WHAT COULD THE GERMAN Navy do to help prevent an evacuation? General Keitel asked Vice-Admiral Otto Schniewind, Chief of the Naval War Staff, in a phone conversation on May 26. Not much, Schniewind felt, and he formally spelled out the Navy’s views in a letter to OKW on the 28th. Large ships were not suitable in the narrow, confining waters of the English Channel; the destroyers had been used up in Norway; U-boats were restricted by shallow water and the enemy’s very effective antisubmarine measures.
There remained the Schnellboot, the small fast German motor torpedo boat. These “S-boats” were especially suited to narrow seas like the Channel, and new bases were now available in Holland, closer to the scene of action. The only problems were the possibility of bad weather and the short nights this time of year.
Overall, the prospects seemed so bright that SKL—the naval war command—had already shifted two flotillas, totaling nine boats, from the German island of Borkum to the Dutch port of Den Helder, 90 miles closer to Dunkirk. From here Captain-Lieutenant Birnbacher’s 1st Flotilla and Captain-Lieutenant Peterson’s 2nd Flotilla began operating along the coast.
They drew first blood on the night of May 22-23. The French destroyer Jaguar, approaching Dunkirk, rashly radioed that she would be arriving at 12:20 a.m. German intelligence was listening in, and when Jaguar turned up on schedule, an unexpected reception committee was waiting. S 21 and S 23 sank her with a couple of well-placed torpedoes, then slipped away unseen.
On the Allied side nobody was sure what caused the loss. A submarine seemed most likely. The British were still unaware of the S-boats’ nightly patrols as the destroyer Wakeful lay off the beach at Bray-Dunes, loading troops on the evening of May 28. Her skipper Commander Ralph Lindsay Fisher was chiefly worried about an air attack. This might require some violent maneuvering; he packed the troops as low in the ship as possible to get maximum stability. They crowded into the engine room, the boiler room, the store rooms, every inch of empty space.
At 11:00 p.m. Wakeful weighed anchor with 640 men aboard—all she could carry—and headed for Dover via the long Route Y. It was a black night, but the phosphorescence was brilliant. Under such conditions bombers often spotted ships by their wake; as Commander Fisher headed northeast on the first leg of his trip, he kept his speed down to twelve knots to reduce this danger.
Around 12:30 he spotted the winking light of Kwinte Whistle Buoy, where he would swing west for the final run to Dover. It was an important buoy; so important that it remained lit even in these dangerous times. It was also the most exposed point of the homeward journey—easy to reach for enemy planes, U-boats, or any other menace.
Fisher began to zigzag and increased his speed to twenty knots. You couldn’t get by Kwinte too soon.
Not far away other vessels were also watching the winking light of Kwinte Whistle Buoy. The two German Schnellboote flotillas were now alternating their nightly patrols, and tonight was the turn of Captain-Lieutenant Heinz Birnbacher’s 1st Flotilla. On S 30 the skipper, Lieutenant Wilhelm Zimmermann, searched the night with his binoculars. There ought to be plenty of targets out by the buoy, but so far he saw nothing.
Then suddenly, about 12:40, he spotted a shadow even darker than the night. “There, dead ahead!” He nudged the helmsman, standing right behind him. The shadows quickly took shape as a darkened ship rushing toward them. Zimmermann sized it up as a destroyer.
A few brief orders, and S 30 turned toward the target, leading it slightly. On a Schnellboot the torpedo was aimed by aiming the boat itself. The gap quickly narrowed between the two vessels as the S-boat crew tingled with excitement. Would they get close enough before they were seen?
Another order from Zimmermann, and two torpedoes slapped into the sea. The crew began counting the seconds, waiting interminably. …
On the bridge of the Wakeful, Commander Fisher saw them coming—two parallel streaks, one slightly ahead of the other, racing toward his starboard side. They gleamed like silver ribbons in the phosphorescence. He ordered the helm hard-a-port, and as the ship began to swing, the first torpedo passed harmlessly across his bow.
The second hit. It exploded with a roar and a blinding flash in the forward boiler room, breaking Wakeful in half. She sank in fifteen seconds … the severed ends resting on the bottom, the bow and stern sticking out of the water in a grotesque V.
The troops far below never had a chance. Trapped by the slanting decks, engulfed by the sea, they were all lost—except one man who happened to be topside sneaking a cigarette.
A few hundred yards away Lieutenant Zimmermann watched with satisfaction as his torpedo finally hit. He had almost given up hope. He toyed with the idea of picking up survivors for questioning, then thought better of it. Occasional shadows and flashes of phosphorescence suggested that other ships were rushing to the scene—certainly alert and maybe even looking for him. Withdrawal seemed his best bet. The S 30 eased off into the night and resumed its prowl.
Back at the wreck Commander Fisher floated clear of his ship, as did most of the gun crews. About 30 men ended up on the stern, some 60 feet out of the water. Fisher and the rest paddled about, hoping some friendly vessel would find them.
In half an hour they got their wish. Two small drifters, Nautilus and Comfort, appeared out of the night. Normally engaged in minesweeping, they were now part of Admiral Ramsay’s rescue fleet, bound for La Panne via Route Y. As they approached Kwinte Buoy, crew members heard voices crying “Help!” and saw heads bobbing in the sea.
Nautilus managed to pick up six men, Comfort another sixteen, including Commander Fisher. Other rescue ships began to appear: the minesweeper Gossamer, packed with troops from the eastern mole … next the sweeper Lydd, also crowded … then the destroyer Grafton, with a full load from Bray-Dunes. All lowered their boats and stood by. Few yet knew what happened—only that a ship had sunk—and there were a number of flares and flashing signal lights.
Hidden by the night, a thousand yards away Lieutenant Michalowski, commanding the German submarine U 62, watched the confusion of lights with interest. Like the Schnellboot, he had been lying near Kwinte Buoy, waiting for some fat target to come along. These were indeed shallow waters for a U-boat—but not impossible. The U 62 glided toward the lights.
Commander Fisher sensed the danger. Picked up by the Comfort, he had taken over from her regular skipper. Now he moved here and there warning the other ships. Hailing Gossamer, he shouted that he had been torpedoed and the enemy was probably still nearby. Gossamer got going so fast she left her skiff behind. Comfort picked up its crew, ordered Nautilus to get going too, then moved over to warn Grafton and Lydd. Easing alongside Grafton’s starboard quarter, Fisher once again called out his warning.
Too late. At that moment, 2:50 a.m., a torpedo crashed into Grafton’s ward room, killing some 35 army officers picked up at Bray-Dunes. Comfort, lying alongside, was hurled into the air by the blast, then dropped back into the sea like a toy boat. Momentarily swamped, she bobbed back to the surface, but all the crew on deck were washed overboard, including Commander Fisher.
With no one at the helm, but her engines set at full speed, Comfort now moved into a wide circle that took her off into the night. Fisher grabbed a rope’s end and hung on for a brief, wild ride. But she was going too fast, and there was no one to pull him aboard. He finally let go.
Just as well. Comfort, still in her circle came back into view and was sighted by the nearby Lydd. Her skipper, Lieutenant-Commander Rodolph Haig, had been warned by a Wakeful survivor that an enemy torpedo boat, rather than submarine, was probably to blame. Now this seemed confirmed by what he saw in the dark: a small vessel dashing about at high speed.
Lydd opened up with her starboard guns, raking the stranger’s wheelhouse and producing a satisfying cloud of sparks. The torpedoed Grafton joined in, and the stranger appeared disabled.
Swimming in the sea again, Commander Fisher realized that Lydd had mistaken Comfort for the enemy; but there was nothing he could do. On Comfort herself three survivors huddled below decks, equally helpless. Her engines had stopped now, probably knocked out by gunfire, and she wallowed clumsily in the Channel swell.
Suddenly something big loomed out of the night, racing toward her. It was Lydd again, coming to finish off the “enemy” by ramming. As her steel prow knifed into Comfort’s wooden side, two figures burst out of the hatch and leapt for Lydd’s bow.
“Repel boarders!” The ancient rallying cry rose above her decks as members of the crew grabbed rifles and pistols and blazed away. They fortunately missed the two survivors of Comfort who had climbed aboard, but a stray shot fatally wounded Able Seaman S. P. Sinclair, one of their own men. The mix-up was finally ironed out, and Lydd set course for home.
Meanwhile, confusion on the stricken Grafton. The torpedo hits (there was apparently a second) knocked out all her lights, and the 800 troops aboard blindly thrashed about. Among them was Captain Basil Bartlett of the Field Security Police, one of the last to board the ship at Bray-Dunes. There was no space left in the ward room, where the officers were assigned; he settled for a corner of the captain’s cabin. Stunned by the explosion, he came to, groping for some way out. There seemed practically no chance of escape; still he was not overly worried. He remembered similar scenes in countless American war movies. “Gary Cooper always finds a way out,” he consoled himself.
He finally stumbled onto the open deck, and found the night alive with gunfire. Grafton had joined Lydd in pounding the luckless Comfort, and probably other nearby ships were firing, too. Stray shots ripped into the Grafton’s bridge, killing the skipper, Commander Charles Robinson.
Gradually the firing died down, and a semblance of order returned. Word reached the sick bay to start sending the wounded up, and Private Sam Sugar, an RASC driver who had injured his hand, bolted for the ladder. He was stopped in his tracks by an orderly, who gave him a flashlight and told him to stay a bit. Someone was needed to hold the light while the orderly fixed a tourniquet on a sailor who had just lost both legs. Sugar had been on the verge of panic, but the sight of the orderly calmly going about his business at this desperate moment showed the power of example. He had to stay calm too; he just couldn’t let this good man down.
By the time Sugar reached deck, the ferry Malines lay alongside taking off the troops. The Grafton was listing now, slowly sinking, but the men kept in ranks, patiently waiting for their turn to transfer. Captain Bartlett was one of the last to cross over. Gary Cooper had found a way out.
The destroyer Ivanhoe finished off Grafton with two well-placed shells, and at last there was time for postmortems. For Bartlett there was the lucky break of getting on board so late. Any earlier, and he would have died with the other officers in the ward room.
For Sergeant S. S. Hawes, 1st Division Petrol Company, there was a more ironical twist. He had briefly left his unit at Bray-Dunes to help a wounded comrade. Understandable, but orders were to stick together. By the time he got back, the others had put out in a launch, heading for a destroyer lying offshore. It was the Wakeful, and every man in the company was lost. For disobeying orders, Hawes was rewarded with his life.
The luckiest man of all was the indestructible Commander Fisher. Washed off Wakeful, he was one of the few picked up by Comfort; washed off Comfort, he was again picked up, this time by the Norwegian freighter Hird. A battered old steamer out of Oslo, Hird was engaged in the timber trade and was not even part of Admiral Ramsay’s rescue fleet. She had made a routine stop at Dunkirk on May 13, and for the past two weeks had been taking her share of punishment as the Luftwaffe pounded the port. Now only one engine worked, and she could barely make six knots.
But these were desperate times. As the panzers approached, Hird was requisitioned by the French Navy to transfer some of the trapped poilus to Cherbourg, 180 miles to the southwest and presumably out of danger. They crowded aboard all through the evening of May 28, unofficially joined by some of the British soldiers pouring into Dunkirk. Sapper L. C. Lidster found the gangplank blocked by a queue of Frenchmen, so he grabbed a rope ladder hanging down. He and his mates scrambled aboard while the waiting poilus shouted in anger. In various ways other Tommies made it too—Private Sam Love of the 12th Field Ambulance … Corporal Alf Gill of the 44th Division … Staff Sergeant Reg Blackburn of the Military Police … maybe 1,000 men altogether.
The Hird finally crept out of the harbor about midnight, packed with 3,000 Allied troops and a handful of German prisoners. At six knots, her master Captain A. M. Frendjhem wasn’t about to challenge the enemy batteries planted along the coast to the west, so he first steered east along Route Y. At Kwinte Whistle Buoy he would then swing west and make his run down the Channel, beyond the range of the German guns.
It was while rounding Kwinte that he picked up Commander Fisher and several other swimmers—all probably survivors of the Wakeful. Exhausted, Fisher slumped against the after cargo hatch among a crowd of French colonial troops. He saw no British soldiers, nor did it occur to him that any might be aboard.
Regaining his strength, he went to the bridge to urge that he be landed at Dover. Important charts might have floated clear when the Wakeful sank, and Admiral Ramsay must be warned. Captain Frendjhem replied that his orders were to go straight to Cherbourg. Fisher didn’t persist: he knew that the Hird had to pass close to Dover breakwater anyhow; surely he could catch a ride into the harbor from some passing ship.
And so it proved. As the Hird approached the breakwater, Fisher hailed a passing naval trawler. It came alongside, and he jumped aboard.
Meanwhile on the Hird’s foredeck the British troops watched Dover draw near with mounting anticipation. It had been an exhausting trip—no food or water—made worse when one Tommy fell down an open hatch and lay groaning all night. Now at last life began perking up. The famous white cliffs never looked better.
Then to everyone’s surprise the Hird turned out again and headed westward along the coast, past Folkestone … Eastbourne … Brighton. The men decided they must be going to Southampton and settled back to make the best of things. Sapper Lidster tried eating a tin of uncooked fish roe. It tasted awful, “but God! I was so hungry!”
Then another surprise. The Hird didn’t go to Southampton after all. Instead, she veered off past the Isle of Wight and headed across the Channel toward France again. Howls of rage rose from the foredeck. Some men aimed rifles at the bridge, hoping to “persuade” Captain Frendjhem to change his mind. At the crucial moment an elderly British major named Hunt stood up in front of the Captain to protect him and try to calm the troops. He explained that the Hird was under French control, that the senior French officer aboard had ordered her to Cherbourg, that the poilus were desperately needed there, and finally that he personally would see that every British soldier got back to England. It was an inspiring performance, coming from an officer who was not a trained combat leader, but rather a mild father figure in the 508th Petrol Company of the supply troops.
The spell of mutiny was broken. The Hird continued on to Cherbourg, where the British troops each received two slices of dry bread and jam, then marched off to a transit camp outside of town. Here they settled down in tents, until Major Hunt—true to his word—got them all back to England.
Admiral Ramsay and the Dynamo Room staff were blissfully ignorant of the meandering Hird, but they were very much aware of the disastrous events off Kwinte Whistle Buoy. With characteristic energy they dived into the business of countermeasures.
At 8:06 a.m. on the 29th Ramsay radioed his entire armada: “Vessels carrying troops not to stop to pick up survivors from ships sunk but are to inform other near ships.”
Next he took two minesweepers off troop-carrying duties and ordered them to search the area around Kwinte for any lurking torpedo boats. This was a drastic but realistic move. He needed every possible ship for lifting the BEF, but what good did it do, unless he could get them safely home?
There was still some suspicion that U-boats might be involved, so the Admiral also established an antisubmarine patrol in the waters west of Kwinte. In addition, antisubmarine trawlers patrolling off the Thames estuary were brought down to the critical area east of Margate and Ramsgate. A speedboat flotilla at Harwich was ordered to stand by as a striking force in case these various probes turned anything up.
Most important of all, the middle Route X was finally cleared of mines and opened to traffic. During the morning three destroyers tried it out, pronounced it safe from the German shore batteries both east and west of Dunkirk. At 4:06 p.m. Ramsay ordered all ships to start using the new route exclusively in daylight hours. This not only shortened the trip from 87 to 55 miles, but shifted the traffic 26 miles farther west of Kwinte Buoy—meaning 26 miles farther away from the S-boats’ favorite hunting ground.
By midafternoon all possible countermeasures had been taken, and the Dynamo Room returned to what one staff officer called “its normal state of organized chaos.” There were always fresh problems. New German batteries were shelling the mole from the southeast—could the RAF mount a quick strike? The Army’s medical service had completely broken down on the beaches—could the Navy send over a team of good doctors? Refueling was becoming a major bottleneck. Peacetime Dover refueled commercial traffic at a leisurely pace of one ship at a time—how to cope with dozens of vessels, all clamoring for oil at once? The Admiralty reported twenty Thames barges, towed by five tugs, would be arriving at Ramsgate at 5:30 p.m.—could they be used on the beaches as an improvised pier?
Tennant was consulted about the barges, and he turned the idea down. The beach shelved so gradually that twenty barges weren’t enough to make a decent pier. Better to use them for ferrying troops out to the destroyers and coastal steamers waiting offshore. He still didn’t have the small boats he really needed for this work, but the barges were better than nothing.
Meanwhile the problems grew. Men were pouring onto the beach at a far faster rate than they could be lifted off. When Captain S. T. Moore led a mixed bag of 20 officers and 403 men into La Panne around 10:00 a.m. he hadn’t the faintest idea what he was meant to do with them. Someone suggested he check II Corps headquarters; he left his charges in a hotel garden and trudged to the headquarters dugout about a mile up the beach.
Inside, it was another world—three lieutenant-colonels, about six staff assistants, a battery of telephones, and papers being shuffled back and forth. He was given a ticket, neatly filled out, authorizing him to embark 20 officers and 403 men from “Beach A.” Presumably it was to be handed to some collector at some gate to some particular beach.
Then back to the beach the way it really was: no signposts, no ticket takers, just bewildered waiting. At La Panne, Bray-Dunes, and Malo-les-Bains, ever-growing lines of men curled over the sand and into the sea. The queues seemed almost stationary, and the troops whiled away the hours as best they could. The padre of the 85th Command Ammunition Depot moved among his flock, inviting them to join him in prayers and hymns. Some antiaircraft gunners at Bray-Dunes were calmly playing cards; they had run out of ammunition long ago. On the promenade east of the mole a group pedaled about on brightly-colored mini-bikes borrowed from some beachfront concession. Near Malo a soldier lay face down, clutching handfuls of sand and letting it run through his fingers, repeating over and over, “Please, God, have mercy …”
Some discovered a stiff drink could help. Corporal Ackrell of the 85th Command Ammunition Depot asked a comrade for a drink from his water bottle. He discovered, not entirely to his sorrow, that it was filled with rum. A few swigs, and he passed out. Others like Private Jack Toomey didn’t trust the drinking water and had depended on wine and champagne for a fortnight. This morning some vin blanc finally caught up with him: “I was drunk as a lord.”
As the queues inched into the water, panic sometimes took over. With so many thousands waiting, it was hard to remain calm when some skiff, holding perhaps ten people, finally came within reach. Working the beach at La Panne, Lieutenant Ian Cox of the destroyer Malcolm had to draw his revolver and threaten to shoot the next man who tried to rush the boats. Even so, one army officer went down on his knees, begging to be allowed off first. In another rush at La Panne a boat overturned, and seven men were drowned in four feet of water.
Wading out could be hell. Artillery Captain R. C. Austin felt his britches balloon out and fill with water till they were “heavy as masonry.” His sodden jacket and water-logged boots seemed to nail him down.
The sea was up to his chin when a ship’s lifeboat finally appeared, and Austin wondered how he could ever climb into it. He need not have worried. Strong arms reached out, grabbed him by the armpits and belt, and swung him over the gunwale. He heard someone in the boat shouting, “Come on, you bastards, wake up, blast you!”
Occasionally the more resourceful soldiers devised their own transportation. Separated from his artillery unit, Gunner F. Felstead discovered that none of the queues seemed to want stragglers, so he and six mates decided to go it alone. Walking along the beach, they found a canvas collapsible drifting offshore. It had only one oar, but using their rifles as paddles, the little group put to sea. They were ultimately picked up by a naval cutter and transferred to the paddle steamer Royal Eagle.
The minesweeper Killarney rescued three other adventurers about this time. Heading across the Channel, she encountered a raft made of a door and several wooden planks. Aboard were a French officer, two Belgian soldiers, and six demijohns of wine. All were safely transferred.
But it was Lieutenant E. L. Davies, skipper of the minesweeper Oriole, who had the most practical idea for breaking the bottleneck of the beaches this day. Oriole was an old River Clyde paddle steamer with a good, shallow draft. Taking advantage of this, Davies aimed her at the shore and drove her hard aground. For the rest of the day she served as a pier. The troops wading out scrambled aboard her bow and were picked up from her stern by a steady stream of boats from the larger vessels lying further out.
Even so, many of the soldiers stumbled and sank while trying to reach the Oriole. Sub-Lieutenant Rutherford Crosby, son of a Glasgow bookseller, dived overboard again and again, pulling them out. He got a rest when the tide went out, leaving the Oriole high and dry, but toward evening it flowed in again, ultimately refloating the ship. Her work done, she turned for Ramsgate with a final load of Tommies. Altogether on the 29th, some 2,500 men used her as a bridge to safety.
In Dunkirk Captain Tennant had his own solution to the problem of the beaches. The eastern mole was proving such a success, he asked that the whole evacuation be concentrated there. Admiral Ramsay turned him down. The BEF was now pouring into the perimeter in such numbers the Admiral felt that both the mole and the beaches were needed. Beyond that, he wanted to spread the risk. So far he had been lucky. Thanks to the smoke and a low cloud cover, the Luftwaffe had virtually ignored the mole. Ramsay wanted to keep it that way. A large concentration of shipping might draw unwelcome attention.
As it was, a steady stream of vessels pulled in and out all morning. The formula was working: a ship would come alongside … the pier master Commander Clouston would send out enough troops to fill it … the ship would load up and be off again—sometimes in less than half an hour. Working with Clouston was Brigadier Reggie Parminter, formerly of Gort’s staff and now army embarkation officer. Totally imperturbable, he disdained a helmet and jauntily sported a manacled in his left eye.
All the time the queue of men waiting at the foot of the mole continued to grow. To keep it manageable, Parminter devised a “hat-check” system. The waiting men were divided into batches of 50; the leader of each batch was assigned a number; and when that number was called, it was time to go.
“Embarkation is being carried out normally now,” Captain Tennant radioed Dover at 1:30 p.m. on the 29th. And everything was indeed “normal”—except for the number of ships alongside the mole. There were more than usual. On the harbor side the destroyers Grenade and Jaguar, the transport Canterbury, and a French destroyer were all loading troops. On the seaward side, the Channel packet Fenella was also loading.
Now at 11:30, just as Tennant was sending his message, six more ships arrived. Lieutenant Robin Bill was leading in a flotilla of small trawlers. Normally engaged in minesweeping, today they were bringing some badly needed ladders for the mole. They too tied up on the harbor side, between the two British destroyers and the Canterbury.
Then a big paddle steamer, the Crested Eagle, also arrived, tying up on the seaward side, just astern of the Fenella. Altogether, there were now twelve ships clustered around the end of the mole.
At the same time the weather began to clear and the wind changed, sending the smoke inland instead of across the harbor. It was turning into a sparkling afternoon.
All these details were unknown in the Dynamo Room, but the message traffic was certainly reassuring. Every possible precaution had been taken against those torpedo attacks in the night. There had been no serious ship loss since early morning, when Mona’s Isle had struck a mine. Fortunately, she was empty at the time. No fresh information was coming in from Dunkirk, but news from there was always late.
By the end of the afternoon spirits were soaring. At 6:22 p.m. Major-General H. C. Lloyd, doing liaison work with Ramsay, telegraphed the War Office in London:
Naval shipping plan now approaching maximum efficiency. Subject to weather and reasonable immunity enemy action, expect lift about 16,000 Dunkirk, and 15,000 from beaches. …
But even as the General wired his optimism, awesome events were unfolding at Dunkirk … staggering the rescue fleet, turning the mole into a shambles, and throwing Admiral Ramsay’s whole evacuation plan into wild disarray.