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.

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