by Walter Lord
It was quite a jolt to Tarry when the company agent Anthony Summers came aboard one evening and called the nine-man crew together. There was trouble across the Channel, he explained, and the Lady Southborough was needed. Who would volunteer to go? Nobody knew what to expect, but to a man they volunteered.
All Portsmouth harbor was coming alive. Besides the Lady Southborough, four other Tilbury dredges were alerted. The Hayling Island ferries, Pickford’s fleet of small coasters, Navy patrol boats, the battleship Nelson’s launch—all bustled with activity, loading fuel and supplies.
Little ships would be especially important if it came to evacuation from the shore itself. The larger vessels couldn’t get close enough to the gently shelving Flemish beaches. During the past week Ramsay’s requirements for small boats had been widely (though quietly) circulated, yet at dawn on May 26 he still had only four Belgian passenger launches, several Contraband Control boats from Ramsgate, and a few Dover harbor craft. Early that morning Rear-Admiral Sir Tom Phillips, the Vice-Chief of Naval Staff, held a meeting at the Admiralty, trying to speed things up. Among those present was Admiral Preston of the Small Vessels Pool.
The meeting had broken up and Preston was already back at the shop when the Admiral’s assistant secretary, Stan Berry, reported for work that morning. It was Sunday; most of the staff were off. Berry was looking forward to a quiet day, but the duty officer, Lieutenant Berrie, offered an ominous greeting: “Thank God you’ve come. I wouldn’t be in your shoes for a pension!”
“Why?” asked Berry.
“I don’t know what’s up, but the Old Man is here.” Whatever it was, it must be serious. Peacetime customs die slowly, and admirals normally didn’t come to the office on Sunday.
Preston himself said nothing to clear up the mystery. He simply greeted Berry, asking where was the regular secretary, Commander Garrett? Berry explained that Garrett was off, but the arrangement was for him to call in every two hours.
“Tell him to report immediately.” And the Admiral ordered Berry to call in all the rest of the staff, too.
This was no easy matter. For instance, Lieutenant-Commander Pickering, in charge of drifters and trawlers, was in Brighton. When Berry tried to phone him, word came back that he had gone to the cinema. Which cinema? Nobody knew. So Berry had him paged at every cinema in town until he was finally located.
Messages were now flying all over England, breaking into the normal routine of ships and men. Surgeon-Lieutenant James Dow was having a very pleasant war on the minesweeper Gossamer, based on the Tyne. The hours were easy, shore leave generous, the local girls all attractive. Suddenly on May 25 an Admiralty signal intruded: “Raise steam with all despatch. Proceed to Harwich. Do not wait for liberty men, who will rejoin at Harwich.” The ship buzzed with rumors, but nobody really knew what was up.
At Liverpool the destroyer Somali had just docked after a battering in Norwegian waters. Sub-Lieutenant Peter Dickens was counting on a little break, but the Somali had barely tied up when he was handed an Admiralty message: report to Chatham Barracks immediately. That meant going to the other end of England—why?
Chatham itself was in turmoil—or as near to turmoil as a Royal Navy training base ever gets. Seaman G. F. Nixon was attending gunnery school when his battalion was ordered to fall in at 4:00 a.m. on the 26th. At 7:00 they left for Dover in busses, singing, “We’ll Hang Out the Washing on the Siegfried Line.” No one had a clue as to what was going on.
Deep within the white cliffs of Dover the staff of the Dynamo Room worked on. “No bed for any of us last night and probably not for many nights. I’m so sleepy I can hardly keep my eyes open,” Admiral Ramsay wrote his wife Mag on the 23rd. As he worked in his office, he would scribble a line or so between visitors, then stuff the letter into his desk drawer as some new crisis arose. Mag, in return, kept up a flow of gingerbread, asparagus from the garden, and tender words of support.
“Days and nights are all one,” he wrote her on the 25th, and indeed the men in the Dynamo Room had lost all track of time. The usual measuring rods were gone. Buried deep in their chalk cliff, they had no chance to know whether it was day or night. They had no regular meals—just an occasional sandwich or mug of tea taken on the run. There was no pace to their work; they were going flat out all the time. There was no variety; only a feeling of unending crisis that finally numbed the senses.
The strange fleet of ferries, hoppers, dredges, barges, coasters, and skoots now converging on Dover raised a whole set of new problems. First, they would have to be moored somewhere. Sheerness, on the Thames estuary, gradually became the main collecting point where the smaller ships were sorted out and prepared for the sea. Ramsgate became the final assembly point, where fuel tanks would be topped off, supplies loaded, and convoys organized.
Problems were solved, only to spawn new problems equally pressing. Mechanics had to be found who understood balky engines that defied the Navy’s experience … coal had to be obtained for some of the ancient coasters … 1,000 charts were needed for skippers who rarely went to sea. Routes could be marked on them, but data on the beaches was vague at best. Responding to a call for help from the Dynamo Room, Colonel Sam Bassett—head of the Interservice Topographical Department—toured London’s travel agencies, collecting brochures that might describe the French beaches in some detail. There had been nine months of war since the last holiday tripper made that sort of request; the clerks must have thought he was crazy.
Arms were another problem. This peacetime fleet had to have some sort of protection, and the Lewis machine gun seemed the best bet. But there was no single depot that could supply all Ramsay’s needs. They had to be scrounged from here and there—11 from London … 10 from Glasgow … 1 from Cardiff. . . 7 from Newcastle … 105 altogether.
If the Dynamo Room was a scene of “organized chaos,” as one staff officer later recalled, the majestic cliffs successfully hid the fact from the rest of the world. Dover never looked lovelier than it did this 26th of May. The guns could be heard rumbling across the Channel—Boulogne was gone; Calais was falling—but it all seemed very far away to the crews of the vessels riding peacefully at anchor in the Downs.
On the minesweeper Medway Queen, a converted paddle steamer lying just off the cliffs, Chief Cook Thomas R. Russell leaned against the rail, shooting the breeze with his assistant, a young man he knew only as “Sec.” It was strange, they decided, that the whole flotilla was in port this morning—no one at all was out sweeping. Right after breakfast a launch had made the rounds, picked up the captain, first officer, and wireless man from every ship, and taken them to the flagship for some sort of palaver. Now a naval barge eased alongside the Medway Queen and delivered case after case of food—far more than her 48 men could possibly eat. “Enough grub has been put aboard us,” observed Sec, “to feed a ruddy army.”
The men trapped in Flanders knew little more than the crew of the Medway Queen. Later this day, the 26th, Major-General E. A. Osborne, commanding the 44th Division near Hazebrouck, would get a quiet briefing from Brigadier G. D. Watkins of III Corps headquarters, but those of less exalted rank had to depend on rumor. Reginald Newcomb, a chaplain with the 50th Division, had a crony in Intelligence who hinted darkly that the BEF would make for the coast and embark for home—“that is, if Jerry doesn’t get there first.” Rumor spread through the 1st Fife and Forfar Yeomanry that they were going back to the sea, where they would embark, land farther down the coast, and attack the Germans from the rear.
Orders, when they finally came, were usually by word of mouth. In the varied units of the Royal Army Service Corps, especially, there was not much to go on, and many of the RASC officers simply vanished. The men of the 4th Division Ammunition Supply Company were merely told, “Every man for himself; make for Dunkirk, and good luck!” The No. 1 Troop Carrying Company was instructed to “get as near Dunkirk as you can, destroy vehicles, and every man for himself.” And again, for the 573rd Field Squadron, Royal Engineers, the familiar wor
ds: “Every man for himself. Make for Dunkirk.”
Often the orders came almost without warning. It was shortly after dawn in a small Belgian village when Sergeant George Snelgar, attached to a transport company, was awakened by voices shouting, “Get on Parade!” He heard the sound of marching feet, and looking out the window of the café where he was billeted, he saw his unit marching off to the vehicle park. Catching up, he learned that the orders were to smash their cars and motorcycles and go to Dunkirk. They couldn’t miss it: just head for that column of smoke.
At midnight it was harder. Corporal Reginald Lockerby of the 2nd Ordnance Field Park was groping north in a truck when an officer stepped out in the road and waved him down. He was heading right for the German lines 500 yards away. When Lockerby asked for directions to Dunkirk, the officer pointed to a star hovering above the horizon and said, “Just follow that star.” Others were guided by the gun flashes that lit up the night sky. By now they were on almost all sides. There was only one little gap to the north that remained black. That was Dunkirk.
Major Peter Hill, a transport officer, was one of the few who had a map. Not army issue—for some reason all rear area maps had been called in at the start of the campaign. What he did have was a map put out by the Daily Telegraph to help its readers follow the war.
Private W. S. Walker of the 5th Medium Regiment, Royal Artillery, could have better used an English-French dictionary. Coming to a signpost that pointed to “Dunkerque,” he wondered whether that was the same place as Dunkirk.
He need not have worried. Any road north would do, as long as it kept within the corridor held on the east by the Belgians and British; on the west by the French and the British; and at the foot—all the way south—by the French clinging grimly to Lille.
All the roads were still packed with troops in every sort of order and disorder—ranging from Welsh Guardsmen marching smartly with rifles at the slope to stragglers like Private Leslie R. Page, an artillery officer’s batman with the 44th Division. He had lost his unit when it scattered to dodge some strafing. Now he was plodding north alone, mixed with a crowd of soldiers and refugees. A big, open Belgian farm cart rumbled by. It was loaded with fleeing civilians, and there up front beside the driver, Page saw—of all people—his own father.
“What’s this, our Sunday school outing?” Page cracked as he climbed aboard for a brief family reunion. It turned out that the father, a warrant officer with the infantry, was just as lost as the son. Then the Luftwaffe struck again … the two were separated … and once more young Page wandered on alone. “Where are we going?” he asked someone and got the usual answer: “See that smoke in the sky? That’s Dunkirk. Make for it!”
There were women, too, in this great trek—not all of them ordinary refugees. A French liaison officer with the 2nd Ordnance Field Park brought along his mistress. Driver Gordon A. Taylor of the RASC tried to look after a young French girl he had found whimpering alone in the dark in a suburb of Lille. He managed to find a lorry, put her in it, and got her out of town. He felt quite the white knight and protector—until he lost her when the lorry got stuck in a traffic jam and they had to take to their feet. He never saw her again and would always wonder whether his “protection” did her more harm than good.
Private Bill Hersey of the 1st East Surreys had better luck. He had married the daughter of a French café owner in Tourcoing, and Augusta Hersey proved a determined bride indeed. As the East Surreys retreated through Roncq, she suddenly appeared and begged Bill to take her along. With the connivance of his company commander, Captain Harry Smith, Augusta was packed off in the headquarters truck.
Another war bride wasn’t as lucky. When Jeanne Michez married Staff Sergeant Gordon Stanley in February 1940, she became the first French girl to wed a member of the BEF. Stanley was attached to GHQ Signals at Arras; Jeanne moved into his quarters; and until May they lived an almost peacetime domestic life. When “the balloon went up,” he moved with Advanced GHQ into Belgium, and she went home to sit out the war at her mother’s café in the nearby village of Servins.
Jeanne Stanley knew very little of what was happening during the next two weeks, and she was astonished when suddenly one afternoon Gordon rolled up in a staff car with a machine gun mounted on the roof. The Germans were coming, he told her; they must leave right away. Jeanne flung a few things into a suitcase, plus two bottles of rum stuffed in by her mother. In an hour she was ready to go, dressed almost as if she was taking the afternoon train to Paris—blue dress, blue coat, matching blue broad-brimmed hat.
Off they went, the two of them up front and a corporal named Trippe in back. The roads were one huge traffic jam, and it didn’t help when Jeanne’s broad-brimmed hat blew out the window. Gordon stopped, and as he walked back to pick it up, the first Stukas struck.
They missed … the hat was rescued … the Stanleys drove on. They spent the first night in the car; other nights mostly in some ditch. Once they slept in the big barn of a Belgian farmer. He wouldn’t give them permission, but Gordon shot off the barn-door lock, and they settled in anyway.
Sleeping in the hay, diving into ditches to escape the Stukas, they got dirtier and dirtier. Once Jeanne managed to buy a bucket of water for ten francs, but most of the time there was no chance to wash. The broad-brimmed hat crumbled and vanished.
Eventually they reached the little French town of Bailleul. Here they stopped at the comfortable house of an elderly woman, Mlle. Jonkerick. Unlike many of the people they met, she was all hospitality and took them in for the night. Next day they moved on, still hounded by the inevitable Stukas.
Jeanne was now completely exhausted, her clothes in shreds. Gordon tried to put her in his battledress, complete with tin hat, but nothing fit. She finally told him that it was no use; she couldn’t go on. He took her back to Mlle. Jonkerick, who proved as hospitable as ever: Jeanne was welcome to stay till the roads cleared and she could return safely to Servins.
Now it was time to say good-bye. Gordon was a soldier; he had his duty; she understood that. Still, it was a hard moment, made just a little easier when he promised to come back and get her in two months. He would keep that promise, except for the part about two months. Actually it took him five years.
Jeanne Stanley was not the only one near the breaking point. A young lieutenant trying to lead a unit of the 2nd Ordnance Field Park got lost so many times he finally burst into tears. Corporal Jack Kitchener of the RASC found himself in a horrendous traffic jam, which turned into a pushing and shoving match between British and Belgian drivers. When a BEF officer tried to break it up, someone pushed him, too. He pulled his revolver and fired, hitting Kitchener in the left leg. “You've shot me, not the bloke who pushed you!” Kitchener exploded.
Private Bill Bacchus was driver-batman for a chaplain attached to the 13th Field Ambulance, and their trip north turned into an odyssey of bitterness and recrimination. Bacchus considered the padre a drunken coward; the padre charged Bacchus with neglect of duty and “dumb insolence.” Several times the padre drove off alone, leaving Bacchus to shift for himself. On two occasions Bacchus reached for his rifle, as if to use it on the padre. It seemed that even a man of God and his helper were not immune to the strain of defeat, the constant danger, the hunger and fatigue, the bombs, the chaos, the agony of this unending retreat.
Private Bill Stone had felt it all. He was a Bren gunner with the 5th Royal Sussex and had been in continuous action for two days holding off Jerry on the eastern side of the escape corridor. Now his section was ordered to make one more stand, giving time for the rest of the battalion to withdraw and reorganize farther to the rear.
They hung on for an hour, then pulled out in a truck kept for their getaway. It was dark now, and they decided to find some place where they could rest—they hadn’t had any sleep for three nights. They pulled up at a building which turned out to be a monastery. A robed monk appeared from out of the night, beckoned them to follow him, and led them inside.
It was
another world. Monks padded quietly about in their robes and sandals. Flickering candles lit the stone passageways. All was tranquility, and the war seemed a thousand years away. The abbé indicated that it would be a pleasure to give food and rest to these new visitors, along with a party of Royal Engineers who had also discovered this heavenly oasis.
They were all led into the cloisters and seated at a long refectory table. Each British soldier had a monk to wait on him and attend to his needs. They had food and wine that the monks had produced themselves, and after days of army biscuits and bully beef, the meal was like a royal banquet.
There was only one hitch. The Engineers explained that they were going to blow every bridge in the area next morning. Stone and his mates would have to be on their way by 5:00 a.m. They didn’t mind; the stone floor of the cloisters seemed like a feather bed after what they had been through.
At dawn they were on their way. Driving over the bridges, they slowed to a crawl, lest they prematurely set off the demolition charges already laid. The men of the Royal Sussex were well clear of the area when the distant boom of explosives told them that their brief idyll was over and they were back in the war.
Along with blowing up bridges, canal locks, power stations, and other facilities of possible use to the Germans, the BEF was now demolishing its own equipment. To a good artilleryman, it seemed almost sacrilegious to destroy the guns he had so lovingly fussed over for years. As they smashed the breechblocks and destroyed the dial sights, many were openly crying.
Bombardier Arthur May of the 3rd Medium Regiment felt the agony even more deeply than the others. He had been posted to the same battery of howitzers his father had fought with in World War I, and this was a matter of infinite pride. Even the guns were the same, except that they now had rubber tires instead of the old steel rims. The battlefields were the same too. Armentières and Poperinge were familiar names long before this spring. In more ways than one, May felt he was following in Father’s footsteps.