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.)

---

To read today’s comments, or add one of your own, please go to 1st June 1940 – Homeward in the menu top left, and you’ll find the comments and conversations relating to today’s news at the foot of the page.

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)

---

To read today’s comments, or add one, please click on 31st May 1940 – Lovely on the water in the menu top left, and you’ll find the comments and conversations around this day’s news at the foot of the page.

Tomorrow, 1st June 1940 – Homeward