The World War II Collection

  Casualties were mercifully light. Thanks to the heavy overcast, the rescue fleet streamed across the Channel unchallenged by the Stukas and Heinkels. First loss of the day came when the French destroyer Bourrasque, bound for Dover, struck a floating mine. Nearby ships saved all but 150 of her troops.

  Later, during the night of May 30–31, another French destroyer, Siroco, was torpedoed by S-boats lurking off Kwinte Buoy. For a while her skipper, Gui de Toulouse-Lautrec (cousin of the painter), thought he might save his ship, but she let off a huge cloud of steam which attracted the attention of a passing German patrol bomber. A bomb crashed down on the vessel’s stern, igniting her ready ammunition. A column of flame shot 200 feet into the sky, and Siroco was gone.

  But most of the ships reached England safely, landing their ragged passengers in Dover and other southeast coast ports. Herded toward waiting trains, their ordeal was mirrored in their faces—unshaven, hollow-eyed, oil-streaked, infinitely weary. Many had lost their equipment; but some clutched odd, new possessions picked up along the way. A pair of wooden sabots dangled from Private Fred Louch’s gas mask … a French poilu carried a live goose … Bombardier Arthur May still had 6,000 of his 10,000 cigarettes … 2nd Lieutenant R. C. Taylor’s batman had somehow rescued the Lieutenant’s portable gramophone. Along with the men, the inevitable dogs trooped ashore—170 in Dover alone.

  Everything about this motley crowd said “evacuation,” but until now there had been a news blackout. With the men pouring home, this was no longer possible; so on the evening of the 30th London finally issued a communiqué announcing the withdrawal. It was, the Times sniffed, “what so many people in this country have seen with their own eyes.”

  Among the thousands of soldiers brought back, a select few had been carefully hand-picked. Whatever else happened, Lord Gort hoped to get enough good men home to form the nucleus of a new army that might some day return and even the score. General Pownall, Gort’s Chief of Staff, left on the evening of May 29th, as did the Commander-in-Chief’s personal aide, Lord Munster. Now, on the 30th, it was General Brooke’s turn. After a lunch of petit poussin and asparagus, miraculously conjured up by his aide, Captain Barney Charlesworth, he paid a final visit to his division commanders.

  It was not easy. Brooke was known as a brilliant but rather cold man; this afternoon he was all emotion. Saying good-bye to General Montgomery, who would take over the Corps, he broke into tears. Monty patted him on the back, said all the right things. Finally they shook hands, and Brooke trudged slowly away.

  One man absolutely determined not to leave was Lord Gort. The General’s decision became known in London on the morning of May 30, when Lord Munster arrived from the beaches. Winston Churchill was taking a bath at the time, but he could do business anywhere, and he summoned Munster for a tub-side chat. It was in this unlikely setting that Munster described Gort’s decision to stay to the end. He would never leave without specific orders.

  Churchill was appalled at the thought. Why give Hitler the propaganda coup of capturing and displaying the British Commander-in-Chief? After discussing the matter with Eden, Dill, and Pownall, he wrote out in his own hand an order that left Gort no choice:

  If we can still communicate we shall send you an order to return to England with such officers as you may choose at the moment when we deem your command so reduced that it can be handed over to a corps commander. You should now nominate this commander. If communications are broken, you are to hand over and return as specified when your effective fighting force does not exceed the equivalent of three divisions. This is in accordance with correct military procedure, and no personal discretion is left you in the matter. Whoever Gort appointed was to fight on, “but when in his judgment no further organised evacuation is possible and no further proportionate damage can be inflicted on the enemy, he is authorised in consultation with the senior French commander to capitulate formally to avoid useless slaughter.”

  These instructions reached Gort during the afternoon, and he read them aloud at a final GHQ, conference that assembled in his beachfront villa at 6:00 p.m. Besides General Barker, commanding I Corps, and Monty, now in charge of II Corps, the meeting included Brooke, who had not yet pushed off. The final plans for the evacuation were discussed: I Corps would be the last to go, and its commander, Barker, would take over from Gort as directed by London.

  As the meeting broke up, Montgomery lingered behind and asked to see Gort privately for a moment. Once they were alone, Monty unburdened himself. It would be a dreadful mistake, he said, to leave Barker in charge at the end. The man was no longer fit to command. The proper course was to send Barker home and appoint instead the 1st Division commander, Major-General Harold Alexander. He had just the calm, clear mind needed for this crisis. With luck, he might even get the rear guard back safely to England.

  Gort listened but didn’t commit himself.

  Down on the beach General Brooke prepared to go. Usually a rather snappy dresser, he had discarded his new Huntsman breeches and Norwegian boots for a pair of old slacks and shoes. More practical, in case he had to go swimming. But he didn’t have to swim at all. Instead he rode piggy-back out to a rowboat on the broad shoulders of the faithful Charlesworth. By 7:20 he was on his way to a waiting destroyer.

  Around 8:00 a new visitor turned up at GHQ. Admiral Wake-Walker had come to see Lord Gort. With the small craft starting to pour in, he wanted to work out better coordination with the army. During the past few days, all too often the available ships weren’t where the troops were, and vice versa.

  Gort greeted him warmly. The Commander-in-Chief and his staff were about to have dinner; Wake-Walker must join them. They moved into a longish dining room with French windows opening on the sea. The conversation was mostly small talk, and as he sat there sharing the General’s last bottle of champagne, Wake-Walker found it a remarkable experience. They were on the brink of the greatest military disaster in British history, yet here they sat, chatting idly and sipping champagne as though it were just another social evening at the seashore. Only one thing seemed out of the ordinary: his trousers were soaking wet from wading ashore.

  Gort was charm itself, cheerful and unperturbed. He assured the Admiral that just by being here he would have a great stabilizing effect. Wake-Walker found it hard to believe that the mere presence of a desk-bound sailor like himself could prove so inspirational.

  After a final dish of fruit salad, they got down to business. It soon became clear to Wake-Walker that Gort and his staff felt that their part of the job was done. They had gotten the BEF to the coast more or less intact; now it was up to the Royal Navy to get them home—and so far, the Navy hadn’t tried very hard.

  Wake-Walker said any lack of success was not through want of trying. He stressed the difficulty of lifting large numbers of men off the beaches and urged that more troops be shifted down to Dunkirk, where they could use the mole. Brigadier Leese remained unconvinced. The Army had marched enough. The ships should go where the men were. It should be perfectly possible to take men off the beaches … except for the “ineptitude of the Navy.”

  Wake-Walker bristled. He told Leese he had no business or justification to talk that way.

  The discussion turned to getting the rear guard off. No matter how the others were evacuated, this was going to be a tight squeak. The Germans were pressing Nieuport and Furnes hard, and it didn’t seem possible to hold the eastern end of the perimeter beyond the night of May 31–June 1. It was hoped to get everybody else off during the day, then quickly pull the rear guard back to the beaches at midnight. Ramsay had promised to make a supreme effort and was sending a whole new armada of small craft to lie off the coast. With luck they would be where needed, and the rear guard would swarm aboard before the enemy could interfere.

  It was a very demanding timetable. Apart from the rearguard, estimated at 5,000, there were tens of thousands of other troops to come off beforehand. Wake-Walker’s heart sank at the prospect. The thought of that last-minute r
ush for the boats in the dark, with the enemy in hot pursuit, was not a pleasant picture.

  By 10:00 p.m. they had talked themselves out. Wake-Walker headed back for the destroyer Worcester, which he was using at the moment as a flagship. Going down to the beach, he found a large inflated rubber boat, and recruited eight soldiers to paddle him out. As Tennant and Leese watched from the shore, they started off, but the boat was too crowded and began to swamp. They all jumped out and waded back to the beach for a new try with fewer paddlers. “Another example of naval ineptitude,” Wake-Walker dryly told Leese.

  Back at GHQ, the staff prepared a situation report for the War Office, which went off at 11:20 p.m. It reported that the six remaining divisions in the beachhead were being thinned out tonight, and the eastern end of the perimeter should be completely clear some time tomorrow night, May 31–June 1. Evacuation of the rest of the BEF was proceeding satisfactorily. The report didn’t say, but at the present pace, the lift should be complete by the end of June 1.

  Thirty-nine minutes later, at 11:59, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, General Dill, phoned from London. Gort assured him that the night was quiet … that all was going well on the beaches. Dill brushed this aside and got to the real purpose of his call. The Prime Minister wanted him to get off as many French as possible—not just a “fair” number, but an equal number. Winston Churchill himself came on the phone and confirmed the order.

  It was an astonishing development. Instead of winding up the evacuation with a last-minute lift of a small rear guard on June 1, the whole French Army was now involved. Nobody—absolutely nobody—knew how many that meant, but it was clear that all the careful calculations and timetables worked out during the day were now meaningless.

  10

  “Bras-Dessus, Bras-Dessous!”

  “LET’S HELP THE FROGGIES, too,” Bob Hilton suggested to Ted Shaw as they began their seventeen-hour stint, rowing troops from the beach to the ships lying off Malo-les-Bains. Shaw agreed, and from then on, they never worried whether a soldier was French or English. Both were on the same side. It seemed simple enough.

  Higher up, it wasn’t that easy. When the evacuation began, the Admiralty simply assumed that British troops would be taken off in British ships, French troops in French ships. That was the way everything else had been done. Each of the Allies had conducted its own retreat to the coast, then manned its own part of the perimeter. In the same spirit the British had made their own decision to evacuate. Reynaud had been informed, and now it was up to the French to do the same.

  As for the French, at this point they weren’t even thinking evacuation. On May 19, the day Weygand took over, Admiral Darlan told Supreme Headquarters that such a step could lead only to “disaster.” Darlan preferred to hold on to the beachhead, turn it into a continuing threat to the German flank. It was with this thought in mind that Captain Auphan began rounding up hundreds of French trawlers. They were to supply the beachhead, not evacuate it. In Dunkirk Admiral Abrial faithfully reflected the same point of view.

  The French finally faced reality on May 27, when Auphan, Admiral Leclerc, and Admiral Odend’hal met with Ramsay at Dover Castle. They had come to discuss supplying Dunkirk, only to discover that the British were already leaving. Now the French would have to catch up. Auphan’s trawlers could be used, but they weren’t remotely enough. Few French warships were available; most were stationed in the Mediterranean by arrangement with the Royal Navy.

  An agreement was hastily hammered out between the French officers and Admiral Ramsay. Paragraph 5 declared that “all naval means for evacuation shall be shared between Dover and Dunkerque.” This was admittedly vague, but to the French it seemed to promise at least some access to British shipping.

  They soon learned what “sharing” could mean. When Belgium surrendered on May 28, General Champon, head of the French mission to King Leopold, made his way to La Panne. With him came the mission staff, numbering 100 to 150 men. They were a hand-picked lot, and the Allied area commander General Georges ordered “immediate evacuation.” Champon asked Lord Gort for space on some British ship.

  Gort fired off a telegram to the War Office asking confirmation from Brigadier Swayne, British liaison officer at French Supreme Headquarters. “Swayne should point out,” Gort added helpfully, “every Frenchman embarked is a loss of one Englishman.” Why this argument would be persuasive at French headquarters, Gort didn’t say. But he did offer a final suggestion: “Why not send a French destroyer, using own boats?”

  The next day—Wednesday, the 29th—found Champon and his staff still stranded at La Panne. General Georges again urged Gort to act, and Brigadier Swayne followed up with a telephone call to General Pownall, Gort’s Chief of Staff. Pownall reported that orders had been issued covering Champon and “some of his officers,” then asked rather pointedly if this mission was meant to have top priority, “thus displacing an equal number of British troops?”

  No, said Swayne, he was certain that wasn’t what Georges meant. The General just wanted to make sure that the Champon mission had equal status with the British.

  The problem dragged on. Thirty-six more hours would pass before Champon finally got off at 8:00 p.m., May 30.

  If it was that hard to make room for 100 hand-picked men, the prospects weren’t bright for the thousands of ordinary poilus now pouring into the perimeter. From the south came remnants of the French First Army … from the east, the badly mauled 60th Division … from the west, the 68th Division retiring from Gravelines—all converging on the beaches at once. They were in for a long wait: on May 29 over 47,000 men were evacuated, but only 655 were French.

  Winston Churchill understood both the arithmetic and the political ramifications. On the 29th he addressed a memo to Anthony Eden and to Generals Dill and Ismay:

  It is essential that the French should share in such evacuations from Dunkirk as may be possible. Nor must they be dependent only upon their own shipping resources. Arrangements must be concerted at once … so that no reproaches, or as few as possible, may arise.

  Meanwhile General Georges appealed again to Lord Gort. This time his message concerned not just the Champon mission, but all the troops now gathering on the beaches. As relayed over the telephone by the accommodating Brigadier Swayne, Georges urged that the evacuation be carried out by the British and the French “with mutual co-operation and support.”

  “I am quite prepared to cooperate,” Gort wired General Dill in London, “but support—by which is implied resources—is all on our side. Strongly urge that the French should take their full share in providing naval facilities.”

  This of course ignored the fact that the French had very little in the way of “naval facilities,” with their fleet down in the Mediterranean. Pointing out that he had already evacuated “small parties of French,” Gort once again reminded London: “Every Frenchman embarked is at the cost of one Englishman.” His instructions said that the safety of the BEF came first. In light of that, he asked, what was the government’s policy toward the French?

  General Dill wrestled with this for some hours, finally wired Gort a little lamely that the safety of the BEF still came first, but he should try to evacuate “a proportion” of French troops.

  In London that night, Churchill remained uneasy. Despite his directive, there was little evidence that the French were sharing in the evacuation. At 11:45 p.m. he shot off another telegram, this time for Reynaud, Weygand, and Georges:

  We wish French troops to share in evacuation to fullest possible extent, and Admiralty have been instructed to aid French Marine as required. We do not know how many will be forced to capitulate, but we must share this loss together as best we can, and, above all, bear it without reproaches arising from inevitable confusion, stresses, and strains.

  At this moment Admiral Wake-Walker, crossing the Channel to take charge offshore, had a very different view of Admiralty policy. Before leaving, he had been briefed by Admiral Pound, the First Sea Lord. Pound had told
him that the French were not thought to be pulling their weight; he was to “refuse them embarkation, if British troops were ready to embark.”

  Next morning, May 30, Churchill summoned the three Service Ministers and the Chiefs of Staff to a meeting in the Admiralty War Room. An important guest was General Pownall, just back from La Panne. Once again the Prime Minister stressed the importance of getting off more French troops.

  Pownall spoke up, defending the present figures. As usual, he trotted out the familiar argument: so long as the French did not produce ships of their own, “every Frenchman embarked meant one more Englishman lost.”

  Pownall felt that he had forced Churchill to face an “inconvenient truth,” but the Prime Minister had been hearing this argument for two days now, and if he showed displeasure, it more likely stemmed from exasperation.

  More phone talks with Gort followed during the day. At 4:20 p.m. General Dill confirmed that Gort’s first consideration was the safety of the BEF, but he must also do his best to send off a “fair proportion” of the French. At 8:10 p.m. the War Office again notified Brigadier Swayne that French troops were to share in the evacuation “to fullest possible extent.”

  Then came Admiral Ramsay’s figures for the total number rescued during the day: British 45,207; French 8,616.

  Clearly phrases such as “fair share,” “fullest possible extent,” and “fair proportion” could mean what anybody wanted them to mean—thousands of troops, or just one soldier. If the French were really to share the British ships, the orders would have to be far more precise. It was almost midnight, May 30, when Churchill finally faced the matter squarely.