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

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

30th May 1940 – The view from the air

Photo taken from RAF reconnaissance plane overlooking Dunkirk 1940, from the collection in the Imperial War Museum photography archive

Station Commander ‘Boy’ Bouchier assembled all the pilots in the billiards room in the officer’s mess, to tell us we had been assigned to take part in the protection of the British troops over Dunkirk. For fourteen days we went non-stop. I did something like thirty-seven hours in ten days. We just kept flying. We had no reserve pilots.

(Squadron Leader Al Deere, New Zealander, 54 Squadron RAF, from Max Arthur’s Forgotten Voices. We’ve been hearing from Al Deere over the last couple of days about getting shot down over Dunkirk, leaving his wrecked plane on the sand-flats north-east of the town, getting stitched up with a needle and thread by a French handywoman, and encountering two discouraged Tommies in a cafe on his way to join the evacuation queue. His story continues on later pages.)

Dunquerque had been frequently and heavily bombed daily and nightly for some weeks; it was on fire in many places, and blazing to heaven from its oil tanks. For the next week, bombs must have fallen on or near it every five minutes. The enemy sent over immense flights, in the almost certainty of success. They had a perfect target beneath them, columns crowded on roads, shipping crowded in a channel, masses of men upon a beach. During the week there were three hundred and fifty thousand men shut in within a narrow compass with all their possessions; any bomb dropping was certain to be destructive. This was to be an annihilation.

(John Masefield, from The Nine Days Wonder)

The tide was fairly low. A steamer lay on her side at the water’s edge. The sandy beach was about 100 yards wide. Down the centre stood the line of men, three abreast. The smoke from the burning oil tanks drifted eastwards over the town. A few officers walked up and down. All was quiet. And then it started! A formation of high fliers came up from the west, and dropped stick after stick of bombs.This first attack was most unnerving. You felt so completely exposed on the beach. For a time some of us huddled under the hull of the wrecked steamer, but as nothing happened for some time, I called in all my men, and formed them up in the queue again for fear we should lose our place.

During the early evening I heard a Stuka coming down in a vertical dive right on top of me. I was by now dulled by hours of explosions so the the imminence of death aroused no great feeling of fear. Either the bomb would land on me, or it wouldn’t.  I thought of Margaret in those few seconds of suspense, and she brought me a sort of peace of the spirit. The next moment: Crash! Darkness! And then a vision of falling sand in front of me. I realised I had been missed, and I could hear the plane climbing away over Dunkirk. The attack was over.

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

The Constant Nymph, with Dr Basil Smith and his two ratings were off Dunkirk – ferrying load after load of French troops to the Dutch schuit Jutland. The excitement staved off hunger which was just as well – the Navy had given them a sirloin of beef and a sack of potatoes but the little boat boasted only a two-burner Primus.

(Richard Collier, from The War at Sea, ed. John Winton)

We got into Dunkirk around five o’clock in the evening – we hadn’t eaten and it was really chaos. The sand was littered with bodies and crowds of chaps all hoping to get off but there was no hope. They tried to organise queues, but it was very difficult. People were not only being Stuka-ed, but there was also panic on the beaches. On one occasion, a small boat came in – and they piled aboard it to such a degree that it was in danger of capsizing. The chap in charge of this boat decided he must take some action. He ordered one man who was hanging on the side to get away – but he didn’t, so he shot him through the head. From the people around there was no reaction at all.

It was bitterly cold at night. I came out of the water and I removed a corporal’s overcoat from a corpse on the beach. There was a very flimsy canoe, and two chaps paddled out in this canoe. A Stuka had come down and machine-gunned them, and they both leaned the same way – and they were both drowned. The canoe was upside-down, floating some way off the beach. Bill swam out and pulled it ashore, and we paddled out. HMS Whitehall came past us with its guns blazing away at those Stukas, threw us a line and we were pulled aboard.

(Sergeant Leonard Howard, 210 Field Company, Royal Engineers, from Max Arthur’s Forgotten Voices)

The Tom Tit was ‘stolen on impulse and without authority’ by Ron and Alan Tomlinson, and in her they made 16 trips ferrying men to the big ships. The Tollesbury, a 1901 barge from the Thames near Erith went with all her crew who volunteered; the Windsong, another sailing boat, must have been at considerable risk, being not very swiftly manoeuvrable, reported as ‘ready for sea and able to take 30 passengers’ –  she made several trips and brought many men home.

(Ships’ stories from several sources including the website of the Association of Little Ships of Dunkirk. More little ships’ stories throughout the nine days, and HMM Medway Queen is the first of a new series of features on the heroic little ships.)

Our operations over Dunkirk fell into two main categories. One was that we would do a fighter sweep. We would sweep all the way round, behind the beaches and try and intercept any German aircraft coming up to attack the soldiers on the ground. In the other role, we would escort a bomber called the Blenheim, and be their fighter escort when they went to bomb targets that were related to the evacuation from Dunkirk. I think our ground crews were the people who got into more fisticuffs in local pubs, because after a few beers the soldiers would say, ‘Where were you?’ and our ground crews knew very well that we’d gone over there.

(Flying Officer Geoffrey Page, 56 Squadron, RAF, from Max Arthur’s Forgotten Voices)

Mrs Richardson told me of a friend of her husband’s dead on the beach at Dunkirk – not a wound – shock. News of Louie’s brother, the West boy [Harry] landed in a sailing boat at Ramsgate – hunting his battalion – no clothes – won’t go back he says; but gives no word of his wounds. Some say he’s the only survivor of his regiment.

(Virginia Woolf’s diary. More news of Harry West on 2nd June)

We met the men coming back and drove them to hospital. They were in torn, oily, wet uniforms – one officer had nothing on but a blanket and a monocle – and their faces were black and covered with oil. All the men said: ‘Where were our bloody planes? Never saw one.’

(Lavinia Holland-Hibbert, FANY, from Anne de Courcy’s Debs at War)

After the nightmare of the retreat, Captain Snook’s experience of the evacuation was not much better – ‘the din was appalling’. On the beach, he met five survivors of the destroyer Grenade which had just been blown up. Together they got into a little boat they found and set off for England, but the engine conked out halfway. Stranded for a while, they were eventually picked up by a trawler, and at last landed in Ramsgate.

(Captain HS Snook’s letters containing his account of Dunkirk are in the Imperial War Museum)

I will pay my tribute to these young airmen. The Knights of the Round Table, the Crusaders, all fall back into the past not only distant, but prosaic, before these young men, going forth every morn to guard their native land and all that we stand for, holding in their hands these instruments of colossal and shattering power.

(Winston Churchill, 4th June 1940, in his speech to the House of Commons, reported by Sarah Gertrude Millin in World Blackout, her record of the first year of the war.)

Dunkirk Phossil 70 by Charlie Bonallack; image interpreted from aerial photograph taken from RAF plane in IWM archive, hand-painted on porcelain. For more, see Dunkirk Phossils by Charlie Bonallack.

Here in the sand we grovelled, with the burning town as back-drop, the flash of guns and bursting bombs as light and sound effects. Cold, hungry and despondent, we were sure we had been forgotten and deserted. With the first light of dawn the Luftwaffe and Wehrmacht began, again, to hurl exploding horror at this sandy shore and at the ships, yachts, and all the other vessels of that noble company. For us there was a gruelling twelve-kilometre march along the loose sand to march into the sea up to our necks only to march out again, a hellish diversion to be repeated again and again.

(Ken Anderson LAC, from Robert Jackson’s Dunkirk)

Many German pilots whose planes were shot down over Dunkirk were killed by small arms fire as their parachutes floated down. One who survived was First Lt. Erich von Oelhaven, who landed among the dunes, was captured by soldiers, and after a day sheltering in a foxhole in the sand from his colleagues in the air, was taken at gunpoint to queue for a trawler on a makeshift jetty of abandoned trucks.

Observing that his armed guard was asleep on his feet, he escaped into the sea, and sheltered for hours between the jetty trucks, unable to stand as the tide came in, and floating with his head jammed in a pocket of air, while the Stukas and German artillery continued to pound the beach and the sea. He survived hunger, extreme thirst and concussion, for several days and nights until 4th June, when he emerged from hiding and collapsed onto the deserted beach, to be found later by German soldiers.

(Story from Robert Jackson’s Dunkirk)

The German planes, about forty big two-engined bombers, flew on steadily in formation. They appeared to be approaching the direction of the road. If so we were for it. They couldn’t miss the target of the crawling column inextricably mixed up with all these thousands of foot-slogging, weary troops. Already there were big bomb craters lining the sides of the road, showing us it had not escaped attention on previous occasions.

A mad rush for cover started. Men packed themselves into ditches, crawled underneath the wreckage of vehicles, flattened themselves down between the very grass blades in the fields, and stood up to their necks in the water of the canal. In the space of a few seconds the mass of humanity that had encumbered the road had utterly vanished. Not a soul was in sight.

(From Gun Buster’s Retreat via Dunkirk. More on Y Battery’s rearguard action as they finally approach Dunkirk tomorrow 31st May)

Brigadier Beckwith-Smith’s instruction as to how to deal with Stuka dive-bombers: ‘Stand up to them. Shoot at them with a Bren gun from the shoulder. Take them like a high pheasant. Give them plenty of lead. Remember, £5 to any man who brings one down. I have already paid out £10.’

(from Lt. Jimmy Langley’s account in Hugh Sebag-Montefiore’s Dunkirk. More from Brigadier Beckwith-Smith on 3rd June)

The next day 30th left for La Panne east of Dunkirk. Reached there about 11pm and cruised about from 11 until 2am. It was most unpleasant as the whole place was on fire and the wind was blowing off-shore. [A fruitless trip, as the area was being so heavily shelled and bombed. The Royal Daffodil went back again the next day, nevertheless.]

(Captain G Johnson, on the Royal Daffodil. More from them tomorrow and every day until 2nd June)

How many men and women in this tiny country really listen with indifference to the hiccuping boom of the Nazi bomber as it passes overhead? The conquest of fear – and today it is conquered or effectively concealed by hundreds of thousands of decent citizens – is only the greater tribute to that unquenchable vigour of the human spirit which a whole nation displays. And for what? We in Britain are growing so accustomed to the demand made upon our endurance, our humour, and our self-control, that we have almost ceased to ask ourselves just why they are required. For what end is this people showing its superlative courage? For what purpose is it making, at incalculable cost, the emotional sacrifices involved in parting with children, abandoning homes, leaving husbands or wives in danger, closing down businesses, terminating professions, concluding social experiments which have embodied the hopes and dreams of a lifetime?

We are doing, permitting and enduring these things in order that we may destroy another great nation whose airmen, soldiers, sailors and civilians are also displaying superb gallantry and endurance. It may be that now we have no alternative but to fight on against the men and women who have endorsed and practised the militaristic creed which forces us to perfect the arts of destruction. But I who so dearly love my country and so deeply admire its brave and imperturbable people, refuse to admit that I am joining the defeatists when I inquire what would have happened if all the energy, courage and resourcefulness which is now dedicated to the work of destruction, had been given to seeking a solution for Europe’s problems while time still remained? This question has significance for the future.

(Vera Brittain, England’s Hour, written in the summer of 1940. More from Vera Brittain on 2nd June)

They say that in Europe there has never been a more beautiful spring. I look through a row of windows at a blue sky, at trees still green and many flowers, and I think they have these things now in Europe too. It seems to me quite inappropriate that men should be flying through these blue skies, travelling through these flowery fields, firing death at people in summer clothes. A man (high in the Colonial Service) told me after the last war how, one day in France, he went into the fields and picked some flowers and recited to himself, standing alone there in the woods, a poem of Keats, and then came back to his dug-out and made himself drunk; and he wept at the memory. Summer ought to be a closed season for killing people.

(Sarah Gertrude Millin, 28th May 1940, from World Blackout.)

–

from A Young English Airman

Often unseen by those you helped to save

You rode the air above that foreign dune

And died like the unutterably brave

That so your friends might see the English June.

Yet knew that your young life, as price paid over

Let thousands live to tread that track to Dover.

(John Masefield)

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Tomorrow, 31st May 1940 – Lovely on the Water

26th May 1940 – A very tight corner

“Gentlemen, we are falling back on Dunkirk.  A lot of regiments are going out of action now.  They are going to be evacuated to England.”

(from Return via Dunkirk by Gun Buster, 1940)

The face of the countryside had undergone a complete change. Miles and miles of low-lying marshy fields stretched as far as the eye could see, all cut up by a network of canals and highways. Into this pancake of a land it seemed as if the whole of the B.E.F. was pouring. Every road scoring the landscape was one thick mass of transport and troops, great long lines of them stretching back far to the eastern horizon, and all the lines converging towards the one focus – Dunkirk. Ambulances, lorries, trucks, Bren-gun carriers, artillery columns – everything except tanks – all crawling along those roads in well-defined lines over the flat, featureless country in the late afternoon sunshine, provided an impressive and memorable picture of two modern armies in retreat. Under the greyish camouflage paint they resembled from a distance slow-moving rivers of muddy-coloured lava from some far-off eruption.

(Gun Buster, Return via Dunkirk, published 1940)

The British Expeditionary Force in France and Belgium had been ordered forward to attack. Within days, the Army on their left flank was falling back and the Army on their right flank was broken through. At once, the B.E.F found itself in the most dangerous position that the war offered. Those who had imperilled it had foreseen nothing of the kind and were unable to improvise measures to kill the danger. There was nothing for it but to fall back, and falling back was made almost impossible by the multitudes of refugees on the roads. Our men could only crawl back, while the enemy raced to cut them off from the sea.

(John Masefield, The Nine Days Wonder)

A solid mass five miles in length and about one hundred yards broad began to walk along the beach towards Dunkirk.

(Major Colvin, 2nd Grenadier Guards, from Hugh Sebag-Montefiore’s Dunkirk)

We were advancing in open formation up a main road when, all of a sudden, a machine gun opened up and the left and the right of the formation simply disappeared. They were down. It was awful. It was plain murder, and by God I was scared. It was devastating. We in the centre got away with it. My goodness me, I shall remember that to my dying day. It was an awful situation to be in. We were not only outnumbered, we were out-armed in every way. It was, quite frankly, a bloodbath.

Sergeant Edward Doe, 2nd Battalion, King’s Royal Rifle Corps, from Max Arthur’s Forgotten Voices)

There were hours of endless plodding, punctuated with frustrating halts, as they worked out the best way to cross the many barbed-wire fences and streams in their path, under cover of darkness. If anything, the days were even worse: they had to lie up more or less immobile in ditches or farm buildings, ever fearful they might be discovered. They also had to cope with great physical discomfort, frequently soaking wet, all suffered from a mild form of trench foot. As if that were not enough, Fane also had his wounded arm to worry about. But what bothered them most during their four-night journey were their many close encounters with Germans…

(Lt Julian Fane and Corporal Eldridge, Glosters, from Hugh Sebag-Montefiore’s Dunkirk; we hear more of their story on 2nd June)

The Dunkirk crisis was unbelievable. A lot of people coming back had jettisoned their guns and vehicles. They were just pouring through. I think the officers at the other end of the phone were largely confined to their building, but they could see very clearly what was going on. It was absolute mayhem. Dunkirk was full of people who had mostly walked there, not in any form or order. They had just got there as fast as they could. Some had hitched lifts wherever possible. There were lots of refugees coming in. It had been bombed. We knew that a lot of the troops were sheltering in the buildings along the shore. We had no idea they were going to be rescued – it seemed the whole army was going to be captured. I was extremely upset, because it never occurred to me that we would survive. I thought we were defeated, and quite frankly thought we would surrender and sue for peace.

(Corporal Elizabeth Quale, WAAF liaison officer, from Max Arthur’s Forgotten Voices)

Squadron Leader Al Deere first had the view from the air, then the ground. ‘I was leading the squadron, and just as we arrived over Dunkirk, a Dornier 17 came flying up the coast. We went after it and, being the leader, I was first there. I was lining up behind to shoot it, when the rear-gunner fired. He hit my engine. I crash-landed north-east of Dunkirk. The tide was out, and I got down on the beach, but I knocked myself out on the edge of the windscreen. When I came to, I got out and was looked after by a girl who stitched me up with an ordinary needle and put a plaster on me. Then I headed for Dunkirk, where I knew the BEF was intending to evacuate.

(From Max Arthur’s Forgotten Voices. More from Al Deere on 29th May and 30th May)

All the time it was a desperate sight to witness. The poor refugees didn’t know which way to turn. From the first their trains of children and old women had been machine-gunned and their convoys attacked by Bombers and fighters. Women would come to you crying their eyes out for food and money. The troops were wonderful the way they would spend their money to buy bread for the poorer ones. Even so it was an impossible situation for the British Army to cope with. And when the company finally reached the town Dunkirk was a terrible sight. All the way we were continually bombed and had to take shelter. The bombers came over in waves of three generally at least a dozen strong. We camped in the fields outside the ruined town, could see the Casino smouldering away, houses around about razed to the ground, and didn’t actually get on to the beach to queue for a boat for several days.

(Captain NC Strother Smith’s account in the Imperial War Museum archive. More of Captain Strother Smith’s story on 29th May)

Captain HS Snook’s account in the IWM archive speaks of the ‘nightmare’ of the two weeks of retreat before he and those left of his company even reached Dunkirk, where ‘the din was appalling’, and he gives a very negative picture of the evacuation. ‘It was every man for himself.’ He met no organised evacuation at all, and in his account he derides the ‘hopeless incompetency’ of the officers he encountered, ‘all hopeless, either too young or too silly’. And of his companions, he says ‘out of a battalion of about 850 who went into action, only about 350 returned’.

(Captain HS Snook’s account in the Imperial War Museum archive. Captain Snook’s story continues on 30th May)

Throughout that night and the following day our guns continued shelling the enemy on the far side of Ypres. On our side there was hardly an hour’s relief from the bombers. About 4pm I went to the Battery Command Post. The Major was in the act of telephoning down to the gun positions: ‘Prepare to withdraw.’

We weren’t left long in the dark. ‘Gentlemen, we are to join the rearguard of the B.E.F. We are one of the four artillery regiments chosen.’

It was an honour, undoubtedly. But for the moment most of us thought the news a bit depressing. We weren’t carried away by any false heroics. A rearguard action covering the evacuation was going to be no picnic. We might as well resign ourselves.

(from Return via Dunkirk by Gun Buster, whose story of Y Battery’s fraught rearguard action continues throughout the following nine days; they were among the very last troops to be evacuated. We next hear from him on 28th May)

Meanwhile at home, Leonard Woolf voiced the anxiety of people waiting for news of friends: ‘In Rodmell Dunkirk was a harrowing business. There was not merely the public catastrophe, the terrible suspense with Britain on the razor’s edge of complete disaster; in the village we were domestically on the beaches. For Percy, and Jim and Dick and Chris, whom I had known as small boys in the village school and watched grow up into farm workers and tractor drivers were now, one knew, retreating like the two grenadiers of the Napoleonic wars, driven back to the Dunkirk beaches. There they presumably were waiting and we in Rodmell waited.’

(Leonard Woolf, The Journey not the Arrival Matters. More news from Rodmell on 30th May and 3rd June)

The British and French forces in Belgium were in a very tight corner. They retreated to Dunkirk, spending several days on the unsheltered beaches under the continual threat of German bombers. They were rescued by a makeshift evacuation fleet from England, in which naval craft mingled with Thames pleasure-launches, tugs, barges, fishing-smacks, yachts, and ship’s lifeboats. In calm hot weather this extraordinary armada shuttled to and fro across the narrow seas, the soldiers wading out to meet it.

(Geoffrey Trease This is your Century. More on the extraordinary armada tomorrow 27th May)

When Operation Dynamo began it was thought that only a few thousand could be saved. The next day the situation was so much worse that we had to be prepared for a desperate scramble to pick up survivors from a great disaster.

(John Masefield The Nine Days Wonder)

Map from Return via Dunkirk by Gun Buster. When his account of their rearguard action covering the retreat begins, Y Battery are stationed at Ypres, from where they see the great mass of troops converging on Dunkirk.

They marched over the Field of Waterloo,

By Goumont and La Haie, and then fell back,

Forever facing front to the attack

Across the English bones.

Westward, by Fontenoy, their ranks withdrew;

The German many bomb-bursts beat the drum,

And many a trooper marched to kingdom come

Upon the Flanders stones.

Westward they went, past Wipers, past the old

Fields bought and paid for by their brothers’ blood.

Their feet were in the snapping of the flood

That sped to gulf them down.

They were as bridegrooms plighted to the mould

Those marching men with neither hope nor star,

The foemen in the gateways as a bar,

The sea beyond to drown.

And at the very sea, a cloud of night,

A hail of death and allies in collapse,

A foe in the perfection of his traps,

A certainty of doom.

When, lo, out of the darkness, there was light,

There in the sea were England and her ships,

They sailed with the free salt upon their lips

To sunlight from the tomb.

(John Masefield)

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Tomorrow, 27th May 1940 – An extraordinary armada

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