4th June 1940 – Beyond Dunkirk

On 4th June Dunkirk fell to the Germans.

(from Five Days in London, John Lukacs)

The signal ‘Operation Dynamo now completed’ circulated by the Admiralty on 4th June by no means implied that all BEF troops had been evacuated from France. There were still more than 100,000 British soldiers south of the River Somme; the British 51st Highland Division had to secure nineteen miles of the front line. ‘On this day alone 23 officers and over 500 other ranks were missing, wounded or killed. June 5th must have been the blackest day in the history of the battalion.’

(from Hugh Sebag-Montefiore’s Dunkirk)

It’s a complete mess. There are guns everywhere, as well as countless vehicles, corpses, wounded men and dead horses. The heat makes the whole place stink. Dunkirk itself has been completely destroyed. There are lots of fires burning. Amongst the prisoners are Frenchmen, and blacks, some of them not wearing uniforms, real villains, scum of the earth. We move to Coxy de Bains by the beach. But we cannot swim because the water is full of oil from the sunk ships, and is also full of corpses. At midnight there is a thanksgiving ceremony on the beach, which we watch, while looking at the waves in the sea, and the flames in the distance, which show that Dunkirk is still burning.

(German staff officer who entered Dunkirk on 4th June 1940, from Hugh Sebag-Montefiore’s Dunkirk)

The ‘miracle’ of the Dunkirk evacuation was well known to those who were alive in 1940. The accepted version is that all 338,226 members of the British Expeditionary Force were saved from the beaches near Dunkirk by the Royal Navy and an armada of ‘little ships’ who volunteered for the task. Churchill described the rescue of ‘every last man’ of the BEF as a ‘miracle of deliverance’. There is no doubt that these two groups performed magnificently, but, as with so many ‘miracles’, the story includes some myths. One was that only Royal Naval vessels and the ‘little ships’ were involved; the other that all of the BEF were evacuated.

In fact almost as many troops were left in France, most to be evacuated in the following three weeks by merchant ships. Certainly the Navy rescued the majority from Dunkirk and it fell to the various Admirals to organise all of the evacuations, but merchant ships carried more than 90,000 troops to safety. About three quarters of these were saved by railway steamers, ferries and excursions ships (generally described as ‘Packets’). The rest were carried by cargo vessels, coasters, tugs and barges. A further 5,548 stretcher cases were moved by other railway steamers acting as hospital carriers. In addition the Navy operated Dutch schuyts and British paddle steamers; these last still manned by their peacetime crews and civilian volunteers.

(Roy V. Martin, from Ebb and Flow: Evacuations and Landings by Merchantmen in World War Two)

The little boats all summoned again, as if to fetch off more troops. 20,000 of our men cut off.

(Virginia Woolf’s diary for 12th and 13th June 1940)

Some French soldiers were lifted from Dunkirk harbour during the next midnight, by French and English ships, the last ship (the Princess Maud) leaving at 1.50am on the 4th. As she left, a shell fell in the berth she had occupied a moment before. Though the lifting was finished, some useful cruising was done later, to pick up stragglers. The RAF and a number of motor-boats cruised over the Channel, and helped to find and save men wrecked in a transport and a barge. On the evening of June 12th, some survivors were seen by a British aeroplane, who reported them to the patrols; a motor-boat went out at once and brought them off. These must have been among the last to be saved. The numbers lifted and brought to England from Dunkirk alone during the operation were: British 186,587; French 123,095 and those brought by hospital ships etc 6,981, making a total of 316,663.

(John Masefield, Nine Days Wonder)

On the beaches and in the dunes north of Dunkirk, thousands of light and heavy weapons lay on the sands, along with munitions crates, field kitchens, scatttered cans of rations and innumerable wrecks of British army trucks.

‘Damn!’ I exclaimed to Erwin. ‘The entire British Army went under here!’

Erwin shook his head vigorously. ‘On the contrary! A miracle took place here! If the German tanks and Stukas and navy had managed to surround the British here, shooting most of them, and taking the rest prisoner, then England wouldn’t have any trained soldiers left. Instead the British seem to have rescued them all – and a lot of Frenchmen too. Adolf can say goodbye to his Blitzkreig against England.’

(Bernt Engelman, Luftwaffe pilot, from Max Arthur’s Forgotten Voices)

Philip Newman, the surgeon who we left yesterday at the Chateau, was captured by the Germans along with the wounded at the Chateau. In January 1942 he escaped for the second time (he had been recaptured after his first escape) and made it back to England. Later he became one of Britain’s leading orthopaedic surgeons and in 1962 he operated on Churchill, who had broken his hip. He was finally honoured in 1976, when he was appointed CBE.

(from Hugh Sebag-Montefiore’s Dunkirk)

‘When a week ago I asked the House to fix this afternoon for a statement, I feared it would be my hard lot to announce from this box the greatest military disaster in our long history.

I thought, and some good judges agreed with me, that perhaps from 20,000 to 30,000 men might be re-embarked, but it certainly seemed that the whole of the French First Army and the whole of the British Expeditionary Force north of Amiens and the Abbeville gap would be broken up in the field or else have to capitulate for lack of food and ammunition.

This was the hard and heavy tidings for which I called on the House and the nation to prepare themselves a week ago.’

(Winston Churchill, House of Commons 4th June 1940, quoted by AD Divine in his Dunkirk – who adds with restrained pride the following conclusion:)

Not 20,000 men but 337,131 came safe to the ports of England.

The first attempt to rescue those left behind was named Operation Cycle: this was hampered by fog, the lack of ships’ wirelesses and heavy shelling. The evacuation ‘fell far short of Admiral James’s early hopes’. About 8,000 men of the 51st Highland Division were cut off and ordered to surrender; but by 13 June over 15,000 other troops had been saved.

Reinforcements were sent through St Malo; two thirds didn’t get beyond the port before they were recalled; wits in Southampton said that BEF meant ‘back every Friday’

Operation Aerial began on 15 June when 133 ships were sent to Breton ports; most of the 140,000 British troops were saved then. These vessels also mounted an evacuation of the Channel Islands. On 17 June the British liner Lancastria was sunk off St Nazaire.

(Roy Martin, from After Dynamo, May 2015 for The Dunkirk Project; his story continues later on this page.)

Roughly four o’clock in the afternoon the sirens went again. There was an instant attack, a terrific bang and blast which blew me off my feet – straight into the lap of an army officer. Another bomb went off and the ship lurched and started heeling over. Another bomb went off. Machinery like trucks, guns, stuff that was on the deck – human beings all hurtled down into the rails of the ship, into the water. One of my most vivid pictures is of the big masts running parallel to the water, and people running along this and jumping off. I saw a rope and grabbed it. I couldn’t swim so I had to get hold of something that would keep me afloat. I grabbed an oar between my legs and a kitbag under each arm and just floated there.

(Sergeant Peter Vinicombe, Wireless operator, 98 Squadron RAF, aboard Lancastria, from Max Arthur’s Forgotten Voices)

At least 2,710 people drowned, making this Britain’s worst maritime disaster.

(Roy Martin, After Dynamo, continuing below)

We were practically the last to embark on the Lancastria. By this time, she had round about 6,000 troops and air force on board. We were assigned to palliasses right on the bottom of the hold. It was pretty grim and, having a strong sense of self-preservation, I thought, ‘Well, on the trip home, if we get attacked by submarines or hit a mine, we wouldn’t have a chance down there – particularly if the lights have all gone.’ So I decided to stay on the top deck. When she was hit I went to the bow to have a look back, and she was sinking slowly in the water. So I said to this chap, ‘Well, I’m a swimmer. I’m over the side.’ I just looked down about a thirty foot drop, took my tin helmet off, my uniform, my boots, clutched my paybook and my French francs and jumped over the side. When I broke surface I swam about a hundred yards and came across a plank, which looked as if it had been blown off one of the hatches. So I sat on that, and the thing that surprised me was how calm I felt. I thought, ‘Well, I’ll sit on this. You’ll never see anything like this again.’ Fifty yards away from me, men were singing ‘Roll out the barrel’.

(Corporal Donald Draycott, Fitter, 98 Squadron, aboard the Lancastria, from Max Arthur’s Forgotten Voices)

The sinking of the Lancastria was the subject of a BBC documentary and a page on the BBC History site tells the story in full with some moving images. Click here for a link to the archived page.

It’s something that you look back on with astonishment – that from the little trawler which picked us up, we were able to watch the final lurching and sinking of the Lancastria. She overturned completely in the end, so you could see the propellors, and even then you could see men standing on her upturned bows, afraid to jump into the sea. That was a pretty awful sight to behold. That was awful.

(Private William Tilley, Clerk, Royal Army Service Corps, from Max Arthur’s Forgotten Voices)

After the rescues from Breton ports and the evacuation of the Channel Islands, the ships moved to Bordeaux, where much treasure was also saved. They then went on to St Jean de Luz, near the Spanish border. Embarkations only ceased when the Armistice came into force on 25 June. More of those rescued from these ports were Polish and Czech troops and civilians. The Polish liners Batory and Sobeiski embarked their countrymen and British cargo ships saved many more. Further British and Allied troops and civilians were lifted from southern France. Voyages from western France took days, rather than hours, those from the south took weeks to reach the UK.

During the three operations the Royal Navy sent 102 ships and 45 requisitioned Dutch coasters. The Merchant Navies, mainly the British, provided 129 passenger ships and 141 cargo ships – an awesome response.

(Roy Martin, from After Dynamo.  More from Roy Martin in today’s comments, including an account from Miss R Andrews who was rescued by the Ettrick, one of the last passenger ships to leave St Jean de Luz.)

Just then (it was almost midnight), we had our first taste of the kindness of a great people; ladies of the British Red Cross (I had no idea who warned them, or who had even thought of warning them) went from one compartment to the other with hot tea and pieces of delicious freshly made cake. What a luxury after the stale bread we had eaten for the last five days. We even received some warm milk for the children. My wife and the nurse could not restrain their tears. I also saw tears in the eyes of the Red Cross volunteer, a very kind and distinguished-looking lady with white hair, who was helping us. We were far from the Germans. That cup of tea and piece of cake had comforted us morally as well as physically.

(Paul Timbal, among those evacuated from Bordeaux on the Broompark on 19th June 1940, part of Operation Aerial. Timbal’s story is told in The Suffolk Golding Mission by Roy V. Martin)

SS Alderpool carried 3,500 Poles from France to safety in Plymouth.
Photo from archive of Polish Institute & Sikorski Museum in London, contributed by Roy Martin

It is said that many thousands – it is even said that four-fifths of them – have got back. A few days ago one thought they must either surrender or die. They have fought their way out in the greatest, strangest rearguard action ever known. Corunna, when one thinks how much fiercer and crueller war is today, cannot compare with it. However, it is a victory over adversity, not over Germans; it is a moral, not a physical victory.

(Sarah Gertrude Millin, 1 June 1940, from World Blackout.)

General Bernard Law Montgomery criticised the shoulder ribbons issued to the troops, marked ‘Dunkirk’. They were not ‘heroes’. If it was not understood that the army suffered a defeat at Dunkirk, then our island home was now in grave danger. Churchill saw things in much the same way: ‘Wars are not won by evacuations.’

(from Five Days in London by John Lukacs)

In retrospect, it was Dunkirk that lost Germany the war, because it suddenly brought Britain to her senses – made us realise that, with all our allies surrendered to the enemy, we alone had to carry the fight.  The rest is history.

(Arthur Addis, Ammunition Officer, HQ, Third Division, BEF, quoted from the BBC website archive of the Dunkirk Evacuation by kind permission of his wife.)

No British soldiers were left on the beach and it is remembered as a success rather than a retreat – ‘snatching glory out of defeat’.

(The entry for ‘Dunkirk’ in the Oxford Encyclopedic English Dictionary, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1991)

I, like so many others had taken for granted the history of England, of which Nelson was a part. And I knew that I, too, should in future feel a sense of responsibility.

(Second Officer Nancy Spain, WRNS, from Voices from the War at Sea, ed. John Winton)

FROM HIS MAJESTY THE KING TO THE PRIME MINISTER AND MINISTER OF DEFENCE, 4th JUNE 1940, Buckingham Palace.

I wish to express my admiration of the outstanding skill and bravery shown by the three Services and the Merchant Navy in the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from Northern France. So difficult an operation was only made possible by brilliant leadership and an indomitable spirit among all ranks of the Force. The measure of its success – greater than we had dared to hope – was due to the unfailing support of the Royal Air Force and, in the final stages, the tireless efforts of naval units of every kind.

While we acclaim this great feat, in which our French Allies too have played so noble a part, we think with heartfelt sympathy of the loss and sufferings of those brave men whose self-sacrifice has turned disaster into triumph.

GEORGE R.I.  (Letter quoted in AD Divine’s Dunkirk, Appendix A; Appendix B contains the official list of the hundreds of ships, boats and other craft which took part in Operation Dynamo, and Appendix C lists 36 pages of Dunkirk Honours and Awards)

A brutal, desperate adventure forced on us by the most dire disaster.

(AD Divine, from Dunkirk. Divine went to Dunkirk on board the White Wing with Rear Admiral Taylor and was awarded the DSM)

Stele by Liz Mathews, setting a poem by Valentine Ackland. Stoneware panel on yacht board, with oxides, clay slip, acrylics

This morning I lingered over my breakfast, reading and re-reading the accounts of the Dunkirk evacuation. I felt as if deep inside me there was a harp that vibrated and sang, like the feeling of seeing suddenly a big bed of clear, thin red poppies in all their brave splendour. I forgot I was a middle-aged woman who often got up tired and also had backache; somehow I felt everything to be worthwhile, and I felt glad I was of the same race as the rescuers and rescued.

(5th June 1940 diary entry in Nella Last’s War: A Mother’s Diary, quoted in John Lukacs’ Five Days in London)

The little ships, the unforgotten Homeric catalogue

of Mary Jane and Peggy IV, of Folkestone Belle,

Billy Boy, and Ethel Maud, of Lady Haig and Skylark,

the little ships of England brought the Army home.

(Philip Guedalla, 1941)

On Sunday morning news came over the radio – Britain had declared war on Germany. What I feared more than my own death, war raged by everyone against everyone else, had been unleashed for the second time. Once again I walked down to the city of Bath for a last look at peace. It lay quiet in the noonday sunlight and seemed just the same as ever. People went their usual way, walking with their usual gait. They were in no haste, they did not gather together in excited talk, and for a moment I wondered: ‘Don’t they know what has happened yet?’ But they were English, they were used to concealing their feelings. They didn’t need drums and banners, noise and music, to fortify them in their tough and unemotional resolution.

I knew what war meant, and as I looked at the crowded, shining shops I saw a sudden vision of the shops I had seen in 1918, cleared of their goods, cleaned out, I saw, as if in a waking dream, the long lines of careworn women waiting outside food shops, the grieving mothers, the wounded and crippled men, all the mighty horrors of the past come back to haunt me like a ghost in the radiant midday light. I remembered our old soldiers, weary and ragged, coming away from the battlefield; my heart, beating fast, felt all of that past war in the war that was beginning today. And I knew that yet again all the past was over, all achievements were as nothing – our own native Europe, for which we had lived, was destroyed and the destruction would last long after our own lives. Something else was beginning, a new time, and who knew how many hells and purgatories we still had to go through to reach it?

The sunlight was full and strong. As I walked home, I suddenly saw my own shadow going ahead of me, just as I had seen the shadow of the last war behind this one. That shadow had never left me all this time, it lay over my mind day and night. Perhaps its dark outline lies over the pages of this book. But in the last resort, every shadow is also the child of light, and only those who have known the light and the dark, have seen war and peace, rise and fall, have truly lived their lives.

(The closing paragraphs of The World of Yesterday by Stefan Zweig, first published in German in 1942, translated by Anthea Bell and published by Pushkin Press in 2009.)

Handwritten dedication on the title page of my first edition copy of AD Divine’s Dunkirk

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To read or add to today’s comments and conversations, please go to 4th June 1940 – Beyond Dunkirk in the menu top left, and you’ll find the comments at the foot of the page.

3rd June 1940 – Towards the end

Every day we received many more wounded at the ‘hotel’, the hospital at La Panne; we were kept extremely busy dressing wounds. Outside on the beaches were anti-aircraft guns, and every time they fired the whole building shook. At one time, a terrific barrage shattered the windows; fortunately the glass blew outwards. We had several air raids during the day, and the noise was terrifying.

Troops were continually lifted from the beaches, and at last the rumour spread that we also would be going home. It seemed too good to be true – but the day came when, having evacuated all our casualties, we received orders to move out. We were just packing our gear when Jerry dropped a stick of bombs across the beach, killing and wounding many men. A number were injured around the hotel when the remaining windows blew out, scattering glass. When the noise had died down, two of us set off down the beach in search of wounded.

Having evacuated our latest batch of casualties we finally moved off from the hospital, leaving behind an officer and eight men to look after the remaining wounded who were then moved to the Chateau. We marched off down the beach in single file, and behind us, shells screeched into La Panne; we saw one explode on the rear of the building we had just left.

(Corporal W McWilliam, RAMC, from Robert Jackson’s Dunkirk)

Meanwhile Major Philip Newman returned from his interview with General Alexander to request hospital ships, to the Chateau, the 12th Casualty Clearing Station, where all the remaining wounded were waiting evacuation. He, too, waited for orders.

The first was an invitation to send all the walking-wounded to the mole. Newman and his staff quickly went round the house and grounds, and collected a hundred men who were willing, and just about able, to shuffle along. They were packed into four lorries for transportation to the mole. After a dangerous journey, the men limped down the mole, and were helped on to a destroyer.

‘Then at about 9.45pm,’ wrote Newman, ‘just as the light was failing, we got a message at the Chateau to say a hospital ship was coming in. I called all the men together, and told them there was a slight chance, and that if we worked really hard all night, and got rid of all the wounded, we could get on the boat.’ Five ambulances full of wounded men were driven to the mole. Major Newman tells what happened next:

(Major Philip Newman’s story from Hugh Sebag-Montefiore’s Dunkirk)

We waited for an hour, but no hospital boat came. [Major Newman did not yet know that the two hospital ships sent for en clair had been bombed – one sunk, the other put out of action.]

At 11pm I saw the last of the BEF file past. We, with some marines, rushed a few of the stretchers half a mile up the jetty, and put them on a boat. At about 11.30pm the four commanders and brigadiers, and anybody else who was English, left in a pinnace, and there we were, left standing alone, forsaken by England, and only the Germans to look forward to. I can never forget that moment as long as I live. It gave me the greatest feeling of desolation I have ever had.

The rest of the stretchers we begged the French soldiers to take with them on to the boats, which they did with an ill grace. So we did at least do our duty, and got 25 more men to safety. One man on a stretcher, we actually chucked over, as the ship had already left the quay. He landed safely.

We arrived back at the Chateau. The boys had worked very hard to get the convoy ready, and then had given up hope, and simply gone to sleep on the ground in utter despair.

(Major Philip Newman, from Hugh Sebag-Montefiore’s Dunkirk. More news of Major Newman tomorrow, 4th June)

The last lifting was severely hampered by fog and smoke and besides the old known and charted wrecks in the approaches, there were now at least twelve new uncharted ones, and more wrecks in the harbour. HMS Express and HMS Shikari were the last ships to leave on 3rd June. The enemy tried to bomb Shikari; luckily the haze made their aim poor. These two ships carried between them about one thousand soldiers and the British pier parties. The only troops now remaining in Dunquerque were some non-combatants of the garrison and the few units still holding the fortress for the French.

(John Masefield, Nine Days Wonder. More on the last to be rescued tomorrow, June 4th)

The first thing I’d pay tribute to is the men and the morale that we had in the battalion, which was absolutely wonderful. It was the most thrilling feeling to experience the spirit of the chaps who were with you. We had tremendous respect for the courage of our men and the way they held out when the Dunkirk withdrawal was going on. They never got to Dunkirk themselves. They were stopping the Germans interfering by land with the withdrawal of thousands and thousands of other people – which they did successfully. The battalion was practically wiped out doing it.

(Captain Francis Barclay, 2nd Battalion, Royal Norfolk Regiment, from Max Arthur’s Forgotten Voices. More news of the rearguard tomorrow, 4th June)

Stream wash away by Liz Mathews, poem by Kathleen Raine
An improvised grave or way marker made from Thames driftwood

Ambulance driver Lillian Gutteridge was making her way to Dunkirk with an ambulance full of wounded patients. A German SS officer commandeered the ambulance and ordered her to abandon the stretcher-cases. She slapped his face, whereupon the SS officer stabbed her in the thigh, but the timely appearance of a troop of Black Watch soldiers saved her. Lillian Gutteridge then drove her ambulance to the railway, despite her wound, and managed to get her patients onto the Cherbourg train (which picked up another 600 wounded troops en route) and from Cherbourg eventually reached England.

(Story from Queen Alexandra’s Royal Army Corps History by Julia Piggott on the QARANC History website.

Is Harry [West, whom we last saw yesterday with his looted watches] the real animal behind the brave, laughing heroic boy panoply which the BBC spread before us nightly? – a natural human being, not made for shooting men, but for planting potatoes. I gather he’d shoot himself rather than go to France again. So it was at Waterloo, I suppose.

(Virginia Woolf’s diary. Harry West in fact rejoined his regiment and fought with it overseas until the end of the war.)

Suddenly Brigadier Beckwith-Smith drove up in his car. ‘Marvellous news, Jimmy,’ he shouted. ‘The best ever! It is splendid. We have been given the supreme honour of being the rearguard at Dunkirk. Tell your platoon, Jimmy, come on, tell them the good news.’

After all the months together, I knew 15 Platoon very well, and had not the slightest doubt that they would accept this information with their usual tolerance and good humour. However I did not think they would class it as ‘marvellous’ and ‘the best ever’.

‘I think it had better come from you sir.’

‘Right,’ he replied, and after telling them to remain seated, made known to them the change of plan.

(2nd Lt Jimmy Langley of the 2nd Coldstream Guards, from Hugh Sebag-Montefiore’s Dunkirk. Jimmy Langley was wounded and taken to the Chateau, where his arm was amputated by surgeon Major Philip Newman. He survived to become a P.o.W. and was repatriated to England in 1941, where he became one of the leading lights of MI9, helping prisoners of war escape and travel home.)

I hoped and believed that last night would see us through, but the French, who were covering the retirement of the British rearguard, had to repel a strong German attack, and so were unable to send their troops to the pier in time to be embarked. We cannot leave our allies in the lurch, and I must call on all officers and men detailed for further evacuation tonight, and let the world see that we never let down an ally.

(Vice Admiral Ramsay’s directions, issued at 10am on 3rd June, from Hugh Segbag-Montefiore’s Dunkirk)

There were in fact still many men to be rescued; it is probable that there were at least 30,000 men still in the area, and it was essential that a tremendous effort should be made to lift the last of them. Ammunition was by now quite exhausted, and any question of holding even a bridge-head in the town itself was hopeless.

Princess Maud and Royal Sovereign were the last of the passenger ships to leave Dunkirk. HMS Shakari, Sun IV, Sun XV and Tanga went in to the Mole at the same time on Monday 3rd June. This was almost the very last of the loading – the last desperate effort. Already, in addition to the bombing and the shelling, machine-gun fire from the Germans in the streets of the town was beginning.

HMM Medway Queen made her last passage. She had established the mine-sweepers’ record of seven trips, a magnificent performance. She went alongside the Mole again, and very shortly after she had made fast a shell-burst threw a destroyer against her stern lines, cutting them. Both ships swung out and Medway Queen lost her brow. Men who were at the moment coming down it managed to fling themselves aboard as it fell. Almost immediately afterwards she was in trouble again, being rammed by a cross-channel steamer. She picked up 367 French troops among others on this trip, considerably incapacitated by various troubles.

At 3.30 HMS Shakari was still lying alongside the quay. Only the wreckage of Dunkirk and its flames lay between the advancing Germans and the Mole.  The men that were left were weaponless and defenceless. At 3.40am, with the German machine-guns stuttering in the nearer streets, having taken every man she could get on board, the destroyer pulled out.  To Shakari, one of the oldest of the destroyers in service in the Royal Navy (she was built in 1919) fell the honour of being the last ship to leave Dunkirk.

(from AD Divine’s Dunkirk)

Clipping from a London newspaper preserved by one of the soldiers shown; Alec J. Harrison, second from left, was among the last soldiers to be evacuated from Dunkirk, and lived until his 80’s. This clipping was contributed to The Dunkirk Project by his cousin’s daughter, Linda Rowley, and more of Alec Harrison’s story can be found in the comments at the end of today’s page.

Ages passed. We began to give up hope of a boat. Suddenly out of the blackness, rather ghostly, swam a white shape which materialised into a ship’s lifeboat, towed by a motor-boat. It moved towards us and came to a stop twenty yards in front of the head of the queue we all hailed, dreading they hadn’t seen us. But they risked a few more yards. So fearful was I that the boat might move off and leave us that I struggled to the head of the queue and waded forward crying: ‘Come on the 2004th!’

Higher rose the water every step we took. Soon it reached my arm-pits, and was lapping the chins of the shorter men. The blind urge to safety drove us on whether we could swim or not. Our feet just maintained contact with the bottom by the time we reached the side of the boat.

Four sailors in tin-hats began hoisting the soldiers out of the water. It was no simple task. Half the men were so weary and exhausted that they lacked strength to climb into the boat unaided. The gunwale stood three feet above the surface of the water. Reaching up I could just grasp it with the tips of my fingers. When I tried to haul myself up I couldn’t move an inch. A great dread of being left behind seized me.

Two powerful hands reached over the gunwale and fastened themselves into my arm-pits. Another pair of hands stretched down and hooked-on to the belt at the back of my great-coat. Before I had time to realise it I was pulled up and pitched head-first into the bottom of the boat.

The boat was now getting crowded. The moment came when the lifeboat could not hold another soul. And we got under weigh, leaving the rest of the queue behind to await the next boat. There and then on that dark and sinister sea, an indescribable sense of luxurious contentment enveloped me. The grey flank of H.M.M. Medway Queen, paddle steamer, loomed in front of us, her shadowy decks already packed with troops from the beaches. In a minute or two our boatload was submerged in the crowd. Irresistible drowsiness seized us…

It was a beautiful sunny June morning. Not a speck of cloud in the blue sky. And there in the pearly light that a slight haze created we saw the finest sight in the world.

“Ramsgate!” I exclaimed.

“England,” murmured the A.C.P.O.

(from Return via Dunkirk by Gun Buster, ending his best-selling account of the heroic rearguard action of Y Battery, 2004th Field Regiment R.A., ‘the last battery in the B.E.F. to come out of action’. Gun Buster and his colleagues were brought back on HMM Medway Queen, the first in our series of Heroic ships. Gun Buster is the pen-name of Dick Austin – Capt. R.A. Austin of 368 Battery, 92nd Field Regiment Royal Artillery, whose colleague in arms ‘Boyd’ is Capt. B.G. Bonallack, soldier-poet whose story runs through Thames to Dunkirk. More on BG Bonallack here.)

The endpapers of BG Bonallack’s copy of Return via Dunkirk with the key to the book’s characters on the left, and on the right signed by the author and colleagues. I was shown this treasured memento by Basil Bonallack’s son Tim Bonallack, and I’m very grateful to his family for this and other generous permissions.

Page 22 of the Working Model for Thames to Dunkirk, the last page to show the soldiers, with the names of the signatories lettered on the beach, and the Medway Queen among the little ships ferrying the soldiers out to the waiting ships.

The last ships carrying BEF soldiers left Dunkirk shortly before 11pm. The total number of soldiers evacuated was 288,000 (including some 193,000 BEF troops), a miraculous figure compared with the 45,000 the Admiralty had originally mentioned to Vice-Admiral Ramsay. General Alexander and Captain Tennant who had overseen the evacuation then toured the beaches and the harbour in a motor boat, calling for any British soldiers to show themselves. None did, and at 11.30pm Tennant sent the following signal to Dover, which at the beginning of Operation Dynamo he had never imagined would be appropriate: ‘BEF evacuated.‘

(Hugh Sebag-Montefiore, Dunkirk)

Lucky Weather

Mere English, this Armada thing again

(the genius for last-minute muddle through,

the lucky weather)

Sunday sailors

who messed about in boats

now take their baptism of fire.

Heroes – how not – courage beyond, of course.

An island race, etc.

The sea shall have them.

For those in peril – the sea, the sea

never dealt death like this.

Compassless little ships to ferry home

every man England expects will do

not question why.

(Frances Bingham)

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To read or add to the comments and conversations for this day, please go to 3rd June 1940 – Towards the end in the menu top left, and you’ll find the comments at the foot of the page.

Tomorrow, 4th June 1940 – Beyond Dunkirk

2nd June 1940 – Tatter’d Colours

About an hour after the setting of the sun came the familiar drone, as the Luftwaffe came along and dropped flares, so they could see us. The sky was alight as they dropped their bombs. Where the boats came in, there was a little nucleus at the head of the water, and then a great queue, running up from the dunes behind, perhaps a quarter of a mile long. The idea was just like a London bus queue. Nobody told us to do that – it seemed the decent thing to do.

There must have been about ten or twelve of these queues running up. When we were halfway up in our queue, the bombing started, and one man ran to the head of the queue when he saw a boat coming. A naval officer turned on him and said, ‘Look, go back to the place you’ve come from – or I’ll shoot you.’ He said it very loudly for everybody to hear, and the man went back with his tail between his legs.

When we got on board, an officer came round and said, ‘We shall shortly be sailing for Blighty – England, Home and Beauty.’ I went down into the hold, where I was put into a hammock, because I was dead – we all were.

(Captain Anthony Rhodes, 253 Field Company Royal Engineers, from Max Arthur’s Forgotten Voices)

In the account of this day, Sunday 2nd June, something must be written of the loss of Commander Clouston, RN, who had for six days been doing noble service on the jetty at Dunkirk. On the Saturday night he returned to Dover to report upon the situation and to receive final orders for the great lifting of troops planned for Sunday night. He left Dover on Sunday in a motor-launch with a naval officer and some seamen. A second motor-launch came with them. On their way back to Dunkirk they were attacked by enemy aircraft, who put his motor-launch out of action and left her in a sinking condition. Commander Clouston waved to the men in the second launch to get away before they were sunk. Soon afterwards, this second boat was hit. Commander Clouston refused to desert his men, clinging round the wreck of their boat.

With the naval officer who was ultimately the only survivor of his Company, he then left his wrecked launch to try to swim to a boat seen a couple of miles away. Becoming weary long before he could reach this boat he turned to swim back to the water-logged launch, and was never seen again. His companion, after swimming for two or three hours, reached the boat he had sighted and with great difficulty got on board her. She proved to be a ship’s deserted cutter. In this he drifted for some time till picked up by a French trawler which had lost her way in the Channel. He undertook to navigate this trawler back to Ramsgate, and did so, reporting at Dover dressed in clothes borrowed from a French sailor.

Commander Clouston had been of the utmost service in helping the escape of nearly two hundred thousand men under frightful conditions of strain and danger. It was a grief to many that he did not live to see the lifting brought to an end.

(John Masefield, Nine Days Wonder)

Even though they must have known that the end was near, they never grumbled, nor were they afraid; they even went so far as to ask permission of Commander Clouston before removing their tin hats. When I left them clinging around the wreck, although already suffering from exposure, they were singing and discussing old times together. Commander Clouston’s example must have helped them all, as it helped me. Although exhausted himself, he continued to chat, encourage and white lie to the end.

(The account of the naval officer who survived, from Hugh Sebag-Montefiore’s Dunkirk)

Sylvia, a motor yacht, was crewed by her civilian owner, who on his return with a full load of men said ‘I have seen the sea red with human blood, severed arms and legs, a sight I shall never forget. If she goes down, I shall go with her.’ He refuelled and went straight back to Dunkirk, returning the next day with another full load of men and a completely crippled boat.

(Ships’ stories from several sources including the website of the Association of Little Ships of Dunkirk. More little ships’ stories throughout the nine days)

Louie comes agog. Her brother Harry [West] came back on Monday. It pours out – how he hadn’t boots off for 3 days; the beach at Dunkirk – the bombers as low as trees – the bullets like moth holes in his coat – how no English aeroplanes fought. At Dunkirk many men shot themselves as the planes swooped, Harry swam off, a boat neared. ‘Say Chum can you row?’ ‘Yes’, he said, hauled in, rowed for 5 hours, saw England, landed – didn’t know if it were day or night or what town – didn’t ask – couldn’t write to his mother – was despatched to his regiment. He looted a Belgian shop & stuffed his pockets with rings which fell out in the sea; but 2 watches pinned to his coat survived. He saw his cousin dead on the beach; & another man from the street. He was talking to a chap, who showed him a silk handkerchief bought for his joy lady. That moment a bomb killed him. Harry took the handkerchief. Harry has had eno’ war, & is certain of our defeat – got no arms & no aeroplanes – how can we do anything?

(Virginia Woolf’s diary. More about Harry West tomorrow, 3rd June)

Sheila Parish, a FANY driver, remembers driving ambulances to fetch the survivors of HMS Arcadia, sunk by a U-boat in the retreat from Dunkirk, the four hundred aboard her singing ‘Roll out the barrel’ as they drowned. ‘The men who survived were in a terrible state, their bodies and clothers burned with flaming oil when they jumped into the sea.’

(Sheila Parish, FANY, from Anne de Courcy’s Debs at War)

I was stationed at Plymouth for Dunkirk and was told to go and meet some boats coming in, on one of which was King Zog of Albania and his family, and take him to London. I took the biggest car I could find, set off and found the King with his sisters and his baby son on the quayside. He told me that he would accompany his men in the lorry containing his crates of luggage and that we should meet at the railway station. There I took him to the ticket office to buy tickets for his group of sixty and he was asked for the requisite sum of money. He said: ‘I have no money at all.’ The ticket collector said: ‘Well, if you’ve no money you can’t travel.’ The King turned and ordered some of his men to open one of the crates. From it, he picked out great handfuls of jewels and handed them to the ticket collector. The poor man was horrified, but he let them travel.

(Sheila Parish, FANY, from Anne de Courcy’s Debs at War)

Earlier on the morning of 2nd June, hospital staff at the 12th Casualty Clearing Station [the Chateau] were woken by what Major Philip Newman described as ‘a terrific crash’. A shell had hit the front room of the Chateau, the former operating theatre, injuring about a dozen of ‘the poor chaps’ whom Newman found there. ‘Everywhere patients were yelling.’

Newman took the chance to tell General Alexander about the ‘hopeless’ situation at the chateau. Alexander immediately had a message sent to Ramsey in Dover asking for hospital ships. Unfortunately, though the message was sent en clair [ie not in code] in the hope that the Germans would intercept it, and would not bomb ships on a mercy mission, the two hospital ships which attempted to reach Dunkirk later that day were both attacked. One sank, the other returned, damaged, to England.

(from Hugh Sebag-Montefiore’s Dunkirk. More on Philip Newman and the fate of the wounded in the Chateau tomorrow, 3rd June)

2nd June. We set off once more [on the Royal Daffodil]… and were attacked by six enemy aircraft. I had previously seen the Paris sunk. I saw the German aeroplanes machine-gunning the boats which contained nurses and medical personnel. The six enemy aircraft flew over us and dropped six aerial torpedoes.

Five of these missed, but the sixth hit the ship, passed through three decks, entered the engine room, and went out through the starboard side before exploding just clear of the ship. The engines stopped and the aeroplanes machine-gunned the ship with tracer bullets, which started small fires. The ship began to make water through the hole made by the bomb and listed to starboard. Gear was shifted to the port side and the port boats were lowered to the deck and filled with water. This raised the starboard side enough to lift the hole just clear of the water.

Mr J Coulthard, the chief engineer, and Mr W Evans, the second engineer, took all the beds they could find and used them to plug the hole. Mr Evans stood up to his neck in the water in the engine-room holding open the bilge-valve while Mr Coulthard kept the pumps going. With a diesel-engine ship this was a great risk; but the Royal Daffodil managed to get back to Ramsgate, running very slowly with three parts of water to one of oil in the system, and was able to land all the troops she had taken on board.’

(Altogether in seven days at Dunkirk the Royal Daffodil carried off 8000 troops. Captain G Johnson’s account of these truly heroic deeds at Dunkirk is in the IWM archive; the last part of this account is from AD Divine’s Dunkirk, Sunday June 2nd, where he continues:)

It is difficult to speak too highly of this feat.  The sheer seamanship of it is beyond praise.  To lift the ship’s side clear out of the water needed determination and courage of a high order.  The bravery of her engineers who, with the almost pathetic inadequacy of mattresses and planks, staunched that great hole in her side is superb.

(AD Divine was at Dunkirk on this day on board White Wing, a 30-foot river cruiser, with Rear-Admiral Taylor. His account was written ‘at the time’:)

Having the Admiral on board, we were not actually working the beaches but were in control of operations. After we had spent some time putting small boats in touch with their towing boats, the battery off Nieuport began to drop shell on us. It seemed pure spite.

A salvo of shells got one of our troopships alongside the Mole. She was hit clean in the boilers and exploded in one terrific crash. There were about 1000 Frenchmen on the Mole. We had seen them crowding along its narrow crest, outlined against the flames. They had gone out under shell-fire to board the boat, and now they had to go back again, still being shelled. It was quite the most tragic thing I have ever seen in my life. We could do nothing with our little dinghy.

While they were still filing back to the beach and the dawn was breaking with uncomfortable brilliance, we found a navy whaler. We told her people to come aboard, but they said that there was a white motor-boat aground and they would have to fetch off her crew. They were terribly slow, and we waited. It was my longest wait, ever. When they found the captain of the motor-boat, they stood and argued with him and he wouldn’t come off anyway. Damned plucky chap.

(from AD Divine’s Dunkirk. That captain eventually got his motor-boat Singapore refloated on the rising tide and left with three French officers in addition to his crew and some British soldiers they found ‘floating around’, plus three lifeboats in tow, which they found mid-Channel.)

The calmness of the average non-military citizen is magnificent. Although on the day of Leopold’s capitulation [King Leopold III’s surrender of Belgium to the Germans precipitated the necessity for the BEF’s retreat and the whole Dunkirk scenario] a German wireless commentator painted a colourful picture of London as a panic-stricken city, the truth was considerably less picturesque. Once over the shock, Londoners sensibly forgot Leopold and thought only of the men he’d left behind him, fighting an heroic rearguard action to cover the retreating troops’ movements. Then, after a seemingly interminable period of suspense, it was learned that the first war-stained, exhausted contingent had arrived safely on British shores, and the relief and enthusiasm were terrific.

No one seems to think much beyond these arrivals at the moment. It isn’t yet known how many haven’t come back.

(Mollie Panter-Downes, 2nd June 1940, from one of her Letters from London for The New Yorker, published in London War Notes.)

Tired, half-clad, often with their clothes saturated through having to wade out to the rescuing steamers, the Army returns. More heroism and more ingenuity are exercised over this haphazard evacuation than over any other in the history of the world. If the peace of Europe had been sought with half this energy, war would have been eliminated ten or more years ago. A batch of the rescued, marching through Waterloo station, are cheered until the glass roof rings with the sound.

(Vera Brittain, England’s Hour)

The one thing I shall never forget, though – the picture that will always haunt me – was the look in the faces of the men while we were filling up another boatload. Would there be room for them in this lot  –  or  – ? You could see anxious eyes counting the heads in front and calculating chances. Then, as we paddled away, loaded to the gunnel, the face of the man left at the head of the queue – the man who had just missed – grinning resolutely, and wishing us luck, and wondering in his heart if we should be able to manage another trip!

(Ian Hay, volunteer seaman, from his account in the Imperial War Museum archive)

Many soldiers were still struggling to reach Dunkirk, Lt. Julian Fane and Corporal Eldridge among them. ‘It was only at dawn on 2 June, after four nights on the run, that they finally reached the first of the canals running round the Dunkirk perimeter.  On the far side, there was a scuttled boat that had not quite sunk. After Corporal Eldridge had swum across and brought it back. They set up a kind of ferry service, with men clinging to the half-submerged boat, while it was pulled back and forth across the canal with string. They were only just in time.’

(Lt. Julian Fane and Corporal Eldridge, Glosters, from Hugh Sebag-Montefiore’s Dunkirk.)

On either side, scattered over the sand in all sorts of positions, were the dark shapes of dead and dying men, sometimes alone, sometimes in twos and trees. No assistance that availed anything could be given to these dying men. The living themselves had nothing to offer. They just pressed forward to the sea, hoping that the same fate would not be theirs.

There was still another dread haunting us. Should we be able to get off the beach before dawn discovered us, and those waves of German bombers that we had watched the previous day diving over Dunkirk had us for a target?

“I’m not too comfortable in my mind about things,” Boyd muttered to me.

We came at last to the water’s edge.

“I don’t like the look of the Mole,” said the Major. “You saw the shelling going on at the land end. They know it’s packed with troops waiting to be taken off.  It’s sure to get a bad time. Shall we try to get off from the beach? Wade into the water and take our chance in one of the queues?”

We tacked ourselves on to the rear of the smallest of the three queues, the head of which was already standing in water up to the waist.  Half an hour passed.  Suddenly a small rowing boat appeared. The head of the queue clambered in and were rowed away into the darkness. We moved forward, just stood there silently staring into the darkness, praying that a boat would soon appear.

(from Return via Dunkirk by Gun Buster, whose ordeal finally ends tomorrow, 3rd June. His comrade Boyd, master of the understatement, was BG Bonallack, author of The Retreat, the poem I set on Thames to Dunkirk. More on BG ‘Boyd’ Bonallack here.)

Nurse Nancy Harker, who we met on 27th May in Calderstone’s hospital in Lancashire for the wounded from Dunkirk was still in ‘a long-drawn-out nightmare. The stench of gangrene still comes back to me.’ She also remembered how ‘the wounds that cried out for immediate treatment had to wait for days.’ Her favourite Dunkirk survivor was Bert Heath, whose right leg had been amputated in France, due to gunshot wounds, and his right arm had to go too as soon as he reached Calderstone’s. He quickly won over Nurse Harker by nicknaming the leg’s stump ‘Baby’ and by promising her that as soon as he was given a ‘peg leg’, he would race her up and down the ward. She was less sympathetic to three Frenchmen who arrived on stretchers only to leap up as soon as they were inside to declare that they had been shamming to get away. Although they may well have lived through traumas every bit as dreadful as those haunting the British wounded, they were sent to Coventry by the nurses and abandoned in the laundry cupboard. ‘No time for them,’ wrote Nurse Harker in her account. ‘Only saw them when I went to get linen.’

(Nancy Harker’s story from Hugh Sebag-Montefiore’s Dunkirk)

The Soldier’s Death

Trail all your pikes, dispirit every drum,

March in a slow procession from afar,

Be silent ye dejected Men of War!

Be still the hautboys, and the flute be dumb!

Display no more, in vain, the lofty banner;

For see! where on the bier before ye lies

The pale, the fall’n, the untimely Sacrifice

To your mistaken shrine, to your false idol Honour.

(Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea, 1661 – 1720)

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To read the comments or add to this day’s conversations and contributions, please go to 2nd June 1940 – Tatter’d colours in the menu top left, and you’ll find the comments at the foot of the page.

Tomorrow, 3rd June – Towards the end

1st June 1940 – Homeward

Postcard from Jimmy Owen Jones, Elspeth Owen’s father, to her mother on his return to England:
Safe & well in England. Just in case the wire doesn’t connect.

We were told to embark as many people from the jetties as we could. Most of them were stretcher-cases and walking wounded. They looked like a beaten army – they weren’t really, but they looked it. We cleared the mess decks to make room for the stretchers. The walking cases were pushed into corners. There were two or three hundred of them on board, plus about sixty of us crew. We tried to feed them but we ran out of food. They seemed shocked and were very, very quiet. I don’t think they realised what was happening to them. A lot of them had never seen warfare. We got the chaps off at Portsmouth. Those that could walk marched off the jetty, heads up and shoulders back.

(Ordinary seaman Dick Coppeard, Royal Navy, from Max Arthur’s Forgotten Voices)

Things now became much worse. From midnight until five in the morning, the shelling increased to such a pitch that of the two hospital ships sent in for wounded, only one was able to go in to bring them off. The other lay off the harbour entrance for four hours, but could not get in. Four troopships tried to get in and failed. One entered at dawn, loaded up, and was returning, when she was heavily bombed. At five o’clock the enemy let loose a monstrous air attack all over the area. It lasted for four hours, with successions of aeroplanes thirty to forty strong; one Master Mariner made the note, ‘Over 100 bombs on ships near here since 5.30’.

At the home ports, 670 troop trains carried the soldiers away. Volunteer war workers provided mobile canteens to all these trains to give food, drink, sweets and cigarettes to all, and to send off telegrams for those who wished.

(John Masefield, The Nine Days Wonder)

When we got to Dover we were put into old customs sheds. In there were these ladies from the women’s services – the Red Shield Club – all the various ladies’ associations. I had no tunic – I’d lost it – and one of the elderly ladies took off her fur coat and put it round me whilst I sat down, and gave me a cup of tea. Then she produced a stamped envelope – stamped and sealed – and she said, ‘Right. Address it to go to your wife or whoever. Put the message on the back. Use it like a postcard – it will get there quicker.’

(Corporal Frank Hurrell, 3rd Field Army Workshop, RAOC, from Max Arthur’s Forgotten Voices)

Jimmy Owen Jones dated his card 31/5/40 but it was postmarked 30 May 1940, so he was perhaps understandably confused about the date. It probably arrived in Aylesbury on 1st June 1940.

2nd Lt Jimmy Langley of the 2nd Coldstream Guards, whom we last met on 30th May with his eccentric Brigadier, was wounded while part of the rearguard: ‘I had just fired five most satisfactory shots, and was kneeling, pushing another clip into the rifle, when there was the most frightful crash, and a great wave of heat, dust and debris knocked me over. A shell had burst on the roof.

There was a long silence, and I heard a small voice saying, ‘I’ve been hit,’ which I suddenly realised was mine. That couldn’t be right; so I called out, ‘Anybody been hit?’

A reply from behind – ‘No, sir, we are all right.’

‘Well,’ I replied more firmly, ‘I have.’ 

By the time 2nd Lt. Langley was wounded on 1 June, the La Panne casualty clearing station had been evacuated. That explains how he came to be lying in an ambulance in the driveway leading up to Chateau Coquelle in Rosendael, a large house that BEF soldiers knew as ‘Chapeau Rouge’ or the Chateau. This was the temporary base for the 12th casualty clearing station for wounded soldiers about to be evacuated to England. It was overflowing.

(2nd Lt Langley’s story from Hugh Sebag-Montefiore’s Dunkirk. More news of Jimmy Langley and the Chateau on 3rd and 4th June)

The homeward route was a wonderful sight. Hundreds of small craft of every description, making towards Dunquerque. The German bombers were busy dropping their loads all over the place. There were more than seventy enemy planes overhead dropping their bombs all round on us, like hail-stones, but our luck held good. We escaped undamaged. The gunner put in some great work with his gun and hit three enemy planes, two of which came down. I was just coming along Folkestone pier at 8.30 when a violent explosion occurred. Another lucky escape. A mine had gone off behind us. We had brought home 504 troops, seventy of them French.

(A shipmaster, quoted in John Masefield’s The Nine Days Wonder)

All the routes homeward were now under very heavy shell-fire. It was reckoned that the enemy had at least three batteries of six-inch guns near Gravelines along the coast to the west of Dunkirk, besides the heavy coastal guns in Fort Grand Philippe to the east. At six that evening the signal was sent from the harbour: Things are getting very hot for ships. It was decided that the harbour could no longer be used during daylight.

A naval officer had the heart-breaking task of telling the men waiting on the jetty that they would have to go back and wait for night to fall. In spite of the appalling fire the lifting on this day was a record; we took away 61,998 men. Our loss in troopships, destroyers and mine-sweepers sunk and damaged was very heavy.

(John Masefield, The Nine Days Wonder)

This postcard from the evacuation is another from the series contributed by the Medway Queen Preservation Society. More stories in a feature on HMM Medway Queen.

Thousands of men stretched away behind us. But we failed to move forward. Only the wounded were got away that night. As the hours went by, the spirits of all must have been sinking. Mine certainly were. Sleep was impossible. It was just waiting, waiting, waiting.

(Gunner Lt Elliman, from Hugh Sebag-Montefiore’s Dunkirk)

Sapper Alexander Graham King, the mad hatter, finally finished his self-imposed tour of duty entertaining the troops on the beach for seven days with his accordion, and got on board a ship for home.

(from the Imperial War Museum archive)

Dunkirk Phossils 67 – Basil, John and Kate Bonallack, by Charlie Bonallack: image from family photograph hand-painted on porcelain fired to 1280°c. This image is a detail: more Dunkirk Phossils here.

I went in the pub the first night I came back from France, and the landlord said to me, ‘Oh, we thought you’d been took prisoner.’ And old Bill, the postman, took one look along the bar. He said, ‘I told you if there’s only one bugger come back it’ll be him.’

(Senior Aircraftman James Merrett, Ground Gunner RAF, from Max Arthur’s Forgotten Voices)

Tamzine was the smallest boat surviving – an open fishing boat from Birchington measuring 14′ 7″, she can’t have held many men in each trip, but must have ferried hundreds from the beaches to the waiting ships. She’s now in the Imperial War Museum, surrounded by massive tanks.

(Ships’ stories from several sources including the website of the Association of Little Ships of Dunkirk. More little ships’ stories throughout the nine days)

All sorts of craft were coming round the buoy, all fully loaded with troops. A batch of about twenty Belgian fishing-boats bore down, the leader asking us the way to England. I sung out the course, and told him to follow the other traffic and he would be all right.

(Observer quoted in John Masefield’s The Nine Days Wonder)

Aerial photo from IWM archive, taken from RAF reconnaissance plane in May 1940, of rescue ships and boats approaching Dunkirk waters

The Imperial War Museum Photo Library has a remarkable collection of photos taken at Dunkirk, some of them aerial photos taken from RAF planes showing the armada of little ships and the shoreline, some taken by photographers on the ships showing the queues of men up to their chests in the sea, some of the lines and formations of men on the beaches. There are the burning oil stores and the wrecked town, the Chateau and the debris on the beach.

Some photos were taken by German photographers and show the ruins of Dunkirk after the evacuation, some are of battered returning little ships being towed up the Thames towards Waterloo Bridge, others of soldiers on their way home. These photographs tell eloquent stories of their own, not least of the courage of the photographers.

(Seven photos from this archive can be accessed here.)

02.35 Anchored off the N. Goodwin Sands in response SOS from Golden Gift ashore high and dry with 250 troops on board. Took off troops in motor-boat in five trips and returned to Ramsgate to disembark troops.

11.00 Proceeded to Bray east of Dunkirk and anchored there 14.30. Shelling from Nieuport batteries. Embarked 900 British troops. Heavy air attacks and 6″ shelling throughout afternoon, necessitating shifting billet on two occasions.

23.30 Weighed. Two magnetic mines dropped by plane close to.

5.00 Disembarked troops.

Remarks. Embarking troops was carried out under difficult circumstances owing to heavy shelling, air attacks and swell running, which made boat-work very arduous. The spirit of the officers and men was excellent. Ratings volunteered from the stokehold for any duties required.

(Commander KM Greig DSO, RN from the log of HMS Sandown)

Little has been written about the doctors and nurses who dealt with wounded men rescued from Dunkirk. There were not enough beds for all of them in hospitals near the main ports in Kent so many casualties were transported to other locations around the country. Nurse Harker, then 29, never forgot the day she met the first Dunkirk hospital train that reached Whalley in Lancashire. As the train, covered with red crosses, steamed into the station, she asked a colleague, ‘Why ever have these poor things had to come all the way to the north of England after all they’ve been through?’

The answer stunned her. ‘Because hospitals in the south are being emptied for the invasion.’ During the first night after the sixty-four Dunkirk survivors were brought in, Nurse Harker and the other nurses were rushed off their feet trying to deal with their patients’ physical needs.

(from Hugh Sebag-Montefiore’s Dunkirk. More from Nurse Harker tomorrow 2nd June)

At Dover when we arrived, there were a whole series of trains. All the units had been dispersed and one hadn’t got any of one’s own men – one was isolated, and we were simply told, ‘Each of you get on the train and get up to London. You’ll find the RTO at Waterloo, and he’ll tell you you’ll have a couple of days to go home, and where you’re to assemble to join your new units.’

So we went up in the trains – they were full of civilians who got in and were going to their office in London. Sitting next to you, there might be a man who was going up to his bank. One very nice man, a civilian, pressed into my hand two half-crowns – which was rather nice.

(Captain Anthony Rhodes, 253 Field Company Royal Engineers, from Max Arthur’s Forgotten Voices)

The light was going fast. She pushed the accelerator harder. She didn’t want to arrive in Bridport in the blackout. Suddenly as she turned the corner she was forced to change down to bottom gear by the mass of men jamming the narrow streets and strolling in the roadway. She pressed the horn to break a wedge through the khaki ranks.

A group strung out in front of her wheeled to face the car bringing it to a standstill. She was half aware that those on the pavement were standing still too, that she was surrounded by weary men in what she saw now was torn and stained battledress, their chins stubbled and their eyes red in the sooty rings of fatigue over the drawn cheeks. She saw too that they weren’t just tired but angry. The man in front of the bonnet with one stripe on his sleeve, opened his mouth in a soundless roar.

She had never seen a human being snarl, now there were faces all around her with the lips drawn back on tobacco-stained teeth. The soldier in front pounded on the bonnet. She knew the others were joining in, that the snarls were now half leers. She thought some of them were drunk. At any moment they might wrench the door open and drag her out. The squaddie beat his fist on the bonnet of the Morris again.

But one of his mates was pulling him off.  The boy bowed a little towards her and waved the car on with an elaborate satirical gesture. She began to inch forward hearing the catcalls and feeling the car rock as others thumped on the side panels while she crawled between them. Then she was through the press and out into a clearer stretch of road. ‘East Street’ he’d said and there it was. She drew up outside the pub but was shaking too much to leave the car. She leaned against the glass side panel and realized that she had begun to cry. When Harry opened the door she almost fell into the street.

‘What’s up? Has anything happened?’

‘I ought to be asking about you. It’s just that I ran into a group of soldiers coming through the town. I thought they might be going to drag me out of the car and rape me or lynch me or something. They seemed so… angry.’

‘They are; bloody angry. They’ve been beaten. No army likes that. It’s being treated as a kind of victory here, plucked from the jaws of defeat, all that stuff, but they’ve been there and back. The beaches were hell but it was hell even getting through to them. Many of the chaps feel betrayed. Some of the officers left them to fend for themselves while they saved their own skins. All armies are like that in defeat, and victory too. There were nasty scenes as we withdrew and began the evacuation. Not everyone of course. Some units marched on board as if they were on the parade ground.’ He upended his glass. ‘Nothing’s been said here. And you mustn’t say anything either. To the rest of the world it’s got to look like a heroic and orderly withdrawal, not a rout, or Hitler will be down our throats even faster; he’s bound to try and invade if we don’t chuck in the sponge. The French will give in quite soon.’

‘We won’t, will we?’

(from Maureen Duffy’s Change)

I quote Field Marshall Lord Alanbrooke: ‘Had the B.E.F. not returned to this country, it is hard to see how the Army could have recovered from the blow. The reconstitution of our land forces would have been so delayed as to endanger the whole course of the war.’

(Arthur Addis, from his account of his war experiences in a memoir for his family)

Within little more than an hour on 1st June we had lost three destroyers, a Fleet minesweeper and a gunboat, and four destroyers had been damaged. Almost immediately after this, the French destroyer Foudroyant was in her turn hit by the dive-bombers and in her turn sank. Two hours of disaster – nor was it the full tally of the day.

The rate of loss was too heavy. It could not continue. There was no question of goodwill involved: it was a question entirely of ship reserves; we no longer had the ships. It was decided that no further operations should take place in daylight along the beaches, as the rate of loss had become too heavy.

On this day we had lost in two hours the equivalent of the loss of a small campaign, a sharp naval action. With the ships had gone many of their own crews, and with them had gone very many more of the soldiers they had picked up at such cost of courage, of effort and of life. The wastage in drowning men alone was too great to be continued.

(from Dunkirk by AD Divine)

1st June. Set out, sent back due to heavy shelling from Gravelines, set out again 10pm, took 1600 troops from pier. It was rather awful as there were now so many wrecks in the harbour.

(Captain G Johnson, on board the Royal Daffodil. More from Captain Johnson’s extraordinary daily journeys to Dunkirk tomorrow, 2nd June)

‘And all on board her are safe and bound for home’
Tall ship – artist’s book by Liz Mathews, text by Valentine Ackland

from Night at Dunkirk

France under our feet like a worn fabric

Was little by little denied our steps

In the sea where the dead with seaweed blend

Bob the overturned boats like bishops’ caps

One hundred thousand men bivouac on

The sky’s rim and the water extends

Off into the sky the beach of Malo

There rises in darkness where horses rot

A sound like the stamp of migrating beasts

The crossing gate lifts up its striped arms

The hearts we have are but half a pair

I remember the eyes of those who embarked

Who could forget his love at Dunkirk?

The sand does not know the scents of spring

And now May dies on the Northern dunes

(Louis Aragon, June 1940, translated from the French by William Jay Smith.  Thanks to Neil Astley of Bloodaxe Books for sending me this poem.)

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Tomorrow, 2nd June 1940 – Tatter’d colours

31st May 1940 – Lovely on the water

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 boat Chalmondesleigh, 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)

Bob Bloom 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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Tomorrow, 1st June 1940 – Homeward