who survived were at the last pitch of their endurance.

  There was yet a stronger argument than human exhaustion.

  Not a round remained of gun ammunition; the Royal Artillery, which had fought throughout the retreat with dexterous gallantry and great accomplishment, had fired their last shells before they took the breech-blocks from their guns and left them to the enemy. The Sappers had no stores: they had long been fighting as infantry, and on the Bresle a Field Company—the 26th—had been seen conducting itself with as much aptitude for battle as if it had been born, bred, taught and trained to be nothing else than infantry. But even the hardiest of infantry soldiers need more than a rifle and a clip of cartridges, and to lighten the load that was to have been embarked, Fortune had given orders that all stores and vehicles and equipment should be destroyed, all gear cast away except what weapons a man could carry. But the Germans had their artillery, their abundance of mortars, their machine-guns. To order a few companies of exhausted riflemen, with Bren guns in support, to attack such a weight of metal would be little better than homicide. But the alternative was surrender, and the burden of such an act would rest on him. …

  Fortune never shrank from making a decision. Now, facing the hardest question of all, he took the braver choice.

  At ten o’clock Major Thomas Rennie went to the cemetery hill and gave the remnant of the Black Watch their orders. They were to cease fire and surrender.

  No one believed him, because the order, at first hearing, was unbelievable. But Rennie was well known, and his word could not long be doubted. With understanding came utter dismay, and men stood up and wept. A furlong distant the mortar detachment continued to fight against a troop of tanks. Not until they had been individually commanded to surrender did they cease fire.

  A little while later the last fragment of the Gordon Highlanders, unarmed, were allowed to march past their General. Marching in the rain, they gave him Eyes right! And the Fifty-First Division went into eclipse.

  14. “Scorched Earth” and Escape

  East of St Valéry there are cliffs, three hundred feet high, reaching without a break to the little port of Veules-les-Roses, four miles away. When the Navy on the night of June 11th discovered that it was impossible to evacuate troops from St Valéry, they proceeded to Veulles-les-Roses four miles to the eastward, landed beach parties and began evacuating the troops found there. In spite of machine-gun fire from the cliffs they succeeded in taking off about 1,350 British and 930 French soldiers. These were the little groups of men, more fortunate than many others, who responded to sauve qui peut by heading eastward. They had had a perilous route to travel. Major C. J. Y. Dallmeyer, of the Lothians and Border Horse, who successfully led a party from St Valéry to the cliffs, saw, when daylight came, the dim shape of vessels lying offshore, and knew there was a break in the cliff at Veules. When he got there he found five gullies leading to the beach, of which three were allotted to French troops and two to British. They fo
rmed a queue and waited their turn. German aeroplanes flew over, but did no damage. Small boats were coming ashore and ferrying-off their passengers. Presently they were taken aboard a ship, which already was being shelled from St Valéry.

  On his way to Veules, Dallmeyer had seen a large number of men going down the cliff on improvised ropes, but, not unwisely, had decided against so uncertain a route. Private McCready, however, risked his neck and brought it safely home:

  “There was no way down the cliffs which were three hundred feet high, and a sheer drop. Someone started making a rope of rifle-slings, and I joined in, by the time we had it made it was daylight, and the enemy were shelling from both sides. I was fourth man on the rope and it was two and a half hours before I got down. The first man to go met his death as the slings snapped, but it was either chance it or get caught so over I went, what a drop; and bullets spattering all over. We were being machine-gunned and sniped, all the time. However, I got down without mishap, and struggled along two miles of beach to the boats.

  “What a lot of dead men on that beach—it was littered with them. I had just got into the small boat when the bombers came, one boat was sunk with about thirty men in it, only one man was saved. The ships put up a terrific barrage and brought down two planes. How I got on the ship is still a bit of a dream to me, but get on I did, and soaked to the skin and simply covered with mud. I just sprawled out on deck, out for the count, I soon got a rude awakening, the enemy started shelling from the cliff tops, but the destroyers put paid to their career. All those who had rifles had to get up on the top deck and fire at the planes. So I fired my remaining bandolier.

  “We lay there until it was decided that no more men could possibly be on the beach or on the cliffs.”

  That was about ten o’clock on the morning of the 12th.

  Havre—A Knacker’s Yard

  The same hour was spent by Ark Force in making of Le Havre a knacker’s yard. Hundreds of motor vehicles were being smashed, initially by driving one against another so as to crumple bonnet and stern, then with hammer, crowbar, or heavy spanner. Petrol stores and oil refineries had been set on fire the day before. …

  Three days earlier the C.R.A. had ordered the 51st Medium Regiment of Royal Artillery to move at once from its sites in the Bois Robert and try to cross the Seine at Rouen. The regiment had no information about the German positions, nor of Allied troops in the area. It had to travel, with eleven guns and a hundred and ten vehicles, across the front of the advancing German columns for a distance of nearly thirty miles.

  Two parallel roads crossed the debatable flank, and both were reconnoitred. One patrol returned. The route was decided and a rendezvous appointed south of the Seine. The Commanding Officer, with his Adjutant, his Regimental Sergeant-Major and four despatch-riders, led the way. They arrived in Rouen at ten a.m. and found an array of oil-tanks burning into a huge black cloud. One road-bridge still crossed the river, but when they were two hundred yards from it, it was blown up. The suspension bridge was also blown, and Germany’s Fifth Column began sniping from houses in the vicinity. French columns of considerable size were trying to cross the river by any means that remained, and the Colonel decided that his regiment would stand no chance against such competition. He ordered it to a wood three miles out of Rouen, and the Adjutant went to reconnoitre Pont de l’Arche, ten miles to the south-east.

  The Colonel went to look at a ferry eight or nine miles to the west, but the only road to it was impenetrably blocked by French transport and refugees. He decided to go to Le Havre, and found on the way that the intervening ferries had been stopped by order of the French military authorities, and roads leading to them were closed.

  A similar attempt to save stores and heavy transport had been made by the 154th Brigade Signals and Light Aid Detachment, moving east from Le Havre. They set out with machine-guns in the leading vehicles, a four-gallon tin of petrol in each, and the men were instructed that if they were ambushed they were to puncture the tins, set the transport on fire, and return to Le Havre on foot if they could. The column consisted of about eighty vehicles. Not a boat was to be seen on the north bank of the Seine, and the road was littered with civilian cars, broken-down or abandoned. They arrived at Lille-bonne and found it in ruins, burning fiercely in one vast fire that was fed by an oil refinery which French Sappers had destroyed.

  French sentries guarded the Quillebeuf ferry. Nearly thirty vehicles got safely across, then the sound of firing was heard in Lillebonne, and the ferry did not return. The remainder of the column had to go back to Le Havre.

  The 154th Brigade Gets Away

  At nine o’clock on the 11th Brigadier Stanley-Clarke gave orders that the Gonserville–Montivilliers–Octeville line must be held to the last round and the last man. He knew then that the remaining Brigades of the Fifty-First were in desperate plight. He knew that Fortune meant to keep step with the French 31st Division, which could march only eighteen kilometres a day, and he knew that before they could arrive he would have to fight to keep the port open. But he was still hopeful that Fortune and his tattered battalions would get through.

  Then the Navy reported that the other Brigades were completely cut off, and an attempt would be made to embark them at St Valéry. Thereupon arrangements were immediately made for the evacuation of Ark Force and the garrison of Le Havre. Embarkation would begin that night, and the naval authorities insisted that, once it had begun, it must be continuous. The Luftwaffe had been very active over Le Havre—three transports, lying outside the harbour, had been sunk on the 10th, and a transit camp intensively bombed—but the Royal Air Force had arranged to give support on the 12th.

  “A” Brigade was withdrawn from the Lillebonne-Bréaute positions and safely embarked during the night of the 11th along with all troops but those manning the inner line. The rain gave some protection against German aircraft, and only a few bombs were dropped.

  It had been arranged that the inner line should be evacuated at noon on the 12th, but in the morning the French Command very earnestly requested that it be held for another twelve hours to enable scattered elements of their IXth Corps to reach Le Havre. This was conceded, and the afternoon was spent in salvaging tools from the columns of ruined transport, and completing their destruction. A subaltern of the 17th Field Regiment, enterprising and knowledgeable about shipping, got seventeen of his regiment’s 25-pounders embarked and safely to Cherbourg. Then the knacker’s yard sprouted fires and explosions, and the enemy’s reconnaissance planes, impressed by the dismal enormity of destruction, presumably reported that all troops had left the town. The Luftwaffe left it alone that night, and the last of the 154th Brigade was evacuated without difficulty in the early hours of June 13th and landed in Cherbourg.

  15. The Auld Alliance

  The two ferry loads of heavy vehicles which had been successful in crossing the river at Quillebeuf made slow progress by congested road to Le Mans, and there the drivers found fellow-countrymen: the forward elements of the Fifty-Second, the Lowland Division.

  As if to symbolise the phoenix quality of the Auld Alliance—stubbornly renewing itself out of seeming extinction—the regiments of Lowland Scotland came marching into France as the bitter remnant of the Highland battalions went forth from it. Seaforths and Camerons, Gordons and the Black Watch and the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders had fought to the conclusion of their luck; and now, to try theirs, the Royal Scots and the Highland Light Infantry, Cameronians, and Royal Scots Fusiliers and the King’s Own Scottish Borderers were coming in.

  A brigade went into action near Faverolles, but their service was short. Paris capitulated, and the Auld Alliance was abrogated by the Government of France.

  By the Government, but not by the people. When the captive-column of the Fifty-First had a little recovered from the exhaustion of the first few days—when men marched as if in a fearful dream of weariness and starvation—then some of the stronger and more daring found opportunity to elude their guards and go to cover in a r
oadside wood. Every day a few more escaped from the long column, and waiting for the night would turn on their tracks and begin a tedious long march to the coast, or farther still to the Spanish frontier. Then it was that the people of France showed their courage and abiding friendship, for in lonely farms or in villages under the very nose of the German conqueror these desperate fugitives found sustenance and willing help.

  Some of them went first to familiar places where they had been billeted in the early months of their service, where they had been welcome guests and their pipers so often had gathered a crowd to Miss Drummond of Perth and The Barren Rocks of Aden. They had roused all northern France to their tunes, and when they marched into Lorraine, into warmer country, into villages that smelt of fruit-blossom—but more strongly of the midden—they would see in the darkness of the night, in the shadow of a house, the glow of cigarettes, and voices would cry hoarsely, “Musique! Jouez le musique!” Then the pipers would play, and the villagers would march alongside the column, friendly and excited.

  They had been made welcome to France, and the welcome had been sincere. In the streets of a dozen occupied towns, in Paris itself, in hamlet and farm the sincerity was proved when the men who had escaped from their captors came to ask for help, and were given it by brave and generous hands.