The mole itself was a sorry sight. Here and there it was pitted with holes and craters, not all of them made by bombs. At least two British ships rammed the walkway in their frantic maneuvers during the raid. Clouston went to work and soon had the gaps bridged with doors, hatch covers, and planking salvaged from the wrecked ships.
In the midst of these labors, the passenger steamer King Orry eased alongside. Her steering gear was gone and her hull badly holed by near misses. The last thing Clouston needed was another ship sunk at her berth; during the night her skipper took her out, hoping to beach her clear of the fairway.
He didn’t get very far. Outside the harbor, but still in deep water, King Orry rolled over and sank. The naval yacht Bystander appeared and began picking up survivors. Manning the ship’s dinghy, Able Seaman J. H. Elton dived into the sea to help the exhausted swimmers. He alone saved 25 men, and he was not done yet. He was the ship’s cook, and once back on board the Bystander, he headed straight for his galley. Normally Elton had to feed a crew of seven, but tonight there were 97 aboard. Undaunted, he made meals for them all, then raided the ship’s locker for dry clothes and blankets.
Often the evacuated troops were too exhausted to help themselves, but not always. Gunner W. Jennings of the Royal Artillery proved a tower of strength while transferring soldiers from the crippled Gracie Fields to the skoots alongside. Again and again he lifted men on his shoulders and carried them across, as if they were children.
When the escort vessel Bideford lost her stern off Bray-Dunes, Private George William Crowther, 6th Field Ambulance, gave up his chance to be rescued. He remained instead on the Bideford, helping the ship’s surgeon. He worked for 48 hours, almost without a break, while the Bideford was slowly towed back to Dover.
All through the afternoon of May 29 the Dynamo Room remained blissfully ignorant of these staggering events. As far as the staff knew, the evacuation was proceeding smoothly—“approaching maximum efficiency,” as liaison officer General Lloyd telegraphed the War Office at 6:22 p.m.
Three minutes later the roof fell in. The destroyer Sabre had been sent over with some portable wireless sets and reinforcements for the naval shore parties. Arriving at the height of the air attack, she wired Dover at 6:25:
Continuous bombing for 1½hours. One destroyer sinking, one transport with troops on board damaged. No damage to pier. Impossible at present to embark more troops.
Then, at 7:00 p.m. came a startling phone message. It was from Commander J. S. Dove, calling from La Panne on the direct line that linked Gort’s headquarters with London and Dover. Dove had been helping out at Tennant’s headquarters since the “lethal kite” fiasco, and was not part of the regular chain of command. He was calling on his own initiative, but it was not his status; it was what he said that seemed important. He reported that he had just come from Dunkirk, that the harbor was completely blocked, and that the whole evacuation must be carried out from the beaches.
Why Dove made this call remains unclear. He had apparently commandeered a car, driven it to La Panne, and talked the military into letting him use the phone—all on his own. He had been in Dunkirk since May 24, and had previously shown great coolness under fire. Perhaps, as Ramsay’s Chief of Staff later speculated, he was simply shell-shocked after five extremely hard days.
In any event, the call caused a sensation in the Dynamo Room. Taken together with Sabre’s signal (“Impossible at present to embark more troops”), it seemed to indicate that the harbor was indeed blocked and only the beaches could be used.
First, Ramsay tried to make sure. At 8:57 he radioed Tennant, “Can you confirm harbor is blocked?” Tennant replied, “No,” but the raid had left communications in a shambles, and the answer never got through. Not hearing from Tennant, he later tried the French commander, Admiral Abrial, but no answer there either.
At 9:28 Ramsay didn’t dare wait any longer. He radioed the minesweeper Hebe, serving as a sort of command ship offshore:
Intercept all personnel ships approaching Dunkirk and instruct them not to close harbor but to remain off Eastern beach to collect troops from ships.
Midnight, there was still no word from Dunkirk. Ramsay sent the destroyer Vanquisher to investigate. At 5:51 a.m. on the 30th she flashed the good news,
“Entrance to Dunkirk harbor practicable. Obstructions exist towards outer side of eastern arm.”
This welcome information was immediately relayed to the rescue fleet, but a whole night had gone by. Only four trawlers and a yacht used the mole during those priceless hours of darkness, despite calm seas and minimum enemy interference. “A great opportunity was missed,” commented Captain Tennant a few days later. “Probably 15,000 troops could have been embarked had the ships been forthcoming.”
But for Ramsay, the worst thing that happened on the evening of May 29 was not the false report from Dunkirk; it was a very real decision made in London. The day had seen heavy losses in shipping—particularly destroyers. The Wakeful, Grafton, and Grenade were gone; Gallant, Greyhound, Intrepid, Jaguar, Montrose, and Saladin damaged. The whole “G” class was now knocked out. To the Admiralty there was more than Dunkirk to think about: there were the convoys, the Mediterranean, the protection of Britain herself.
At 8:00 p.m. Admiral Pound reluctantly decided to withdraw the eight modern destroyers Ramsay had left, leaving him with only fifteen older vessels, which in a pinch could be considered expendable.
For Ramsay, it was a dreadful blow. The destroyers had come to be his most effective vessels. Withdrawing a third of them wrecked all his careful projections. Even if there were no further losses, he would now be able to maintain a flow of only one destroyer an hour to the coast—a pace that would lift only 17,000 troops every 24 hours.
The Admiralty’s decision couldn’t have come at a worse time. Every ship was desperately needed. The fighting divisions—the men who had defended the escape corridor—were now themselves moving into the perimeter. In the little Belgian village of Westvleteren, 3rd Division packed up for the last time. Headquarters was in a local abbey, and before pulling out, General Montgomery sought out the Abbot, Father M. Rafael Hoedt. Could the Father hide a few personal possessions for him? The answer was yes; so the General handed over a box of personal papers and a lunch basket he particularly favored. These were then bricked up in the abbey wall, as Monty drove off promising that the army would be back and he’d pick everything up later.
Only a general as cocky as Montgomery could make such a promise. Brigadier George William Sutton was more typical. He felt nothing but anguish and personal humiliation as he trudged toward Dunkirk, passing mile after mile of abandoned equipment. He was a career officer, and “if this was what it came to when the real thing came to a crisis, all the years of thought and time and trouble that we had given to learning and teaching soldiering had been wasted. I felt that I had been labouring under a delusion and that after all, this was not my trade.”
Despite the disaster, some units never lost their snap and cohesion. The Queen’s Own Worcestershire Yeomanry marched into the perimeter with the men singing and a mouth organ playing “Tipperary.” But others, like the 44th Division, seemed to dissolve. Officers and men tramped along individually and in small parties. Private Oliver Barnard, a signalman with the 44th, had absolutely no idea where he was heading. Eventually Brigadier J. E. Utterson Kelso came swinging by. Barnard fell in behind him with the comforting thought, “He’s a brigadier, he must know where he’s going.”
Parts of the French First Army north of Lille—finally released by General Prioux—were converging on Dunkirk, too. The plan was for the French to man the western end of the perimeter while the British manned the eastern end, but this caused all sorts of trouble where the poilus coming up the escape corridor had to cross over from east to west. It meant going at almost right angles to the generally north-south flow of the British.
There were some unpleasant collisions. As the Worcestershire Yeomanry approached Bray-Dunes, they met
the main body of the French 60th Division moving west on a road parallel to the shore. Part of the Worcesters wriggled by, but the rest had to get down into a rugger scrum and smash their way through.
When a lorry fell into a crater, blocking the road north, Major David Warner of the Kent Yeomanry organized a working party to move it. French troops kept pushing the party aside, refusing to stop while the job was done. Finally, Warner drew his revolver and threatened to shoot the next man who didn’t stop when ordered. The poilus paid no attention, until Warner actually did shoot one of them. Then they stopped, and the lorry was moved.
There were clashes even among the brass. General Brooke ordered the French 2nd Light Mechanized Division, operating under him, to cover his eastern flank as II Corps made its final withdrawal on the night of May 29-30. General Bougrain, the French division’s commander, announced that he had other orders from General Blanchard, and that he was going to comply with them. Brooke repeated his previous instructions, adding that if the French General disobeyed, he’d be shot, if Brooke ever caught him. Bougrain paid no attention to this either, but Brooke never caught him.
All through this afternoon of tensions and traffic jams, the last of the fighting troops poured into the perimeter. Some went straight to the beaches, while others were assigned to the defenses, taking over from the cooks and clerks who had manned the line the past three days. As the 7th Guards Brigade moved into Furnes, cornerstone of the eastern end of the perimeter, the men spotted General Montgomery standing in the marketplace. In a rare lapse, the General had dropped his normally cocky stance and stood looking weary and forlorn. As the 7th swung by, they snapped to attention and gave Monty a splendid “eyes left.” It was just the tonic he needed. He immediately straightened up and returned the honor with a magnificent salute.
Farther west, the 2nd Coldstream Guards were moving into position along the Bergues-Furnes canal. Running parallel to the coast, about six miles inland, the canal was the main line of defense facing south. The Coldstream dug in along the north bank, making good use of several farm cottages that stood in their sector. The flat land across the canal should have offered an excellent field of fire, but the canal road on that side was littered with abandoned vehicles, and it was hard to see over them.
At the moment this made no difference. There was no sign of the enemy anywhere. The Coldstreamers whiled away the afternoon casting a highly critical eye on the troops still pouring into the perimeter. Only two platoons of Welsh Guards won their approval. These marched crisply across the canal bridge in perfect formation. The rest were a shuffling rabble.
The last of Lord Gort’s strong-points were closing up shop. They had kept the corridor open; now it was time to come in themselves—if they could. At the little French village of Ledringhem, fifteen miles south of Dunkirk, the remnants of the 5th Gloucesters collected in an orchard shortly after midnight, May 29. The sails of a nearby windmill were burning brightly, and it seemed impossible that these exhausted men, surrounded for two days, could get away undetected. But the Germans were tired too, and there was no enemy reaction as Lieutenant-Colonel G.A.H. Buxton led the party north along a stream bed.
They not only slipped through the German lines; they captured three prisoners along the way. At 6:30 a.m. they finally stumbled into Bambecque, once more in friendly country. The adjutant of the 8th Worcesters saw them coming: “They were dirty and weary and haggard, but unbeaten. … I ran towards Colonel Buxton, who was staggering along, obviously wounded. He croaked a greeting, and I saw the lumps of sleep in his bloodshot eyes. Our Commanding Officer came running out and told the 5th Gloucesters’ second-in-command to rest the troops a minute. I took Colonel Buxton indoors, gave him a tumbler of stale wine, and eased him gently to the floor on to a blanket, assuring him again and again that his men were all right. In a few seconds he was asleep.”
The men holding the strong-point at Cassel, 19 miles south of Dunkirk, were also trying to get back to the sea. For three days they had held up the German advance while thousands of Allied troops swarmed up the escape corridor. Now they finally had orders to pull back themselves, but it was too late. The enemy had gradually seeped around the hill where the town stood. By the morning of May 29 it was cut off.
Brigadier Somerset, commanding the garrison, decided to try anyhow. But not during the day. There were too many Germans. The only chance would be after dark. Orders went out to assemble at 9:30 p.m.
At first all went well. The troops quietly slipped out of town, down the hill, and headed northeast over the fields. Somerset felt there was less chance of detection if they traveled cross-country.
It really didn’t matter. The Germans were everywhere. With Somerset in the lead, the 4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry were overwhelmed near Watou; the East Riding Yeomanry were virtually wiped out in a minefield; the 2nd Gloucesters were trapped in a thick woods called the Bois Saint Acaire.
“Kamerad! Kamerad!” shouted the German troopers swarming around the woods, trying to flush out the Gloucesters. Crouching in the brush, the Tommies lay low. A pause, and then a voice speaking good English over a loudspeaker: “Come out! Come out! Hitler is winning the war, you are beaten. Come out, or we will shell you out. Lay down your arms and come out running.”
Second Lieutenant Julian Fane of B Company wasn’t about to buy that. He had heard of another British battalion that listened to such a broadcast, threw down its arms, and came out … only to be machine-gunned down. He told the men near him, and they decided to fight it out.
Since the Germans had them targeted, the first step was to find a new position. Fane led his men in a wild dash to another wood 100 yards away. It did no good. The enemy quickly spotted them, and they spent the rest of the day huddling under a hale of artillery and mortar fire.
Darkness at last, and the little group continued north. They moved in single file, keeping as silent as possible, making use of every bit of cover. But if they had any delusion that they were traveling unseen, it was dispelled when a red Very light suddenly soared into the night. Instantly machine guns, mortars, rifles, every kind of weapon opened up on them. They had been ambushed.
Tracers criss-crossed the sky; a nearby haystack burst into flames, illuminating the group perfectly. Men were falling on all sides, and Fane himself was hit in the right arm and shoulder. He finally reached a ditch, where he was relatively safe as long as he kept an 18-inch profile. He gradually collected about a dozen other survivors. Together they crept off into the darkness, managing somehow to work their way around the German flank. He didn’t know it, but his little band was all that remained of the 2nd Gloucesters.
One British soldier outside the perimeter was still very much in the fight. Private Edgar G. A. Rabbets had been just another Tommy in the 5th Northamptonshires until the great retreat. Then a German thrust almost caught the battalion near Brussels. A fire-fight developed, and at one point Rabbets raised his rifle and took a potshot at an enemy soldier about 200 yards away. The man dropped in his tracks.
“Can you do that again?” asked the company commander. Rabbets obligingly picked off another German.
Then and there Ted Rabbets was designated a sniper, and henceforth he acted entirely on his own. He had no previous training for his new work, but did enjoy one unusual advantage: he had once known a poacher who taught him a few tricks. Now he could move so quietly he could “catch a rabbit by the ears,” and he could make himself so small he could “hide behind a blade of grass.”
As a sniper, Rabbets soon developed a few trade secrets of his own: never snipe from tree tops—too easy to get trapped. Keep away from farmhouse attics—too easy to be spotted. Best vantage point—some hiding place where there’s room to move around, like a grove of trees.
Following these rules, Rabbets managed to survive alone most of the way across Belgium. He tried to keep in occasional touch with his battalion, but usually he was deep in German-held territory—once even behind their artillery. From time to tim
e he matched wits with his German counterparts. One of them once fired at him from a hole in some rooftop, missed by six inches. Rabbets fired back and had the satisfaction of seeing the man plunge out of the hole. Another time, while prowling a village street late at night, Rabbets rounded a corner and literally ran into a German sniper. This time Ted fired first and didn’t miss.
Rabbets ultimately reached the coast near Nieuport and slowly worked his way west, dipping into the German lines on an occasional foray. On May 31 he finally rejoined the BEF at La Panne—still operating alone and perhaps the last fighting man to enter the perimeter.
All the way south, five divisions of General Prioux’s French First Army fought on at Lille. It was still early on the morning of May 29 when a French truck convoy, approaching the city from Armentières, met some armored vehicles moving onto the road. The poilus sent up a great cheer, thinking that at last some British tanks were coming to help them. Only when the strangers began confiscating their arms did the Frenchmen realize that they had run into the 7th Panzer Division.
Cut off from the north, General Prioux surrendered during the afternoon at his headquarters in Steenwerck. He had gotten his wish: to remain with the bulk of his army rather than try to escape. Most of his troops holed up in Lille, continuing to tie down six enemy divisions.
By now it didn’t matter very much. With the escape corridor closed, Rundstedt’s Army Group A and Bock’s Army Group B at last joined forces, and the Germans had all the troops they needed for the final push on Dunkirk.