LIEUTENANT IAN COX, FIRST Lieutenant of the destroyer Malcolm, could hardly believe his eyes. There, coming over the horizon toward him, was a mass of dots that filled the sea. The Malcolm was bringing her third load of troops back to Dover. The dots were all heading the other way—toward Dunkirk. It was Thursday evening, the 30th of May.
As he watched, the dots materialized into vessels. Here and there were respectable steamers, like the Portsmouth-Isle of Wight car ferry, but mostly they were little ships of every conceivable type—fishing smacks … drifters … excursion boats … glittering white yachts … mud-spattered hoppers … open motor launches … tugs towing ship’s lifeboats … Thames sailing barges with their distinctive brown sails … cabin cruisers, their bright work gleaming … dredges, trawlers, and rust-streaked scows … the Admiral Superintendent’s barge from Portsmouth with its fancy tassels and rope-work.
Cox felt a sudden surge of pride. Being here was no longer just a duty; it was an honor and a privilege. Turning to a somewhat startled chief boatswain’s mate standing beside him, he burst into the Saint Crispin’s Day passage from Shakespeare’s Henry V:
And Gentlemen in England, now abed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here.
The efforts of the Small Vessels Pool and the Ministry of Shipping were at last paying off. The trickle of little ships that began in Tough’s boatyard was turning into a deluge. There was still no public announcement of the evacuation, but England is a small place. In one way or another, the word reached those who were needed.
It was a midnight phone call from the Admiralty that alerted Basil A. Smith, a London accountant and owner of the 24-foot cabin cruiser Constant Nymph. Would Smith confirm that his boat was ready for sea and could sail on four hours’ notice? Early next morning, May 27, the summons came: take her down to Sheerness at once.
Captain Lemon Webb was nursing the Ipswich spritsailing barge Tollesbury up the Thames on an ordinary cargo run. Then a motorboat eased alongside, and a naval officer ordered him to a nearby jetty. There a tug took her in tow, and Tollesbury was on her way to Sheerness, too.
The crew of the Margate lifeboat Lord Southborough were playing darts at their favorite pub when their turn came. A cryptic message said report to the boathouse at once. Within hours they were heading direct for Dunkirk—no stop at Sheerness for them. For Coxswain Edward D. Parker it was almost a family outing. His brother and nephew were in his crew; a son had already gone over with the Margate pilot boat; another son was one of Commander Clouston’s men on the mole.
The cockle boat fleet of Leigh-on-Sea lay peacefully at anchor on May 30 when the call came for them. Bearing imposing names like Defender, Endeavour, Resolute, and Renown, they sounded like dreadnoughts; actually they were only 40 feet long with a 2 ½-foot draft. Normally they were engaged in the humblest of tasks—gathering in the cockle shellfish found in the mud flats of the Thames estuary. The crew were all civilians, but every man volunteered. Seventeen-year-old Ken Horner was considered too young and left behind, but he wasn’t about to buy that. He ran home, got his mother’s permission, and bicycled off in pursuit of the fleet. He caught up with his boat at Southend.
These vessels came with their crews, but that did not always happen. In the race against time, yachts were often commandeered before their owners could be located. Other weekend sailors just couldn’t drop everything and sign up in the Navy for a month—the standard requirement. As the little ships converged on Sheerness and Ramsgate, the main staging points, Admiral Preston’s Small Vessels Pool looked around for substitute crews.
Shipwright A. W. Elliott was working in Johnson & Jago’s boatyard at Leigh-on-Sea when a bobby pedaled up on a bicycle. He announced that volunteers were needed to get “some chaps” off the French coast. Elliott needed no urging.
At Lowestoft on the east coast the Small Vessels Pool commandeered taxis to bring down a contingent of commercial fishermen. In London, Commander Garrett of the Pool spent three straight nights calling up various clubs … rounding up yachtsman members … packing them off in Admiralty cars to Sheerness and Ramsgate.
It was during these hectic days that Sub-Lieutenant Moran Capiat arrived in London for a few days’ leave. An actor and yachtsman in peacetime, he was currently serving on a naval trawler in the North Sea, but the ship was being refitted, and for the moment he was free. He was aware that Dunkirk was coming to a boil, but felt it was no concern of his.
Going to the Royal Ocean Racing Club for breakfast, he was surprised to find nobody there. Even the steward was gone. He finally located the steward’s wife, who explained that everyone had vanished after a call from the Admiralty a day or so ago. Mildly mystified, he settled down in a chair to relax alone.
The phone rang, and he answered. It was the Admiralty. A voice said they wanted “still more hands” and asked who he was. Capiat identified himself, and the voice said, “You’re just what we need.” He was then told to go to Sheerness immediately. Still baffled, he caught a train at Waterloo Station within an hour.
Five minutes’ walk from the Royal Ocean Racing Club was the ship chandlers shop of Captain O. M. Watts on Albemarle Street. Downstairs the Captain cheerfully dispensed a hodgepodge of charts and nautical gear; upstairs he gave navigation lessons to young gentlemen who hoped for a commission in the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve. They were mostly professional men: solicitors, brokers, actors, bankers from the City, and such. Few knew much about the sea; some had never been out of sight of land.
John Fernald was a young American theatrical director attending the Captain’s classes every Thursday evening. Usually the session was blackboard work, but not on Thursday, May 30. When he arrived with his friend David Homan, a scenery designer, Watts took them aside for a private chat. Quietly he explained there would be no regular class tonight; the Navy needed volunteers immediately for a “hazardous job.”
Neither Fernald nor Homan liked the prospect of moving from navigational theory to practice so abruptly, but they couldn’t see any graceful way out; so they volunteered. Captain Watts told them to grab what gear they could and report immediately to the Port of London Authority down by the Tower.
Fernald rushed back to his flat, picked up an old pea jacket, and hurried down to Tower Hill, as directed. Most of the others were already there. Some didn’t even have time to change their clothes and were still wearing the cutaways and striped trousers of the City. Stockbroker Raphael de Sola, however, was resplendent in the jacket of the Royal London Yacht Club, blue trousers to match, a visored cap, and a greatcoat worthy of the First Sea Lord of the Admiralty.
Along with Captain Watts’s scholars, there were a number of more obviously waterfront types: lightermen, dock workers, deckhands, barge men. High and low together, they milled around the lobby of the Port Authority building, still not knowing what they were to do.
Then a Royal Navy commander appeared and gave them a quick briefing. They were to man ship’s lifeboats collected from vessels lying at the London docks. These would be towed down the river and across the Channel, where they would be used to help rescue the BEF.
A bus now took the group to Tilbury, where the lifeboats were waiting. The rule was four men to a boat; twelve boats to a tow. Fernald and Homan managed to stick together, and soon after midnight they were on their way. In the quiet of the night, broken only by the water rushing by and the throb of the tug up ahead, Fernald wondered at the incredible change in his life that had snatched him from a humdrum existence in London and put him in an open boat racing through the dark.
First stop was Sheerness. This bustling harbor on the Thames estuary had become the collecting point for all the little ships streaming down the river. Here they were sorted out and put into shape under the watchful eye of Commodore A. H. Taylor, a retired Rear-Admiral who could normally be found shuffling paper in the Economic Warfare Division of the Admiralty.
Engines were the big problem. Many of the boats had been laid up for the winter and were hard to get running again. Others had idiosyncrasies apparently known only to their absent owners. The Thames excursion steamers had boilers that couldn’t use salt water. It was a miracle that Captain T. E. Docksey and his engineers managed to get more than 100 boats in good enough shape to cross the Channel.
Every ship also needed someone on board who could keep the engine running. By now there were plenty of weekend-sailor volunteers, but few of these bankers and shopkeepers really understood machinery. The Shipping Federation, an organization of operators, was asked to help and issued a call for volunteers. About 350 marine engineers responded.
From Sheerness most of the little ships moved on to Ramsgate. Here fuel tanks were topped off, provisions loaded, and convoys made up. Many of the craft had no compass, and some of the skippers had never been out of sight of land. Lieutenant-Commander Raymond Grundage, the Routing Officer, issued more than 1,000 charts, 600 with routes lined off for neophyte navigators.
Problems could be enormous—or exasperatingly minute. Robert Hilton, a physical education specialist, and Ted Shaw, a red-headed cinema manager, had teamed up to bring the motorboat Ryegate II down the river. They expected to pick up supplies at Ramsgate, but all they received were two cans of water. Otherwise the boat was bare—not even a tumbler for the water. The naval supply depot at Ramsgate seemed unable to cope; they finally went to a pub, had a drink, and pocketed the glasses.
Each little ship had its own tale of troubles, but at the start they all suffered from one common problem: none of them were armed. Lieutenant C. D. Richards carefully hoarded his stockpile of 105 Lewis machine guns, doling them out only to the tugs and escort vessels.
Later the crews would scavenge the beaches, gathering a plentiful supply of discarded Bren guns; and sometimes a BEF gunner might even attach himself to a vessel, but at first they were defenseless. It was enough to make a member of the crew feel a bit uneasy. “Even a record of the 1812 Overture would be better than nothing,” observed one skipper.
It was 10:00 p.m., May 29, when the first convoy of little ships set out from Ramsgate on the long trip across the Channel. None of the eight launches in the group had any navigating instruments. Nevertheless, Lieutenant R. H. Irving, skipper of the escorting motorboat Triton, was confident. Unlike most, he knew these waters well. Waiting outside Ramsgate breakwater, he shouted to the other ships to close up and follow him. Three of the boats developed engine trouble and had to turn back, but the others stuck to Triton and arrived safely off La Panne at dawn.
At 1:00 a.m. on the 30th another convoy left Ramsgate—this time, nineteen launches led by the Belgian ferry Yser—and from then on the flow steadily increased. By late afternoon it was hard to tell where one convoy ended and the next began. All that night, and the 31st too, the little ships poured across the Channel.
Frequently they passed ships like the Malcolm heading back to England. Decks packed with troops, they were a sobering sight. For their part, the men on the returning vessels watched this armada of small craft with mounting excitement and pride. The very names seemed to say “England”: Swallow … Royal Thames … Moss Rose … Norwich Belle … Duchess of York … Blue Bird … Pride of Folkestone … Palmerston … Skylark … Nelson … Southend Britannia … Lady Hatg … New Prince of Wales.
Many of the names also had a personal quality, suggesting that this rescue effort was no mere naval operation; that it was really a family affair: Grace Darling … Boy Bruce … Our Maggie … Our Lizzie … Girl Nancy … Handy Billie … Willie and Alice … Auntie Gus.
Traveling in company, usually shepherded by an armed tug or skoot, the little ships moved across a smooth, gray carpet of sea. The English Channel has a reputation for nastiness, but it had behaved for four days now, and the calm continued on May 30. Best of all, there was a heavy mist, giving the Luftwaffe no chance to follow up the devastating raids of the 29th.
“Clouds so thick you can lean on them,” noted a Luftwaffe war diarist, as the Stukas and Heinkels remained grounded. At Fliegerkorps VIII General Major von Richthofen couldn’t believe it was that bad. At headquarters the sun was shining. He ordered Major Dinort, commanding the 2nd Stuka Squadron, to at least try an attack. Dinort took his planes up, but returned in ten minutes. Heavy fog over Dunkirk, he phoned headquarters. Exasperated, Richthofen countered that the day was certainly flyable where he was. If Herr General major didn’t believe him, Dinort shot back, just call the weather service.
But cloudy weather didn’t guarantee a safe passage for the little ships. Plenty of things could still go wrong. The Channel was full of nervous and inexperienced sailors.
“Periscope on the starboard bow,” shouted the lookout of the 80-foot excursion steamer New Prince of Wales. It turned out to be the mast of a sunken ship, standing fifteen feet out of the water, complete with shrouds.
Next, New Prince of Wales was almost run down by a destroyer that mistook her for a German S-boat. The skipper, Sub-Lieutenant Peter Bennett, managed to flash a recognition signal just in time. A little later he ran alongside an anchored French cargo ship, hoping to get some directions. “Où est l’armée britannique?” he called. The reply was a revolver shot. These were dangerous days for strangers asking questions.
Uncorrected compasses were another source of trouble. It was easy to find the French coast, but the right spot was another matter. Sub-Lieutenant William Ronald Williams anchored his lighter a few hundred yards off an empty stretch of beach and had a boat row him ashore. Walking a quarter-mile inland in search of somebody in authority, he hailed a couple of soldiers he saw silhouetted against a distant blaze.
“Lieber Gott!” one of them cried, and they began shooting at him. Williams ducked behind a dune and shot back. Both Germans fell, but there were other voices now, and Williams raced back to the beach. In less than five minutes he had his lighter under weigh at her full six knots.
One way or another, most of the little ships eventually reached the right part of the coast and went to work. Essentially they were ferries, carrying or towing troops from the beaches to the larger vessels lying further out. Sometimes it was easy—just a matter of towing some rowboat or inflated raft; other times it was difficult and dangerous—especially when they had to pluck men directly from the sea.
“Well done, motorboat, wait for me,” a voice hailed Lieutenant Irving, as he nursed Triton alongside a destroyer with one more load. An officer wearing a lambskin coat leapt aboard. It was Commodore Gilbert Owen Stephenson, a 62-year-old retired vice-admiral, who had been recruited for the crisis and put in charge of all offshore operations at La Panne. Hatless and wet through, he seemed oblivious to his own discomfort as he told Irving to carry on. He added that he might later have “one or two other jobs” for Triton to do.
Stephenson then threw himself into the rescue work too. Nothing was beneath him. He steered, passed lines, helped haul the exhausted troops aboard. Through it all he kept up a line of cheerful chatter. “Come on, the Army!” he would cry; or, to some half-drowned soldier, “Where have I seen you before? You’re so good-looking I’m sure I know you.”
Late in the afternoon Stephenson had Triton take him to a certain spot off the beach. Instructing Irving not to move, he explained he was going ashore to look for Lord Gort. If he brought back the General, Irving was to take him straight to England. With that, Stephenson plunged over the side and waded ashore through the surf, often up to his neck in water.
In an hour he was back, again wading through the surf, but there was no sign of Lord Gort. Stephenson offered no explanation, nor did Irving ask. They simply went back to their rescue work, the Commodore still hatless and soaked to the skin. Along with his words of cheer for the troops, he had plenty to say to Irving himself. Sometimes the lieutenant was a “good fellow”; other times, “a bloody fool.” Irving didn’t mind. He’d do anything for a senior officer like this.
Off Bray-Dunes to the west, the Constant Nymph was hard at work too. At first Basil Smith, her accountant-skipper, could find only French troops. These he ferried out to the skoot Jutland, which was serving as a “mother ship.” Then a British army officer swam out to say there was a whole division of the BEF waiting a little farther west. Smith shifted his boat slightly and began picking them up.
It was never easy. On top of all the other problems, the Germans were now within artillery range, and began shelling the beach. East of La Panne an enemy observation balloon rode unmolested in the sky directing the fire. Smith was one of the few who didn’t seem disturbed. As he later explained, he was deaf and had a lot to do.
Off Malo-les-Bains the Ryegate II was having less success. Coming over from Ramsgate, her engines broke down; then it turned out she drew too much water to get close to the beach; finally she fouled her propeller on some piece of wreckage. Disgusted, her skipper Sub-Lieutenant D. L. Satterfield tied up to the skoot Horst and assigned his crew to a couple of ship’s boats.
Bob Hilton and Ted Shaw, the pair who had brought Ryegate II down the Thames, manned the Horst’s own lifeboat. As they pulled toward the shore, they could hear the skoot’s radio blaring away. It was incongruously tuned into the BBC’s “Children’s Hour.”
Coming through the surf, Hilton and Shaw were immediately mobbed and capsized. Gradually they learned the art of successful ferry-work. Basically, it consisted of getting close enough to pick up men, but not so close as to be swamped. For seventeen straight hours they rowed, side by side, carrying troops to the Horst.
Hour after hour the little ships worked the beaches, returning to Ramsgate only when they could find no more fuel, or when the crews were too tired to carry on. Then they discovered that the trip home could be perilous too. The motor launch Silver Queen had neither charts nor compass, but the crew felt they had a good idea where England was, and they headed that way.
Halfway over they found a soldier’s compass, and this increased their confidence. Finally they sighted land, and then a friendly-looking harbor. Approaching the breakwater, they were greeted by a blast of gunfire. Hopelessly twisted around, they had stumbled into Calais by mistake.
Six batteries of German guns pounded away as Silver Queen frantically reversed course. One round crashed into her stern; another landed on the starboard bow. The Belgian launch Yser, traveling in company, was hit too. Someone on the Yser fired a Very pistol in a desperate call for help. Amazingly, a friendly destroyer did catch the signal, hurried over, and provided covering fire while the two strays crept out of range. Somehow Silver Queen limped back to Ramsgate, discharged a load of troops, and then quietly sank at her pier.
For most of the little ships, the time of greatest danger was not going over or coming back; it was at the beach itself. Even when the troops behaved perfectly, the boats were in constant danger of capsizing. The sea was still smooth, but the wind was veering to the east and the surf began rising. The loading went more slowly than ever.
At La Panne, Lieutenant Harold J. Dibbens of the Military Police had been puzzling over the loading problem ever since reaching the beach the previous afternoon. Unlike most of the BEF, Dibbens was thoroughly at home on the sea. He grew up on the Isle of Wight—always around boats—and even served a hitch in the Navy before settling into his career as a detective at Scotland Yard. When war came, his professional experience won him a direct commission in the Military Police, and until “the balloon went up” he spent most of his time fighting pilferage and chasing black marketeers. The great retreat ended all that, and now here he was, with the remnants of 102nd Provost Company, waiting on the beach like so many others.
Watching the confusion at the water’s edge—some boats overturning, others drifting away untended—Dibbens decided that the biggest need at the moment was a pier or jetty stretching out to sea. Then the boats could come alongside and be loaded far more efficiently. But where to find the materials for such a jetty? His eye fell on the mass of abandoned trucks and lorries that littered the beach. Now all he needed was a little manpower.
“Want a sapper unit! Need a sapper unit!” Dibbens shouted, stalking through the dunes, where many of the troops were waiting. He was acting on his own initiative—had no authority at all—but it was a time when resourcefulness was what counted, and a colonel would listen to a corporal, if his idea was good enough.
Captain E. H. Sykes of the 250th Field Company, Royal Engineers, stepped forward. What was wanted? Dibbens couldn’t order the Captain to do anything, but he suggested a deal: his own men would provide a supply of lorries, if Sykes’s men would use them to build a jetty out into the sea. As a “sweetener” the sappers could be the first group to use the completed jetty.
Sykes agreed and detailed 2nd Lieutenant John S. W. Bennett’s section to do the construction. These men threw themselves into the job with amazing enthusiasm, considering their mood until now. They had just completed a long march to the coast, and the last night had been hell. They had lost many of their officers somewhere in the dark, and most of the company just melted away. Normally 250 strong, they were down to 30 or 40 by the time they reached La Panne.
Lieutenant Bennett was one of the few officers who stuck with them all the way. He did his best, but in peacetime he was on the Faculty of Fine Art at Cambridge, and what they wanted right now was a professional soldier. There was a lot of grumbling, until in exasperation he finally told them, “If you want me to lead you, I’ll lead you; if you want me to leave you, I’ll leave you.”
“Frankly, I don’t give a damn what you do,” someone called out from the ranks.
But the art professor was a better leader than they realized. The men were soon working flat-out. They lined up the lorries side by side, leading into the sea. They loaded them with sandbags and shot out the tires to keep them in place. They scavenged timber from a lumberyard for staging. They ripped decking from stranded ships for a plank walkway. They even added the touch of a rope railing.
When they began the tide was out, but now it came rolling in. Soon the men were up to their waists in the surf, lashing the lorries with cable. Sometimes they had to hold the jetty together by linking arms until a lashing could be made. Buffeted by the surf, they were soaked to the skin and covered with oil and grease.
The men of 102nd Provost Company had been good scavengers—sometimes too good. At one point an irate brigadier stormed up to Dibbens. Somebody had stolen four lorries he had earmarked for use as ambulances. Dibbens expressed appropriate dismay, said he couldn’t imagine who could have done a thing like that, and quietly replaced the missing lorries with four others stolen from somebody else.
The “provost jetty,” as it came to be called, was finished during the afternoon of May 30 and proved a huge success. All evening, and all the next day, a steady stream of men used it to board the growing fleet of small boats and launches engaged in ferry work. Ironically, Bennett’s men were not among them. Corps headquarters decided that they had done such a splendid job, they now must maintain it. Down the drain went the promise that they would be the first “customers.” Instead, they learned the hard way the old military maxim: never do a task too well, or you’ll be stuck with it forever.
Later there would be considerable speculation over who first thought of the jetty. Besides Lieutenant Dibbens, credit has been given to Commodore Stephenson, Commander Richardson, and General Alexander, among others. Curiously, all these claims may be valid. It seems to have been one of those ideas “whose time had come,” for examination of Luftwaffe photographs shows that no fewer than ten different lorry jetties were slapped together on May 30–31 between Malo-les-Bains and La Panne.
This in turn meant there were many builders besides the long-suffering 250th Field Company. One such unit was A Squadron of the 12th Lancers, who built a jetty about three miles west of La Panne. They were anything but experienced in this sort of work—they were an armored reconnaissance unit—but the perimeter was now fully manned, and all surplus fighting troops were being funneled to the beaches.
With the regulars moving in, there was a striking improvement in discipline. At Bray-Dunes Commanders Kerr and Richardson had their first easy night. As Kerr explained a little unkindly, they were at last dealing with “real officers.”
The long shadow of tradition was now very much in evidence. When Colonel Lionel H. M. Westropp ordered the 8th King’s Own Royal Regiment to head down the beach toward the mole, he first assembled his officers. He reminded them that they wore the badge of one of the oldest regiments of the line. “We therefore will represent the Regiment as we march down the beach this afternoon. We must not let it down, and we must set an example to the rabble on the beach.”
The battalion set off in perfect step, arms swinging in unison, rifles correctly slung, officers and NCO’s properly spaced. The “rabble on the beach” were suitably impressed.
Nineteen-year-old 2nd Lieutenant William Lawson of the Royal Artillery knew that appearances were important, but he felt he had a good excuse for looking a little scruffy. His artillery unit had been badly mauled on the Dyle, again at Arras, and had barely made it back to the perimeter—two rough weeks almost always on the run.
Now at last he was at La Panne, and it was the Navy’s turn to worry. Wandering down the beach, he suddenly spied a familiar face. It was his own father, Brigadier the Honorable E. F. Lawson, temporarily serving on General Adam’s staff. Young Lawson had no idea his father was even in northern France. He rushed up and saluted.
“What do you mean looking like that!” the old Brigadier thundered. “You’re bringing dishonor to the family! Get a haircut and shave at once!”
The son pointed out that at the moment he couldn’t possibly comply. Lawson brushed this aside, announcing that his own batman, a family servant in prewar days, would do the job. And so he did—a haircut and shave right on the sands of Dunkirk.
At the mole Commander Clouston had standards, too. Spotting one of the shore patrol with hair far longer than it could have grown in the last three or four days, he ordered the man to get it cut.
“All the barbers are shut, sir,” came the unruffled reply. Clouston still insisted. Finally, the sailor drew his bayonet and hacked off a lock. “What do you want me to do with it now,” he asked, “put it in a locket?”
Under the Commander’s firm leadership, the mole continued to operate all day, May 30. A steady stream of destroyers, minesweepers, Channel steamers, and trawlers pulled alongside, loaded up, and were off again. For one two-hour stretch, Clouston had the troops trotting out the walkway on the double. He embarked over 24,000 during the afternoon and evening.
Clouston’s efforts got a big assist from a major policy reversal engineered in Dover. Early afternoon Admiral Ramsay phoned Admiral Pound in London, insisting that the modern destroyers be put back on the job. They were absolutely essential if he was to get everybody off in the time he had left. After a heated exchange, Pound finally relented. At 3:30 p.m. orders went out, sending the destroyers back to France.
German batteries were now firing on Dunkirk harbor from Gravelines, but the mole lay just out of range. German planes made occasional hit-and-run attacks on the shipping, but Kesselring’s great fleets of bombers remained grounded. In sharp contrast to yesterday’s fear and confusion, today the mood was cheerfully relaxed. While the Malcolm loaded some Cameron Highlanders, her navigator Lieutenant Mellis played his bagpipes on the foc’sle. As one party of Royal Dragoon Guards moved along the walkway, a big Royal Marine stood ladling out hot stew. One Dragoon officer had no cup, but he did produce a long-stemmed cocktail glass picked up somewhere. The Marine filled it with gravy, solemnly inquiring, “Can I put a cherry in it, sir?”
But the greatest change was on the beaches. Discipline continued to improve; the columns of waiting men were quiet and orderly; the ever-growing stream of little ships methodically ferried the troops to the larger vessels lying offshore. As Captain Arthur Marshall’s twelve-man internal security unit patiently waited their turn, a colonel bustled over. Apparently worried that the unit had nothing to do, he ordered the men to “tidy up the beach a bit.”
At first Marshall felt the colonel must be joking; but no, he was dead serious. The smaller the mess they left, he explained, the less likely the Germans would think that the BEF had left precipitously. The result would decrease the enemy’s feeling of triumph, thereby helping the war effort.
Finally convinced that the colonel meant what he said, Marshall’s party glumly went to work—piling abandoned overcoats here, stowing empty crates there, neatly coiling stray lengths of rope. They kept at it as long as the colonel was in sight.
Overall, May 30 proved a very good day. Thanks to better discipline, the lorry jetties, and above all, the surge of little ships, the number of men lifted from the beaches rose from 13,752 on the 29th to 29,512 on the 30th. A total of 53,823 men were evacuated on this gray, misty day—much the highest daily figure so far.
Casualties were mercifully light. Thanks to the heavy overcast, the rescue fleet streamed across the Channel unchallenged by the Stukas and Heinkels. First loss of the day came when the French destroyer Bourrasque, bound for Dover, struck a floating mine. Nearby ships saved all but 150 of her troops.
Later, during the night of May 30–31, another French destroyer, Siroco, was torpedoed by S-boats lurking off Kwinte Buoy. For a while her skipper, Gui de Toulouse-Lautrec (cousin of the painter), thought he might save his ship, but she let off a huge cloud of steam which attracted the attention of a passing German patrol bomber. A bomb crashed down on the vessel’s stern, igniting her ready ammunition. A column of flame shot 200 feet into the sky, and Siroco was gone.
But most of the ships reached England safely, landing their ragged passengers in Dover and other southeast coast ports. Herded toward waiting trains, their ordeal was mirrored in their faces—unshaven, hollow-eyed, oil-streaked, infinitely weary. Many had lost their equipment; but some clutched odd, new possessions picked up along the way. A pair of wooden sabots dangled from Private Fred Louch’s gas mask … a French poilu carried a live goose … Bombardier Arthur May still had 6,000 of his 10,000 cigarettes … 2nd Lieutenant R. C. Taylor’s batman had somehow rescued the Lieutenant’s portable gramophone. Along with the men, the inevitable dogs trooped ashore—170 in Dover alone.
Everything about this motley crowd said “evacuation,” but until now there had been a news blackout. With the men pouring home, this was no longer possible; so on the evening of the 30th London finally issued a communiqué announcing the withdrawal. It was, the Times sniffed, “what so many people in this country have seen with their own eyes.”
Among the thousands of soldiers brought back, a select few had been carefully hand-picked. Whatever else happened, Lord Gort hoped to get enough good men home to form the nucleus of a new army that might some day return and even the score. General Pownall, Gort’s Chief of Staff, left on the evening of May 29th, as did the Commander-in-Chief’s personal aide, Lord Munster. Now, on the 30th, it was General Brooke’s turn. After a lunch of petit poussin and asparagus, miraculously conjured up by his aide, Captain Barney Charlesworth, he paid a final visit to his division commanders.
It was not easy. Brooke was known as a brilliant but rather cold man; this afternoon he was all emotion. Saying good-bye to General Montgomery, who would take over the Corps, he broke into tears. Monty patted him on the back, said all the right things. Finally they shook hands, and Brooke trudged slowly away.
One man absolutely determined not to leave was Lord Gort. The General’s decision became known in London on the morning of May 30, when Lord Munster arrived from the beaches. Winston Churchill was taking a bath at the time, but he could do business anywhere, and he summoned Munster for a tub-side chat. It was in this unlikely setting that Munster described Gort’s decision to stay to the end. He would never leave without specific orders.
Churchill was appalled at the thought. Why give Hitler the propaganda coup of capturing and displaying the British Commander-in-Chief? After discussing the matter with Eden, Dill, and Pownall, he wrote out in his own hand an order that left Gort no choice:
If we can still communicate we shall send you an order to return to England with such officers as you may choose at the moment when we deem your command so reduced that it can be handed over to a corps commander. You should now nominate this commander. If communications are broken, you are to hand over and return as specified when your effective fighting force does not exceed the equivalent of three divisions. This is in accordance with correct military procedure, and no personal discretion is left you in the matter. Whoever Gort appointed was to fight on, “but when in his judgment no further organised evacuation is possible and no further proportionate damage can be inflicted on the enemy, he is authorised in consultation with the senior French commander to capitulate formally to avoid useless slaughter.”
These instructions reached Gort during the afternoon, and he read them aloud at a final GHQ, conference that assembled in his beachfront villa at 6:00 p.m. Besides General Barker, commanding I Corps, and Monty, now in charge of II Corps, the meeting included Brooke, who had not yet pushed off. The final plans for the evacuation were discussed: I Corps would be the last to go, and its commander, Barker, would take over from Gort as directed by London.
As the meeting broke up, Montgomery lingered behind and asked to see Gort privately for a moment. Once they were alone, Monty unburdened himself. It would be a dreadful mistake, he said, to leave Barker in charge at the end. The man was no longer fit to command. The proper course was to send Barker home and appoint instead the 1st Division commander, Major-General Harold Alexander. He had just the calm, clear mind needed for this crisis. With luck, he might even get the rear guard back safely to England.
Gort listened but didn’t commit himself.
Down on the beach General Brooke prepared to go. Usually a rather snappy dresser, he had discarded his new Huntsman breeches and Norwegian boots for a pair of old slacks and shoes. More practical, in case he had to go swimming. But he didn’t have to swim at all. Instead he rode piggy-back out to a rowboat on the broad shoulders of the faithful Charlesworth. By 7:20 he was on his way to a waiting destroyer.
Around 8:00 a new visitor turned up at GHQ. Admiral Wake-Walker had come to see Lord Gort. With the small craft starting to pour in, he wanted to work out better coordination with the army. During the past few days, all too often the available ships weren’t where the troops were, and vice versa.
Gort greeted him warmly. The Commander-in-Chief and his staff were about to have dinner; Wake-Walker must join them. They moved into a longish dining room with French windows opening on the sea. The conversation was mostly small talk, and as he sat there sharing the General’s last bottle of champagne, Wake-Walker found it a remarkable experience. They were on the brink of the greatest military disaster in British history, yet here they sat, chatting idly and sipping champagne as though it were just another social evening at the seashore. Only one thing seemed out of the ordinary: his trousers were soaking wet from wading ashore.
Gort was charm itself, cheerful and unperturbed. He assured the Admiral that just by being here he would have a great stabilizing effect. Wake-Walker found it hard to believe that the mere presence of a desk-bound sailor like himself could prove so inspirational.
After a final dish of fruit salad, they got down to business. It soon became clear to Wake-Walker that Gort and his staff felt that their part of the job was done. They had gotten the BEF to the coast more or less intact; now it was up to the Royal Navy to get them home—and so far, the Navy hadn’t tried very hard.
Wake-Walker said any lack of success was not through want of trying. He stressed the difficulty of lifting large numbers of men off the beaches and urged that more troops be shifted down to Dunkirk, where they could use the mole. Brigadier Leese remained unconvinced. The Army had marched enough. The ships should go where the men were. It should be perfectly possible to take men off the beaches … except for the “ineptitude of the Navy.”
Wake-Walker bristled. He told Leese he had no business or justification to talk that way.
The discussion turned to getting the rear guard off. No matter how the others were evacuated, this was going to be a tight squeak. The Germans were pressing Nieuport and Furnes hard, and it didn’t seem possible to hold the eastern end of the perimeter beyond the night of May 31–June 1. It was hoped to get everybody else off during the day, then quickly pull the rear guard back to the beaches at midnight. Ramsay had promised to make a supreme effort and was sending a whole new armada of small craft to lie off the coast. With luck they would be where needed, and the rear guard would swarm aboard before the enemy could interfere.
It was a very demanding timetable. Apart from the rearguard, estimated at 5,000, there were tens of thousands of other troops to come off beforehand. Wake-Walker’s heart sank at the prospect. The thought of that last-minute rush for the boats in the dark, with the enemy in hot pursuit, was not a pleasant picture.
By 10:00 p.m. they had talked themselves out. Wake-Walker headed back for the destroyer Worcester, which he was using at the moment as a flagship. Going down to the beach, he found a large inflated rubber boat, and recruited eight soldiers to paddle him out. As Tennant and Leese watched from the shore, they started off, but the boat was too crowded and began to swamp. They all jumped out and waded back to the beach for a new try with fewer paddlers. “Another example of naval ineptitude,” Wake-Walker dryly told Leese.
Back at GHQ, the staff prepared a situation report for the War Office, which went off at 11:20 p.m. It reported that the six remaining divisions in the beachhead were being thinned out tonight, and the eastern end of the perimeter should be completely clear some time tomorrow night, May 31–June 1. Evacuation of the rest of the BEF was proceeding satisfactorily. The report didn’t say, but at the present pace, the lift should be complete by the end of June 1.
Thirty-nine minutes later, at 11:59, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, General Dill, phoned from London. Gort assured him that the night was quiet … that all was going well on the beaches. Dill brushed this aside and got to the real purpose of his call. The Prime Minister wanted him to get off as many French as possible—not just a “fair” number, but an equal number. Winston Churchill himself came on the phone and confirmed the order.
It was an astonishing development. Instead of winding up the evacuation with a last-minute lift of a small rear guard on June 1, the whole French Army was now involved. Nobody—absolutely nobody—knew how many that meant, but it was clear that all the careful calculations and timetables worked out during the day were now meaningless.