The sky was not the only source of danger. After a night of ferry work, the six cockle boats started back for Ramsgate at 3:00 a.m., June 1. Most had fared very well, but Letitia had now broken down and was being towed by the drifter Ben and Lucy. Then Renown’s engine went, and she latched onto Letitia. The three vessels limped along, with Renown yawing wide at the end of the tow.
It was about 3:30 when Renown brushed a German mine, freshly laid by some bomber or S-Boat. There was a blinding flash, and every trace of Renown and her crew of four vanished completely.
The methodical German shelling continued taking its toll too—often with frightening suddenness. As the pleasure steamer New Prince of Wales lay off Bray-Dunes on the 31st, Sub-Lieutenant Bennett left the bridge to help start a balky engine. He had just reached the deck when there was a shrieking, tearing sound, coming at him straight from above. There was a shattering explosion … a momentary glimpse of gray streamers of smoke laced with bits of shell … pain in his left foot, left thigh, and the left side of his face … and he found himself lying on deck. As he lost consciousness, he decided this must be the end. He had seen enough war movies showing men dying with blood running out of their mouths. That was the way they always went, and that was what was happening to him.
He came to a few minutes later, happy to find he was still alive. But two of his men were killed, and the New Prince of Wales was a write-off. The motor boat Triton was nearby, and Lieutenant Irving eased her over to take off the survivors. By now Bennett was on his feet again and even feeling belligerent. His face was a bloody mess, but his mind was clear, and he took over as coxswain for Lieutenant Irving.
They weren’t all heroes. Off Bray-Dunes one Dutch skoot lay motionless for hours, doing little or nothing. The skipper was tipsy, and the second in command seemed less than enthusiastic. Troops rowed out to her anyhow, and finally she was reasonably full. At this point Corporal Harold Meredith of the RASC heard the skipper explain, “I’m supposed to take you out to the destroyers, which are lying farther offshore, but I’ve had a very rough day, and tonight I am Nelson. I’ve unfortunately put my telescope to my blind eye, and I cannot see any destroyers; so I’m taking you all the way home.”
One way or another, 68,014 Allied troops were evacuated this May 31. As usual, the most dramatic incidents occurred off the beaches, but the most effective work was again done on the east mole. The destroyer Malcolm showed what one ship could do—1,000 men lifted at 2:15 a.m. … another 1,000 at 2:30 p.m. … still another 1,000 lifted in the early hours of June 1. Her efficiency made the job look easy, yet it was anything but that. Warrant Engineer Arthur George Scoggins nursed his machinery in a steam-filled engine room where the temperature hit 140° to 150°.
For the first time British ships were carrying a really respectable number of Frenchmen—10,842 were rescued this day. Not enough to satisfy Premier Reynaud, but it was a start. And the difficulties were more than the critics in Paris could ever realize. Usually the poilus wanted to bring all their equipment. Many refused to be separated from their units. They seemed unable to comprehend that if too many people got into a small boat at once, it might capsize or run aground. The British crews were inclined to think that the French were just naturally landlubbers, in contrast to “our island race.” The evidence suggests that much of the trouble stemmed from the language barrier.
“En avant mes héros! Courage mes enfants!” Sub-Lieutenant A. Carew Hunt summoned up his limited store of French, trying to tempt some hesitant soldiers to wade out to his boat. Minutes later he was waving his revolver at them to stop the rush.
“Débarquez! You bloody fools, get out! Get out! Nous sommes ensables!” shouted one of Captain Watts’s scholars as his boat grounded under the weight of too many Frenchmen. Nobody understood, and nobody moved. Finally a French NCO caught on, reworked the language, and the order was obeyed.
Sub-Lieutenant Michael Solomon, who knew French well, never had any trouble during a brief stint as interpreter for Commander Clouston on the eastern mole. English officers shouting “Allez!” got nowhere—that was insulting—but the right words, plus a little tact, could work wonders.
So the loading went on, and one more crisis was passed. The equal numbers rule did not upset Ramsay’s timetable after all. Thanks to Clouston’s organizing ability, far more men were evacuating from the mole than anyone had dared hope. The surge of little ships across the Channel helped too. By now there were enough boats for everyone—both French and British.
But already a new crisis was at hand. All day May 31, German shells had been falling on the beach and shipping at La Panne. Now, as dusk settled over the battered town, the bombardment grew worse than ever. It suggested that all was far from well along the eastern end of the perimeter. If it collapsed, Bock’s seasoned troops could break into the beachhead and end the evacuation for good.
11
Holding the Perimeter
GERMAN SHELLS SCREECHED OVERHEAD as Captain P. J. Jeffries of the 6th Durham Light Infantry leaned over and plucked a small flower in the garden of the chateau at Moeres, a Belgian village toward the eastern end of the perimeter. Jeffries didn’t know what this flower was—sort of a cross between an azalea and a rhododendron—but he vowed to find out and plant some in his own garden … if he ever got home again.
At the moment his chances didn’t look too good. Jeffries was second in command of the 6th DLI, one of the units assigned to hold off the Germans while the rest of the BEF and the French escaped to England. For two days enemy pressure had been growing on the Durhams’ section of the canal defense line, and now on the morning of May 31 German shells began landing uncomfortably close to battalion headquarters.
The first actual penetration came not at Moeres, but still farther east near Nieuport, the coastal town that served as the perimeter’s eastern anchor. Here at 5:00 a.m. German infantry crossed the canal in rubber boats and stormed the brickworks held by the 1st/6th East Surreys. By noon they were in danger of being outflanked. Their “sister” battalion, the 1st East Surreys, rushed to the rescue just in time. Together they managed to stop the enemy, but it took every man. At one point the two battalion commanders manned a Bren gun together. One colonel fired the gun, while the other acted as “No. 2,” feeding it with ammunition.
Next, an even closer squeak. While the Surreys were clinging to their brickyard, a new German attack hit the British 8th Brigade three miles to the west. At 12:20 p.m. a hysterical sapper stumbled into Furnes, the main town in the area, blurting that the front had been broken and the Germans were pouring across the canal unopposed.
No time to lose. Reinforcements from the crack 2nd Grenadier Guards were rushed to the scene under a quick-thinking 2nd lieutenant named Jones. He found two battalions of the brigade about to retire without orders. If this happened, a gaping hole would open up in the perimeter, allowing the Germans to pour in behind the defenders. The few remaining officers were trying to rally their men, but nobody would listen.
Jones took more drastic measures. He found it necessary to shoot some of the panic-stricken soldiers, and others were turned around at bayonet-point. He then reported back to headquarters that the brigade was once again stabilized but in desperate need of experienced officers and ammunition. Lieutenant J. Trotter of the 2nd Grenadier Guards was then sent to help him, along with 14,000 rounds of ammunition. By 3:00 p.m. the men were all back in position and morale was high—proving once again the importance of that elusive quality, leadership, in shaping the fortunes of war.
During the afternoon the Germans shifted their efforts to the area southwest of Furnes, but with no better results. They managed to storm across the canal at Bulscamp, but soon bogged down on the other side. Flooded terrain and a spirited defense blocked any further advance. In such a predicament the standard remedy was to soften resistance with artillery, and shells were soon raining on the Durham Light Infantry’s chateau at Moeres. Toward evening the DLI abandoned the place with few regrets. This country was
meant to be an epicure’s delight, but for three days they had lived on a diet of tinned pilchards in tomato sauce.
Evening, and the target was Nieuport again. It’s doubtful whether the exhausted East Surreys could have stood up to any serious attack. Fortunately, just as the German columns massed, help came from an unexpected direction. Eighteen RAF bombers, supported by six planes from the Fleet Air Arm, swept in from the sea, smashing and scattering the enemy force. The British troops forgot their weariness; leapt and waved and shouted with excitement. Until now they thought that only the Germans could pull off this sort of stunt.
While the British brigades to the east desperately parried the German thrusts, the Allied troops to the west had a relatively quiet day. The line from Fort Mardyck to the ancient walled town of Bergues was a French responsibility; General Beaufrère’s 68th Infantry Division lay waiting behind a patchwork of ditches. A mixed garrison of French and British held Bergues itself. Some long-range guns were shelling the place, but the medieval walls stood up to modern artillery amazingly well.
It was the Bergues-Furnes Canal Line to the east of town that seemed most exposed. While the flat fields were bound to reveal an advancing enemy, they also gave away the defenders. There was no cover, except for an occasional tree or farmhouse.
The 2nd Coldstream Guards eyed uneasily the 2,200 yards assigned to them. Lieutenant Jimmy Langley of No. 3 Company moved his platoon into a small brick cottage directly north of the canal. He was anything but a picture-book guardsman—he stood only five feet eight—but he was lively and immensely resourceful. He lost no time converting the cottage into a miniature Gibraltar.
From scores of trucks and lorries abandoned along the canal bank, Langley’s men brought back a vast haul of booty. The weapons alone were impressive—12 Bren guns, 3 Lewis machine guns, 1 Boyes antitank rifle, 30,000 rounds of ammunition, and 22 hand grenades. Considering there were only 37 men left in the company, this was fire power indeed.
Nor was food neglected. Stacks of bully beef, canned vegetables, and tinned milk were piled in the kitchen. And since Langley was especially partial to marmalade and Wiltshire bacon, there was a liberal supply of these too. They might, he decided, be there a long time; so they should be prepared for the good life as well—he added two cases of wine and two crates of beer. During the afternoon the company commander, Major Angus McCorquodale, dropped by and made his contribution too: a bottle of whiskey and two bottles of sherry. McCorquodale was one of those throwbacks to a glorious earlier age in British military history. Gleaming with polished brass and leather, he scorned the new battle dress. “I don’t mind dying for my country,” he declared, “but I’m not going to die dressed like a third-rate chauffeur.”
He liked Langley’s set-up so much he decided to make the cottage the Company’s forward headquarters, and the two of them bedded down in a small back room for some rest. They were up before dawn, June 1, removing roof tiles and turning the attic into a machine-gun nest. Neither the roof nor the end walls were really strong enough, but it was too late to worry about that now. Langley settled down to wait for Jerry with a pair of binoculars and two buckets of cold water by his side. The buckets were for cooling the wine, or the beer, or the Bren gun barrels—whichever seemed to need it most.
There was no night of quiet waiting at Furnes. Shells poured down on the old Flemish town, as they had all day. The 1st Grenadier Guards huddled under an avalanche of falling slate and masonry from the seventeenth-century buildings that ringed the marketplace. The churchyard of venerable Saint Walburge was so thick with shrapnel that walking on the grass was like tramping over a carpet of jagged glass.
In the roomy cellar that served as battalion headquarters, Signalman George W. Jones hunched over a portable radio listening to the BBC evening news. It was the first voice he had heard from the outside world in three weeks. It assured him that two-thirds of the troops trapped at Dunkirk were now evacuated and safely back in England.
Jones felt anything but assured. Here he was, stuck with the rear guard in a collapsing town miles from home, and now he heard that the best part of the army was safely back in England. It was a very lonely feeling.
Lance Sergeant John Bridges, also of the 1st Grenadier Guards, was sure they would never get away. He had originally joined the regiment as a drummer boy, hoping to see the world, play a little football, and ultimately become a writer. But now the dream was buried in the rubble of Furnes. His company commander, Major Dickie Herbert, showed him how to dig a round foxhole, so he could shoot in any direction. That could only mean they were about to be surrounded.
Then an unexpected reprieve. Toward evening Major Herbert returned from a brigade conference and immediately called a meeting of his own officers and NCO’s. He lost no time getting to the point: his first words were, “We’re going home.” A map was produced, and a staff lieutenant lined off the route to the beaches. There were no histrionics, no exhortations. It was all so matter-of-fact that to Bridges it seemed rather like planning a family outing.
At 10:00 p.m. the battalion began “thinning out”—first the headquarters personnel, the signalers, the quartermaster units; then the infantry companies, one by one; and finally certain hand-picked parties from No. 2 and No. 4 Companies, especially skilled in rear-guard work. Everything went very smoothly. After all, they had been doing it since Brussels.
The premium was on silence. The enemy must not find out. The rear-guard parties wrapped sandbags around their boots to deaden the sound on the cobblestone streets. Still, there were heart-stopping moments as the columns, tramping single file, noisily scrambled over piles of rubble, bricks, broken glass, and tangled telephone wire. How could the Germans miss hearing them?
Yet there was no sound of unusual activity in the sections of town now occupied by the enemy. Only the steady pounding of shells that had gone on for two days. By 2:30 a.m., June 1, the last Grenadier had pulled out.
For Sergeant Bridges the march to La Panne was a three-mile nightmare. He especially hated mortar fire, and tonight every mortar in the German Army seemed concentrated on him. Most of the shells landed ahead of the column, which meant few casualties but gave the terrifying impression that the battalion was always marching straight into hell. At one point Bridges’s rifle got caught in a tangle of telephone wire, and the more he tried to get it loose, the more he himself became enmeshed in the tangle. On the verge of panic, he was finally freed by his sergeant major, who also brought him to his senses with a good slap.
Adding to the confusion, hundreds of abandoned cattle, sheep, pigs, and chickens were loose and running among the stumbling men. They reminded Bridges of the stories he had heard about wild animals fleeing before a great forest fire.
All along the eastern end of the perimeter—the II Corps area—the battalions were thinning out and falling back on La Panne. As with the 1st Grenadier Guards, the process usually began about 10:00 p.m. and continued to around 2:30 a.m., when the last rear-guard parties retired. Probably the last unit of all to pull out was the carrier platoon of the 1st Coldstream, which hung around Furnes till 2:50 a.m., covering the withdrawal of the battalion’s infantry.
As always, silence was the rule—which could fool a friend as well as foe. Private F. R. Farley was on sentry duty that night in a lonely copse east of Furnes. He knew his battalion, the 1st/7th Middlesex, would be withdrawing, and he was to be called in when the time came. Hours passed, and nothing happened. From time to time he heard faint sounds: a car starting, a muffled word of command. Then complete silence. He listened—a sentry did not leave his post lightly—then decided to slip back, and see what was happening.
Everyone had gone. The NCO had forgotten to call him in. Desperately he sprinted through the copse to the main road. He was just in time to leap onto the last truck of the last column of the battalion, as it started down the coastal road for La Panne.
The convoy stopped on the edge of town; the men piled out; and the trucks were disabled in the usual way—a
bullet in the radiator, the engine left running until it seized. Moving into La Panne, Farley joined a flood of troops converging on the place from every direction. The whole eastern end of the perimeter was being abandoned; all had instructions to make for La Panne.
Beyond that, there seemed to be no orders. Some men slumped in doorways; others lay exhausted on the pavé; others wandered aimlessly about, as officers and NCO’s called out unit numbers and rallying cries, trying to keep their men together.
The shelling had unaccountably stopped, and for the moment all was relatively quiet. As the men waited to be told what to do, a thousand cigarettes glowed in the darkness.
Eventually there was a stirring, but instead of moving onto the beach, the troops were ordered back a couple of streets. They were now further from the sea, but much better dispersed. It was just as well, for at this moment a spotter plane droned overhead, dropping flares that brilliantly lit up the whole scene. Then came the thump of distant guns, followed by the shriek of falling shells.
There was a shattering crash as the first salvo landed at the intersection near the beach. The hotels and shops in the area were mostly built in the “modern” style of the 30’s, full of chrome and plate glass. Now the glass came cascading down, adding to the general din.
“Into the shops! Off the streets!” The cry went up, and the troops needed no further urging. Rifle butts went to work on the doors and windows remaining, and the men swarmed in, just as a second salvo was landing.