I saw for the first time that strange procession of craft of all kinds that has become famous. Tugs towing dinghies, lifeboats and all manner of pulling boats, small motor yachts, motor launches, drifters, Dutch schoots, Thames barges, fishing boats and pleasure steamers.
(Rear-Admiral William Wake-Walker, in charge of shipping off Dunkirk, 31 May 1940, from Hugh Sebag-Montefiore’s Dunkirk)
Commander CH Lightoller, DSC, RNR, with his son and a Sea Scout as crew, took his yacht Sundowner out of Cubitt’s Yacht Basin at Chiswick on May 31st and dropped down the river with a big convoy of forty boats, which mustered at Westminster bound for the south coast. On reaching Ramsgate the following day, he was instructed to ‘proceed to Dunkirk for further orders’, and this is what happened next:
Halfway across we avoided a floating mine by a narrow margin, but having no firearms of any description – not even a tin hat – we had to leave its destruction to someone better equipped. A few minutes later we had our first introduction to enemy aircraft, three fighters flying high. Before they could be offensive, a British Destroyer – Worcester I think – overhauled us and drove them off. At 2.25pm we sighted and closed the 25-foot motor cruiser Westerly; broken down and badly on fire. As the crew of two (plus three naval ratings she had picked up in Dunkirk) wished to abandon ship – and quickly – I went alongside and took them aboard, giving them the additional pleasure of again facing the hell they had only just left.
Skilful avoiding action and manoeuvres by Captain Lightoller’s son Roger at the wheel enabled Sundowner to come through bombing and machine-gun fire and arrive at Dunkirk Roads, steaming slowly through the wreckage of a just-sunk French transport with severe loss of life. Captain Lightoller picks up the story again:
It had been my intention to go right on to the beaches, where my second son, Second Lieutenant RT Lightoller had been evacuated some forty-eight hours previously; but those of the Westerly informed me that the troops were all away from the beaches, so I headed up to Dunkirk piers. By now dive-bombers seemed to be eternally dropping out of the clouds of enemy aircraft overhead. Within half a mile of the pierheads a two-funnelled grey-painted transport overhauled and was just passing us to port when two salvoes were dropped in quick succession right along her port side. For a few moments she was hid in smoke and I certainly thought they had got her. Then she reappeared still gaily heading for the piers and entered just ahead of us.
With the tide being low, the difficulty of taking troops on board from the quay high above us was obvious, so I went alongside a destroyer (Worcester again I think) where they were already embarking. I got hold of her captain and told him I could take about a hundred (though the most I’d ever had on board was twenty-one). He, after consultation with the military CO, told me to carry on. I may say that before leaving Cubitt’s Yard we had stripped the Sundowner down of everything moveable, masts included, to make for more room.
My son, as previously arranged, was to pack the men in and use every inch of space – which I’ll say he did to some purpose. At fifty I called below, ‘How are you getting on?’ getting the cheery reply, ‘Oh, plenty of room yet.’ At seventy-five my son admitted they were getting pretty tight. I now started to pack them on deck, having passed word below for every man to lie down and keep down; the same applied on deck. By the time we had fifty on deck, I could feel her getting distinctly tender, so took no more. Actually we had exactly 130 on board, including three Sundowners and five Westerlys.
During the whole embarkation we had quite a lot of attention from enemy planes, but derived an amazing degree of comfort from the fact that the Worcester‘s AA guns kept up an everlasting bark overhead.
Casting off and backing out we entered the Roads again, and there it was continuous and unmitigated hell. The troops were just splendid, and of their own initiative detailed look-outs ahead, astern and abeam for inquisitive planes, as my attention was pretty wholly occupied watching the steering and passing orders to Roger at the wheel. Any time an aircraft seemed inclined to try its hand on us, one of the look-outs would just call quietly ‘Look out for this bloke, skipper,’ at the same time pointing. My youngest son, Pilot Officer HB Lightoller (lost at the outbreak of war in the first raid on Wilhelmshaven) flew a Blenheim and had at different times given me a whole lot of useful information about attack, defence and evasive tactics (at which he was apparently particularly good) and I attribute, in a great measure, our success at getting across without a single casualty to his unwitting help.
Not the least of our difficulties was contending with the wash of fast craft, such as destroyers and transports. The effect of the consequent plunging on the troops below, in a stinking atmosphere with all ports and skylights closed, can well be imagined. They were literally packed like the proverbial sardines, even one in the bath and another on the WC, so that all the poor devils could do was sit and be sick. Added were the remnants of bully beef and biscuits. So that after discharging our cargo in Ramsgate at 10pm, there lay before the three of us a nice clearing-up job.
Arriving off the harbour I was at first told to ‘lie off’. But when I informed them that I had 130 on board, permission was at once given to ‘come in’, and I put her alongside a trawler lying at the quay. After I had got rid of those on deck I gave the order ‘Come up from below’, and the look on the official face was amusing to behold as troops vomited up through the forward companionway, the after companionway, and the doors either side of the wheelhouse. A stoker PO, helping them over the bulwarks, said, ‘God’s truth, mate! Where did you put them?’
(from AD Divine’s Dunkirk)
— including, of course, those five Westerlys,who had left Dunkirk once, been back into hell, and at last got home in the company of 125 others. This extraordinary account is given in AD Divine’s Dunkirk. It’s worth noting that the Worcester’s Captain Commander John Hamilton Allison RN was awarded the DSO, and eighteen other Worcester crew members awarded honours from DSC to Mention in Dispatches (Posthumous); but it’s hard to count the number of people indebted to Captain Lightoller and his heroic sons.
Soon we saw another boat coming up behind us. It was the Renown, and, yelling that they had engine trouble, they made fast to our stern. We towed them, 3.5 fathoms of rope being the distance between us. That was at 1.15am. Tired out, the engineer, seaman and signaller went to turn in, as our work seemed nearly done. We were congratulating ourselves, when, at about 1.50am, a terrible explosion took place and a hail of wood splinters came down on our deck. In the pitch dark, you could see nothing, and we could do nothing except pull in the tow rope which was just as we passed it to the Renown about three-quarters of an hour before.
(Jimmy Dench, skipper of the cockle-boat Letitia, one of the six from Leigh-on-Sea, from Hugh Sebag-Montefiore’s Dunkirk)
During the afternoon, HMS Skipjack, filled with troops and towing a motor boat, was attacked by dive-bombers. She shot down three aircraft, but five bombs from one plane sank her. The survivors were picked up by a neighbouring destroyer and reached Dover. One man writing of this day says: ‘Ammunition was going up like fireworks. I waded out to my armpits and scrambled aboard a boat. Two others jumped out of the boat and completely swamped her. We spent about two hours trying to refloat her, but the seas were too strong. I decided to look for a change of clothes and searched the beach, where I soon picked up some short pants and socks. On returning, I found my party gone. I picked up some biscuits on the beach, and presently, when I boarded the destroyer, I had an enormous feast of bread, bully-beef and tea.’
(from John Masefield’s Nine Days Wonder)
We reached the East Jetty about 11pm. On one place there had been a direct hit on the Mole. The gap had been patched with boards. A final halt was made 200 yards from the end, which was altogether about a mile long. Most of the men laid down on the jetty and went to sleep in spite of the cold. A German bomber flew over us at one o’clock, dropping bombs. The battalion just behind us was heavily shelled and machine-gunned and suffered severe casualties. Two ships had already been sunk at the end of the jetty. It was apparently impossible to embark until the sun rose. At five o’clock a destroyer drew alongside. It was daylight, but luckily there was a mist. We were conducted below and all were very soon asleep.
(Eye-witness account quoted in John Masefield’s Nine Days Wonder)
The comedian Tommy Trinder’s boatChalmondesleigh, named after his ‘chum’ saw active service at Dunkirk; Falcon II, a sailing clipper of 1898 which had spent its working life bringing port from Portugal to England brought back 450 men, and the Ethel Maud, an 1889 wooden sailing barge from the Tilbury docks (one of the ‘stackies’ that took hay and straw from farms in Essex, Kent and Suffolk to feed the horses of London) went, being a ‘fast sailer’, and brought home many men.
(Ships’ stories from several sources including the website of the Association of Little Ships of Dunkirk. More little ships’ stories throughout the nine days)
I was coming down a ladder leading from the sickbay to the mess deck when a bomb went down the ship’s forward funnel and exploded. I was thrown up in the air and hit the deckhead. Then I fell back in the blast given off by the bomb. As it hit me, I put my hands up to my face to protect it. It felt as if I had been hit six times on the face with a whip. I was in such pain that I prayed to God to take me. But someone picked me up, and pushed me outside, and I ended up on the upper deck. Then I heard someone shout ‘Abandon ship!’
(Bob Bloom, 19 year-old sick-bay attendant on HMS Grenade, from Hugh Sebag-Montefiore’s Dunkirk)
BobBloom somehow jumped over the side into the water, and climbed on to the mole. From there he staggered on to Crested Eagle, a paddle-steamer moored to the other side of the mole. Shortly afterwards, having also taken on board wounded men from Fenella, another vessel that had been bombed, Crested Eagle got under way, only to be hit by four bombs dropped during yet another air raid. Bloom jumped into the sea for the second time that day.
‘My life was saved by two soldiers who were hanging on to what looked like a barn door with a ring fixed to it. They hung on to it and kicked with their legs, while I sat on it holding the ring.’ Hours later they were rescued by another ship which finally took him to Ramsgate. He woke up in England, with a nurse lifting him on to a stretcher so that he could be taken to hospital. ‘You’ll be safe soon,’ she told him. Bloom’s last words to her before he lost consciousness again were ‘Will you please tell my parents I’m OK.’
(Bob Bloom’s story from Hugh Sebag-Montefiore’s Dunkirk)
There seemed to be thousands and thousands of people in the water, and unfortunately, with this ship having had the attack earlier on, the fuel tanks were damaged. Men were stuck in this oil fuel, clinging to various bits of wreckage. After about an hour, the attackers came over again, and they strafed us with machine-gun fire. Then various ships came in to pick up troops. I’d been in the water approximately five hours. But in the meantime, I’d come across an old broken ladder and I was clinging to that, which I was very pleased about, because although the life-jacket keeps your head above water, it’s very nice to get hold of something. I was picked up by a French tug, whose crew just threw a hook out and dragged us in.
(Ordinary Seaman Frank Brogden, Crewman aboard troopship Lancastria, from Max Arthur’s Forgotten Voices. More from the Lancastria over the next few days.)
The Crested Eagle – the old London pleasure ship which used to go between Tower Bridge down to Clacton – was a hospital ship, painted up with red crosses. She’d been bombed and settled in the water. But the German aircraft were still machine-gunning her. That wasn’t cricket. There was no real hatred about the Germans, really, except that they just weren’t playing the game. That wasn’t the right way to win a war – to have a go at wounded people.
The other thing was seeing all the soldiers coming back without their equipment. We began to think it was sort of the end of our way of life. We didn’t know how long we’d be able to hold Jerry off in England. We knew we had the Navy, and that we would fight – but we didn’t know what the soldiers would be able to do if Jerry had landed – because they had nothing.
(Ordinary Seaman Stanley Allen, aboard HMS Windsor, from Max Arthur’s Forgotten Voices)
It was dark when we reached the sandhills and we were very tired. The day before, or it might have been the day before that, orders [were issued] to blow up the guns. Since then the purpose of our existence had changed. We were no longer a fighting force but simply a unit moving back towards the coast. We lay down where we stood and we slept where we lay down.
An hour later the order came for us to move down the beach, and we made our way over the sand hills; as we came over the edge of the dunes we saw the beach spread out before us, stretching away on either side. As far as we could see it was black with men, in groups, in broken lines and circles, sitting, lying and standing – all of them waiting. We sat in the sand and waited too.
Eventually the sun rose and revealed the clear blue sky of an early summer morning, and with the sun came the Stukas. They approached from behind us, spread out according to their fancy and proceeded to bomb what they liked. Some chose the ships, others the beaches and a few the sea.
(Captain NDG James, 68th Field Battery RA, from Robert Jackson’s Dunkirk)
On the morning of 31st May, Brigadier Wilson heard that his men would not be evacuated for one or even two days. Nevertheless it was decided that 3 Brigade’s headquarters should go to the beach at Bray-Dunes that night so as to be ready when the evacuation order was given. ‘The scenery provided a picture of the abomination of desolation. Ruined and burnt out houses, vehicles abandoned, many of them charred relics of twisted metal on the roadside and overturned in the ditches. Light tanks and guns poking up out of the floods. Horses dead. Here and there civilian or French Army corpses lying in the open. An unforgettable spectacle.’
(Story from Hugh Sebag-Montefiore’s Dunkirk.)
Next day 31st at 4pm we left again. We returned to Dover with 2,500 French troops.
(Captain G Johnson still on board the Royal Daffodil, from his laconic daily account in the Imperial War Museum archive. More from Captain Johnson every day until June 2nd)
Gun Buster and his colleagues in the remnants of Y Battery are at last approaching Dunkirk, having endured an appalling week as the retreat’s rearguard. He picks up the story again as the Battery is still reeling from having blown their guns:
We were now in the region of the dunes, which rose like humps of a deeper darkness. And these in their turn were dotted with the still blacker shapes of abandoned vehicles, half-sunk in the sand, fantastic twisted burned-out skeletons, and crazy-looking wreckage that had been heaped up in extraordinary piles by the explosions of bombs.
Slowly we picked our way between the wreckage, sinking ankle-deep in the loose sand, until we reached the gaunt skeletons of what had once been the houses of the promenade. The whole front was one long continuous line of blazing buildings, a high wall of fire, roaring and darting in tongues of flame, with the smoke pouring upwards and disappearing in the blackness of the sky above the rooftops. Out seawards the darkness was as thick and smooth as black velvet, except for now and again when the shape of a sunken destroyer or paddle-steamer made a slight thickening of its impenetrable surface. Facing us, the great black wall of the Mole had an astounding terrifying background of giant flames leaping a hundred feet into the air from blazing oil tanks.
Along the promenade, in parties of fifty, the remnants of practically all the last regiments were wearily trudging along. There was no singing and very little talk. Everyone was far too exhausted. It was none too easy to keep contact with one’s friends in the darkness, and amid so many little masses of moving men, all looking very much alike. The tide was out. Over the wide stretch of sand could be dimly discerned little oblong masses of soldiers, moving in platoons and orderly groups down towards the edge of the sea.
From the margin of the sea, at fairly wide intervals, three long thin black lines protruded into the water. These were lines of men, standing in pairs behind one another far out into the water, waiting in queues till boats arrived to transport them, a score or so at a time, to the steamers and warships that were filling up with the last survivors. The queues stood there, fixed and almost as regular as if ruled, much more orderly than a waiting theatre queue.
We set our faces in the direction of the sea.
(from Gun Buster’s Return via Dunkirk; Y Battery’s ordeal continues on 2nd June)
A detail from Embarkation from Dunkirk by EC Turner, the book-jacket image for Gun Buster’s Return via Dunkirk (Hodder and Stoughton 1940)
from To the Seaman
I tell you this, that in the future time
When landsmen mention sailors, such, or such,
Someone will say “Those fellows were sublime
Who brought the Armies from the Germans’ clutch.”
Through the long time the story will be told;
Long centuries of praise on English lips,
Of courage godlike and of hearts of gold
Off Dunquerque beaches in the little ships.
And ships will dip their colours in salute
To you, henceforth, when passing Zuydecoote.
(John Masefield)
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