The World War II Collection

by Walter Lord

  Five thousand troops? It was more like 25,000. Richardson immediately signaled the situation to Dover and the Admiralty via a destroyer hovering offshore. Once again, an urgent appeal for small boats and motor launches.

  Meanwhile they must “make do.” Richardson set up headquarters in the back of the lorry. Some of his seamen began breaking up the troops into batches of 50; others rigged lifelines running down into the sea. The beach shelved so gradually that even small boats had a hard time getting in close.

  “What a terrible night that was,” Kerr wrote his wife a few days later, “for we had got hold of the odds and ends of an army, not the fighting soldiers. There weren’t many officers, and those that were, were useless, but by speech and promise of safety and the sight of our naval uniforms we got order out of the rabble.”

  Those manning the boats were having an equally difficult time. The skoot Hilda had arrived early in the afternoon, and because of her shallow draft, her skipper Lieutenant A. Gray managed to nurse her within wading distance of the shore. Troops swarmed out, surrounding the boat completely, trying to scramble up ladders tossed over the bow. But the ladders weren’t firmly secured; the men were exhausted; and the tide was rising. They began falling back into the sea. It took superhuman efforts by the Hilda’s, crew to haul them up and over the rail—a collection of inert, sopping bundles.

  By 7:00 p.m. Gray had 500 men aboard—not many, considering that 25,000 were waiting—but all he could carry. These he ferried to a destroyer lying farther out, then returned for another load. The tide was now ebbing, and the Hilda soon sat on the sand in only two feet of water. Some 400 soldiers surged aboard, and he had another full load by the time the next tide refloated him around 1:30 a.m.

  Not far away the skoot Doggersbank was doing similar work. Earlier her skipper Lieutenant Donald McBarnet had let go a kedge anchor, then ran himself aground. But he drew more than the Hilda, and he still lay in six feet of water—too deep for wading. He lowered his boat and a raft to ferry men out to the ship. On reaching shore, both were immediately mobbed and swamped. Bailed out, they went to work, and by 8:00 p.m. McBarnet had about 450 aboard. Enough. He then used the kedge to pull himself off the beach. Once afloat, he too carried his load to a destroyer farther out, then returned for more.

  This became the pattern all along the beach—Bray, Malo-les-Bains, and La Panne as well. Dinghies, rowboats, and launches would load at water’s edge and ferry the troops to small ships waiting offshore. These would then ferry the men to the growing fleet of destroyers, minesweepers, and packets lying still farther out. When filled, these would head for England—and one more bit of the army would be home.

  It was a practical, workable scheme, but it was also very slow. Each skoot, for instance, averaged only 100 men an hour. No wonder nerves were frayed.

  Most of the troops were not up front where they could see what was going on. They stood far back in line or waited in the dunes behind the beach. They couldn’t imagine why it all took so long. In the blackness of the night they could see nothing, except the occasional silhouette of some boat caught in the glittering phosphorescence of the water. They could hear only the steady rhythm of the surf and every now and then the clank of oarlocks.

  They were tired, cold, and hungry. May nights are chilly along the coast of Flanders, and the men longed for the greatcoats they had thrown away during the hot, dusty retreat. Regular rations had vanished, and it was no longer possible to live off the land. When Corporal R. Kay, a GHQ signalman, found a seven-pound tin of peas near the beach, it was a major discovery. He and a few lucky mates ate them with their fingers, like expensive chocolates.

  At Malo-les-Bains Lieutenant-Colonel John D’Arcy was another who fretted over the seemingly endless delay. He had gathered his artillery regiment in a brickyard behind the dunes—splendid cover but no place to see what was going on. He finally ordered one of his officers, Lieutenant C. G. Payne, to take a signal lamp and “go down to the beach and call up the Navy.”

  Payne had no idea how to go about this, but he did find a signal manual with a section headed, “Call to an Unknown Ship.” Pointing his lamp to sea, he carefully followed the instructions, little expecting any results. To his amazement, an answer came flashing out of the night. Instructed to bring the unit to the beach, he hurried back to the Colonel in triumph.

  Around 1:30 a.m. on the 29th a stiff breeze sprang up, meaning much greater surf and even slower going. At Bray-Dunes Commander Richardson was making so little progress that he decided to suspend any further embarkations and began sending the troops back to Dunkirk. Maybe the mole would be faster.

  Indeed so. Over 24 hours had now passed since Captain Tennant began using the eastern mole or breakwater of Dunkirk harbor as an improvised pier, and the gamble was paying off. A steady stream of destroyers, minesweepers, ferries, and other steamers eased alongside, loaded troops, then backed off and headed for England. The flow of men was regulated by Commander Clouston, who had won the “easy” assignment—pier master of the mole—when he, Richardson, and Kerr cut cards to decide who would be stuck with Bray-Dunes.

  Clouston was a Canadian—big, tough, athletic, amusing. He was a fine ice hockey player, and when stationed at Portsmouth, typically he had organized the staff into a hockey team. He was a man bursting with energy, and in his new job he needed all of it.

  Word of the mole had gotten around, and now thousands of disorganized troops were flocking there, queuing up for a chance to embark. To Private Bill Warner, a headquarters clerk with the Royal Artillery, it was like the endless queue at the cinema when talkies first came in. To others it was more like London at rush hour or a rugby scrum. Planting himself at the foot of the mole, Clouston squarely faced the crowd. Megaphone in hand, he shouted instructions, matching the flow of men to the flow of ships.

  At first they were mostly destroyers. During the morning of May 28 no fewer than eleven loaded up, and Commander Brian Dean of the destroyer Sabre showed how fast they could work. Earlier he had lifted 100 men off the beaches in two hours. His turn-around at Dover took only 58 minutes, and now he was back again, tying up at the mole at 11:00 a.m. This time he loaded 800 men, and headed back to Dover at 12:30 p.m.—a rate of 540 men an hour, compared to 50 men an hour at the beaches.

  And he wasn’t through yet. Reaching Dover at 6:20 p.m., he refueled and was on his way back to the mole at 10:30—his third trip of the day. This time he stayed only 35 minutes, picking up another 500 troops.

  Dusk on the 28th, and the destroyers were joined by an assortment of other craft. The fleet minesweeper Gossamer arrived at 9:45 p.m., departed half an hour later with 420 aboard. The sweeper Ross loaded another 353 about the same time. The skoot Tilly, leading a procession of six small motor vessels, tied up at 11:15; they took on hundreds more. The paddle steamer Medway Queen arrived around midnight and picked up nearly 1,000. Her skipper Lieutenant A. T. Cook had warned Chief Cook Russell to expect “several hundred men who will no doubt feel somewhat peckish.” The warning scarcely prepared Russell for the assault on his galley. These men weren’t “peckish”—they were ravenous.

  All through the night of May 28-29 ships kept coming, while the men streamed out the long wooden walkway like an endless line of ants. For a while the ebb tide slowed the pace—it was hard for untrained soldiers to crawl down the makeshift ladders and gangplanks—but the flow never stopped. Tennant estimated that Clouston was getting men off at a rate of 2,000 an hour.

  At 10:45 p.m. he sent Dover his first optimistic situation report:

  French general appreciation is that situation in port tomorrow will continue as for today. Provided aircraft fighters adequate, embarkation can proceed full speed. …

  The Dynamo Room began to hope that more than a handful might be saved. The total evacuated on May 28 reached 17,804—more than twice the figure for the 27th. They would have to do far better than that, but at least they were moving in the right direction.

  There was other good news t
oo: the Admiralty had now released to Ramsay all destroyers in home waters. … Route X had at last been cleared of mines, cutting the passage to Dunkirk from 87 to 55 miles. … The beachhead was holding despite the Belgian surrender. … The surf was subsiding; a threatening storm veered away. … Smoke from the blazing oil refinery hid the port from the Luftwaffe. … Casualties were mercifully low.

  Besides the Queen of the Channel, the only serious loss of the day was the little paddle steamer Brighton Belle. A charming antique looking like something out of a toy store, she was thrashing her way home with 800 men plucked from the sea at La Panne. Sapper Eric Reader huddled in the boiler room drying off, when the ship hit a submerged wreck with a frightful jolt. “Never touched us,” an old cockney stoker called out cheerfully, but the sea gurgled in and the Brighton Belle began to sink. The troops tumbled on deck as the whistle tooted an SOS. Happily other ships were nearby and took everybody off—even the captain’s dog.

  If casualties could be kept at this level, there were valid grounds for the Dynamo Room’s optimism. On the whole the evacuation was proceeding smoothly, and the greatest crisis of the day—the gap created by the Belgian surrender—had been successfully met. For the troops still pouring up the escape corridor, there was additional reason to hope. On either side of the raised roadways, the fields were beginning to fill with water. The French were flooding the low-lying land south of the coast. Even German tanks would find the going difficult.

  But already a new crisis had arisen, shifting the focus back from the land to the sea. It had been brewing for several days without anybody paying much attention. Now, in the early hours of May 29, it suddenly burst, posing a fresh challenge to Admiral Ramsay and his resourceful staff.

  7

  Torpedoes in the Night

  WHAT COULD THE GERMAN Navy do to help prevent an evacuation? General Keitel asked Vice-Admiral Otto Schniewind, Chief of the Naval War Staff, in a phone conversation on May 26. Not much, Schniewind felt, and he formally spelled out the Navy’s views in a letter to OKW on the 28th. Large ships were not suitable in the narrow, confining waters of the English Channel; the destroyers had been used up in Norway; U-boats were restricted by shallow water and the enemy’s very effective antisubmarine measures.

  There remained the Schnellboot, the small fast German motor torpedo boat. These “S-boats” were especially suited to narrow seas like the Channel, and new bases were now available in Holland, closer to the scene of action. The only problems were the possibility of bad weather and the short nights this time of year.

  Overall, the prospects seemed so bright that SKL—the naval war command—had already shifted two flotillas, totaling nine boats, from the German island of Borkum to the Dutch port of Den Helder, 90 miles closer to Dunkirk. From here Captain-Lieutenant Birnbacher’s 1st Flotilla and Captain-Lieutenant Peterson’s 2nd Flotilla began operating along the coast.

  They drew first blood on the night of May 22-23. The French destroyer Jaguar, approaching Dunkirk, rashly radioed that she would be arriving at 12:20 a.m. German intelligence was listening in, and when Jaguar turned up on schedule, an unexpected reception committee was waiting. S 21 and S 23 sank her with a couple of well-placed torpedoes, then slipped away unseen.

  On the Allied side nobody was sure what caused the loss. A submarine seemed most likely. The British were still unaware of the S-boats’ nightly patrols as the destroyer Wakeful lay off the beach at Bray-Dunes, loading troops on the evening of May 28. Her skipper Commander Ralph Lindsay Fisher was chiefly worried about an air attack. This might require some violent maneuvering; he packed the troops as low in the ship as possible to get maximum stability. They crowded into the engine room, the boiler room, the store rooms, every inch of empty space.

  At 11:00 p.m. Wakeful weighed anchor with 640 men aboard—all she could carry—and headed for Dover via the long Route Y. It was a black night, but the phosphorescence was brilliant. Under such conditions bombers often spotted ships by their wake; as Commander Fisher headed northeast on the first leg of his trip, he kept his speed down to twelve knots to reduce this danger.

  Around 12:30 he spotted the winking light of Kwinte Whistle Buoy, where he would swing west for the final run to Dover. It was an important buoy; so important that it remained lit even in these dangerous times. It was also the most exposed point of the homeward journey—easy to reach for enemy planes, U-boats, or any other menace.

  Fisher began to zigzag and increased his speed to twenty knots. You couldn’t get by Kwinte too soon.

  Not far away other vessels were also watching the winking light of Kwinte Whistle Buoy. The two German Schnellboote flotillas were now alternating their nightly patrols, and tonight was the turn of Captain-Lieutenant Heinz Birnbacher’s 1st Flotilla. On S 30 the skipper, Lieutenant Wilhelm Zimmermann, searched the night with his binoculars. There ought to be plenty of targets out by the buoy, but so far he saw nothing.

  Then suddenly, about 12:40, he spotted a shadow even darker than the night. “There, dead ahead!” He nudged the helmsman, standing right behind him. The shadows quickly took shape as a darkened ship rushing toward them. Zimmermann sized it up as a destroyer.

  A few brief orders, and S 30 turned toward the target, leading it slightly. On a Schnellboot the torpedo was aimed by aiming the boat itself. The gap quickly narrowed between the two vessels as the S-boat crew tingled with excitement. Would they get close enough before they were seen?

  Another order from Zimmermann, and two torpedoes slapped into the sea. The crew began counting the seconds, waiting interminably. …

  On the bridge of the Wakeful, Commander Fisher saw them coming—two parallel streaks, one slightly ahead of the other, racing toward his starboard side. They gleamed like silver ribbons in the phosphorescence. He ordered the helm hard-a-port, and as the ship began to swing, the first torpedo passed harmlessly across his bow.

  The second hit. It exploded with a roar and a blinding flash in the forward boiler room, breaking Wakeful in half. She sank in fifteen seconds … the severed ends resting on the bottom, the bow and stern sticking out of the water in a grotesque V.

  The troops far below never had a chance. Trapped by the slanting decks, engulfed by the sea, they were all lost—except one man who happened to be topside sneaking a cigarette.

  A few hundred yards away Lieutenant Zimmermann watched with satisfaction as his torpedo finally hit. He had almost given up hope. He toyed with the idea of picking up survivors for questioning, then thought better of it. Occasional shadows and flashes of phosphorescence suggested that other ships were rushing to the scene—certainly alert and maybe even looking for him. Withdrawal seemed his best bet. The S 30 eased off into the night and resumed its prowl.

  Back at the wreck Commander Fisher floated clear of his ship, as did most of the gun crews. About 30 men ended up on the stern, some 60 feet out of the water. Fisher and the rest paddled about, hoping some friendly vessel would find them.

  In half an hour they got their wish. Two small drifters, Nautilus and Comfort, appeared out of the night. Normally engaged in minesweeping, they were now part of Admiral Ramsay’s rescue fleet, bound for La Panne via Route Y. As they approached Kwinte Buoy, crew members heard voices crying “Help!” and saw heads bobbing in the sea.

  Nautilus managed to pick up six men, Comfort another sixteen, including Commander Fisher. Other rescue ships began to appear: the minesweeper Gossamer, packed with troops from the eastern mole … next the sweeper Lydd, also crowded … then the destroyer Grafton, with a full load from Bray-Dunes. All lowered their boats and stood by. Few yet knew what happened—only that a ship had sunk—and there were a number of flares and flashing signal lights.

  Hidden by the night, a thousand yards away Lieutenant Michalowski, commanding the German submarine U 62, watched the confusion of lights with interest. Like the Schnellboot, he had been lying near Kwinte Buoy, waiting for some fat target to come along. These were indeed shallow waters for a U-boat—but not impossible. The
U 62 glided toward the lights.

  Commander Fisher sensed the danger. Picked up by the Comfort, he had taken over from her regular skipper. Now he moved here and there warning the other ships. Hailing Gossamer, he shouted that he had been torpedoed and the enemy was probably still nearby. Gossamer got going so fast she left her skiff behind. Comfort picked up its crew, ordered Nautilus to get going too, then moved over to warn Grafton and Lydd. Easing alongside Grafton’s starboard quarter, Fisher once again called out his warning.

  Too late. At that moment, 2:50 a.m., a torpedo crashed into Grafton’s ward room, killing some 35 army officers picked up at Bray-Dunes. Comfort, lying alongside, was hurled into the air by the blast, then dropped back into the sea like a toy boat. Momentarily swamped, she bobbed back to the surface, but all the crew on deck were washed overboard, including Commander Fisher.

  With no one at the helm, but her engines set at full speed, Comfort now moved into a wide circle that took her off into the night. Fisher grabbed a rope’s end and hung on for a brief, wild ride. But she was going too fast, and there was no one to pull him aboard. He finally let go.

  Just as well. Comfort, still in her circle came back into view and was sighted by the nearby Lydd. Her skipper, Lieutenant-Commander Rodolph Haig, had been warned by a Wakeful survivor that an enemy torpedo boat, rather than submarine, was probably to blame. Now this seemed confirmed by what he saw in the dark: a small vessel dashing about at high speed.

  Lydd opened up with her starboard guns, raking the stranger’s wheelhouse and producing a satisfying cloud of sparks. The torpedoed Grafton joined in, and the stranger appeared disabled.