“LET’S HELP THE FROGGIES, too,” Bob Hilton suggested to Ted Shaw as they began their seventeen-hour stint, rowing troops from the beach to the ships lying off Malo-les-Bains. Shaw agreed, and from then on, they never worried whether a soldier was French or English. Both were on the same side. It seemed simple enough.
Higher up, it wasn’t that easy. When the evacuation began, the Admiralty simply assumed that British troops would be taken off in British ships, French troops in French ships. That was the way everything else had been done. Each of the Allies had conducted its own retreat to the coast, then manned its own part of the perimeter. In the same spirit the British had made their own decision to evacuate. Reynaud had been informed, and now it was up to the French to do the same.
As for the French, at this point they weren’t even thinking evacuation. On May 19, the day Weygand took over, Admiral Darlan told Supreme Headquarters that such a step could lead only to “disaster.” Darlan preferred to hold on to the beachhead, turn it into a continuing threat to the German flank. It was with this thought in mind that Captain Auphan began rounding up hundreds of French trawlers. They were to supply the beachhead, not evacuate it. In Dunkirk Admiral Abrial faithfully reflected the same point of view.
The French finally faced reality on May 27, when Auphan, Admiral Leclerc, and Admiral Odend’hal met with Ramsay at Dover Castle. They had come to discuss supplying Dunkirk, only to discover that the British were already leaving. Now the French would have to catch up. Auphan’s trawlers could be used, but they weren’t remotely enough. Few French warships were available; most were stationed in the Mediterranean by arrangement with the Royal Navy.
An agreement was hastily hammered out between the French officers and Admiral Ramsay. Paragraph 5 declared that “all naval means for evacuation shall be shared between Dover and Dunkerque.” This was admittedly vague, but to the French it seemed to promise at least some access to British shipping.
They soon learned what “sharing” could mean. When Belgium surrendered on May 28, General Champon, head of the French mission to King Leopold, made his way to La Panne. With him came the mission staff, numbering 100 to 150 men. They were a hand-picked lot, and the Allied area commander General Georges ordered “immediate evacuation.” Champon asked Lord Gort for space on some British ship.
Gort fired off a telegram to the War Office asking confirmation from Brigadier Swayne, British liaison officer at French Supreme Headquarters. “Swayne should point out,” Gort added helpfully, “every Frenchman embarked is a loss of one Englishman.” Why this argument would be persuasive at French headquarters, Gort didn’t say. But he did offer a final suggestion: “Why not send a French destroyer, using own boats?”
The next day—Wednesday, the 29th—found Champon and his staff still stranded at La Panne. General Georges again urged Gort to act, and Brigadier Swayne followed up with a telephone call to General Pownall, Gort’s Chief of Staff. Pownall reported that orders had been issued covering Champon and “some of his officers,” then asked rather pointedly if this mission was meant to have top priority, “thus displacing an equal number of British troops?”
No, said Swayne, he was certain that wasn’t what Georges meant. The General just wanted to make sure that the Champon mission had equal status with the British.
The problem dragged on. Thirty-six more hours would pass before Champon finally got off at 8:00 p.m., May 30.
If it was that hard to make room for 100 hand-picked men, the prospects weren’t bright for the thousands of ordinary poilus now pouring into the perimeter. From the south came remnants of the French First Army … from the east, the badly mauled 60th Division … from the west, the 68th Division retiring from Gravelines—all converging on the beaches at once. They were in for a long wait: on May 29 over 47,000 men were evacuated, but only 655 were French.
Winston Churchill understood both the arithmetic and the political ramifications. On the 29th he addressed a memo to Anthony Eden and to Generals Dill and Ismay:
It is essential that the French should share in such evacuations from Dunkirk as may be possible. Nor must they be dependent only upon their own shipping resources. Arrangements must be concerted at once … so that no reproaches, or as few as possible, may arise.
Meanwhile General Georges appealed again to Lord Gort. This time his message concerned not just the Champon mission, but all the troops now gathering on the beaches. As relayed over the telephone by the accommodating Brigadier Swayne, Georges urged that the evacuation be carried out by the British and the French “with mutual co-operation and support.”
“I am quite prepared to cooperate,” Gort wired General Dill in London, “but support—by which is implied resources—is all on our side. Strongly urge that the French should take their full share in providing naval facilities.”
This of course ignored the fact that the French had very little in the way of “naval facilities,” with their fleet down in the Mediterranean. Pointing out that he had already evacuated “small parties of French,” Gort once again reminded London: “Every Frenchman embarked is at the cost of one Englishman.” His instructions said that the safety of the BEF came first. In light of that, he asked, what was the government’s policy toward the French?
General Dill wrestled with this for some hours, finally wired Gort a little lamely that the safety of the BEF still came first, but he should try to evacuate “a proportion” of French troops.
In London that night, Churchill remained uneasy. Despite his directive, there was little evidence that the French were sharing in the evacuation. At 11:45 p.m. he shot off another telegram, this time for Reynaud, Weygand, and Georges:
We wish French troops to share in evacuation to fullest possible extent, and Admiralty have been instructed to aid French Marine as required. We do not know how many will be forced to capitulate, but we must share this loss together as best we can, and, above all, bear it without reproaches arising from inevitable confusion, stresses, and strains.
At this moment Admiral Wake-Walker, crossing the Channel to take charge offshore, had a very different view of Admiralty policy. Before leaving, he had been briefed by Admiral Pound, the First Sea Lord. Pound had told him that the French were not thought to be pulling their weight; he was to “refuse them embarkation, if British troops were ready to embark.”
Next morning, May 30, Churchill summoned the three Service Ministers and the Chiefs of Staff to a meeting in the Admiralty War Room. An important guest was General Pownall, just back from La Panne. Once again the Prime Minister stressed the importance of getting off more French troops.
Pownall spoke up, defending the present figures. As usual, he trotted out the familiar argument: so long as the French did not produce ships of their own, “every Frenchman embarked meant one more Englishman lost.”
Pownall felt that he had forced Churchill to face an “inconvenient truth,” but the Prime Minister had been hearing this argument for two days now, and if he showed displeasure, it more likely stemmed from exasperation.
More phone talks with Gort followed during the day. At 4:20 p.m. General Dill confirmed that Gort’s first consideration was the safety of the BEF, but he must also do his best to send off a “fair proportion” of the French. At 8:10 p.m. the War Office again notified Brigadier Swayne that French troops were to share in the evacuation “to fullest possible extent.”
Then came Admiral Ramsay’s figures for the total number rescued during the day: British 45,207; French 8,616.
Clearly phrases such as “fair share,” “fullest possible extent,” and “fair proportion” could mean what anybody wanted them to mean—thousands of troops, or just one soldier. If the French were really to share the British ships, the orders would have to be far more precise. It was almost midnight, May 30, when Churchill finally faced the matter squarely.
“British and French troops must now evacuate in approximately equal numbers,” General Dill stressed in his telephone call to Gort, relaying the Prime Minister’s new orders. Lest there be any misunderstanding, Dill repeated the instructions three different times in the conversation. When Churchill himself came on the wire, the Prime Minister emphasized that the whole future of the alliance was at stake.
He was right. Paris was full of rumors and recriminations these days, mostly to the effect that the British were running home, leaving the French holding the bag. Hoping to clear up any misunderstandings, Churchill flew to Paris the following morning, May 31, for a meeting of the Allied Supreme War Council. Accompanied by General Dill and a few top aides, he was met at the airport by his personal representative to Reynaud, Major-General Sir Edward Spears, who had been bearing the brunt of the French complaints these past few days.
At 2:00 p.m. the British and French leaders met at the Ministry of War on the rue Saint-Dominique. Joining the group for the first time was Marshal Pétain, an ancient gloomy figure in civilian clothes. General Weygand was there too, wearing a huge pair of riding boots that made him look, General Spears felt, like Puss in Boots. The French sat on one side of a large baize-covered table; the British on the other. Through the tall, open windows lay a garden basking in the sunshine. It was another of those glorious spring days—so many this year—that seemed to mock these grim statesmen and generals trying to ward off disaster.
Churchill opened the meeting on a cheerful note. The evacuation, he reported, was going far better than anyone had dared hope. As of noon this day, 165,000 men had been lifted off.
“But how many French?” Weygand asked sharply. The Prime Minister dodged a direct answer for the moment: “We are companions in misfortune. There is nothing to be gained from recrimination over our common miseries.”
But the question wouldn’t go away. After a brief survey of the Norwegian campaign, the discussion came back to Dunkirk, and it turned out that of the 165,000 evacuated, only 15,000 were French. Churchill did his best to explain this awkward disparity: many of the British were rear area troops already stationed near Dunkirk … the French had farther to come … if just the fighting divisions were counted, the disparity wasn’t so bad.
Reynaud broke in. Whatever the reasons, the hard facts remained: of 220,000 British, 150,000 had been rescued: of 200,000 French, the number saved was only 15,000. He couldn’t face public opinion at home with figures like these. Something had to be done to evacuate more French.
Churchill agreed and explained the new “equal numbers” directive. He also stressed that three British divisions still at Dunkirk would stand by the French until the evacuation was complete.
Darlan then drafted a telegram to Admiral Abrial in Bastion 32, describing the decisions taken by the Council. It mentioned that when the perimeter closed down, the British forces would embark first.
Churchill leapt to this feet. “Non!” he cried. “Partage—bras-dessus, bras-dessous!” His atrocious French accent was a legend, but this time there was no mistaking him. With dramatic gestures he vividly acted out an arm-in-arm departure.
Nor did he stop there. Emotionally carried away, he announced that the remaining British troops would form the rear guard. “So few French have got out so far,” he declared, “I will not accept further sacrifices by the French.”
This was a lot more than arm-in-arm, and to General Spears it was going too far. After more discussion, the final draft simply said that the British troops would act as rear guard “as long as possible.” It also said that Abrial would be in overall command. It was just as well that Lord Gort did not know of the Prime Minister’s outburst. It was difficult enough to swallow the policy of “equal numbers.” At least it wasn’t retroactive. London agreed that the rule only applied from now on. Still, it could be costly. The War Office had instructed him to hang on longer, so that as many French as possible could be evacuated. But how long? This morning, May 31, everything pointed to a heavy German attack on Furnes. If he hung on too long just to save more Frenchmen, he might lose the whole Guard’s Brigade.
He was still mulling over this problem when General Alexander—the calm, capable commander of the 1st Division—visited GHQ at 8:30 a.m. Gort glumly told him to thin out his division, since it looked as if he would have to surrender most of his men alongside the French. At least that was what the War Office’s instructions seemed to mean.
At 9:00 a.m. Anthony Eden came on the phone with an interpretation of these orders that must have greatly eased Gort’s mind. As Eden explained to Brigadier Leese:
The instructions sent the previous night to hold on so as to enable the maximum number of Allied troops to be evacuated must be interpreted to mean that [Gort] should only do so as long as he was satisfied that he could continue to hold his position with the forces at his disposal, but he should not prejudice the safety of the remainder of his force by trying to hold his position beyond that time.
In other words, hanging on for the sake of evacuating an equal number of Frenchmen was desirable—as long as it was safe.
Enlightened, Gort now drove down to Dunkirk to meet with Admiral Abrial at 10:00 a.m. The Admiral was, as usual, in Bastion 32. Besides his staff of naval officers, he had with him General Fagalde, commander of the French military forces in the perimeter, and General de la Laurencie, who had just arrived with the only French troops to escape from the German trap at Lille.
Gort’s sessions with Abrial were often strained. Tucked away in Bastion 32, the man never seemed to know what was going on. Today, all was cordial. Gort relayed the “equal numbers” policy, stated that he had already promised to evacuate 5,000 of de la Laurencie’s men. Abrial said that Weygand preferred to use the space for some mechanized cavalry units, and de la Laurencie made no objection. Gort also offered the French equal access to the eastern mole. If it seemed a little odd for the British to be offering the French free use of a French facility in a French port, Abrial was tactful enough to keep silent.
Gort and Fagalde now exchanged full information on each other’s positions along the perimeter—apparently the first time this had been done—and Gort announced that he had been ordered home. At this point General Blanchard turned up. Nominally the Army Group commander, these days he was virtually unemployed. Gort invited him and General de la Laurencie to accompany his own party to England. Both politely declined. As de la Laurencie put it: “My flag will remain planted on the Dunes, until the last of my men have embarked.”
There were farewell toasts. Everyone promised to meet in France soon again.
Returning to La Panne, Gort summoned General Alexander to the seaside villa that served as GHQ. The Commander-in-Chief had reached a major decision: Alexander, not Barker, would take over after Gort’s own departure for England. He never explained the switch. Perhaps he was impressed by Montgomery’s fervent protest the previous evening, but the stolid Gort was not known to be easily influenced by the mercurial Monty.
In any case the orders were ready and waiting when Alexander arrived around 12:30 p.m. Technically, he would relieve Barker as Commanding Officer of I Corps, consisting of three rather depleted divisions. His orders were to “assist our French Allies in the defence of Dunkirk.”
He would be serving under Abrial, as decided in Paris, but with an important escape clause added: “Should any order which he may issue to you be likely, in your opinion, to imperil the safety of your command, you should make an immediate appeal to His Majesty’s Government.”
That was all, as Gort originally dictated the orders to Colonel Bridgeman, still acting as the General’s Operations Officer. Yet there was an important omission. Gort had left out the War Office’s instruction authorizing surrender “to avoid useless slaughter.” Bridgeman felt it should be included, but didn’t dare say so to his chief. Finally, he got a copy of London’s original telegram, pointed to the passage in question, and asked whether he wanted it included, too. Gort said yes, and it was done. To the end they managed to avoid actually saying the dreaded word, “surrender.”
Technically, Gort’s orders would not take effect until 6:00 p.m., when GHQ was scheduled to close down. As a practical matter, they became operational almost right away. After a quick lunch, Alexander drove back to his headquarters and turned his division over to one of his brigadiers. Then he drove down to Dunkirk, accompanied by his Chief of Staff Colonel William Morgan and the ubiquitous Captain Tennant. At 2:00 p.m. they entered the candle-lit gloom of Bastion 32 for Alexander’s first meeting with Admiral Abrial and General Fagalde.
It did not go well. Abrial planned to hold a reduced beachhead, running as far east as the Belgian border, with French troops on the right and a mixed French-British force under Alexander on the left. This force would act as a rear guard, holding the beachhead indefinitely while the rest of the Allied troops embarked. Then, presumably, the rear guard itself would scurry to safety at the last minute.
Alexander felt it would never work. Protracted resistance was impossible. The troops were in no condition to fight indefinitely. The proposed perimeter was too near the harbor and the beaches. Enemy artillery fire at short range would soon stop the evacuation completely. Instead, he proposed to wind up the evacuation as fast as possible, with the last troops pulling back to the beach the following night, June 1–2.
Abrial was unimpressed. If the British insisted on leaving anyhow, he added, “I am afraid the port will be closed.”
Alexander decided it was time to invoke the escape clause in his orders. He announced that he would have to refer the matter to London. Then he drove back to La Panne, relieved to find that the telephone line was still open.
At 7:15 p.m. he managed to get through to Anthony Eden and quickly explained the problem. An hour later Eden called back with new and welcome instructions from the Cabinet:
You should withdraw your force as rapidly as possible on a 50-50 basis with the French Army, aiming at completion by night of 1st/2nd June. You should inform the French of this definite instruction.
The phrase “on a 50-50 basis with the French Army,” Eden explained, did not require Alexander to make up for any past discrepancies; it simply meant that equal numbers of French and British troops must be withdrawn from now on. Supported by the Cabinet, Alexander hurried back to Bastion 32.
Meanwhile, Abrial, too, had gone to his superiors. Wiring Weygand, he protested that Alexander—who had been placed under him—was refusing to follow instructions to fight on. Instead, the British commander planned to embark on the night of June 1–2, whatever happened, “thus abandoning the defence of Dunkirk.”
Weygand could do little but buck the complaint to London. At 9:00 p.m. he radioed Dill, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, reminding him of the decisions reached by the Supreme War Council that very afternoon. Paragraph 4 had specifically put Abrial in charge.
The Admiral was still waiting for some word from Weygand, when Alexander arrived back in Bastion 32 with the British Cabinet’s instructions. He announced that he would hold his sector of the perimeter until 11:59 pm. June 1—tomorrow night—then would withdraw to the beaches under cover of darkness. The French were welcome to come along and share the British shipping, but whatever they did, he was pulling out.
Faced with no alternative, Abrial agreed.
It was now after 11:00 p.m. Alexander had shifted his headquarters to the outskirts of Dunkirk, but the roads were strange and full of craters. It seemed safer to stay in Bastion 32 overnight, so he and Colonel Morgan curled up on the concrete floor—as hard and as cold as relations were getting to be between the two great Allies.
Completely oblivious to all this high-level wrangling, an old soldier sat in his quarters at La Panne on the afternoon of May 31, snipping medal and campaign ribbons from a uniform blouse. General Gort was getting ready to go home. The evacuation was Alexander’s headache now, and at the moment Gort’s main concern was to see that no German soldier made a souvenir out of anything he had to leave behind.
He was to go at 6:00 p.m. Two separate plans had been made for his embarkation, and it was typical of these trying days that neither group of planners knew of the other’s existence. Under one of these plans—developed by the Navy liaison at GHQ—four motor torpedo boats would dash over from Dover to pluck Gort and his staff off the beach. The orders were very vague. The commander of the little flotilla only knew that he was to pick up “a party.” When he arrived, he checked with Admiral Wake-Walker, in charge offshore, for further directions.
Wake-Walker knew even less. No one had briefed him, and it never occurred to him that these motor torpedo boats had been sent to pick up the Commander-in-Chief. He thought that was his responsibility. He assigned the MTB’s to courier chores and continued his own planning. Gort would leave his villa shortly after 6:00, going to a designated spot on the beach two miles west of La Panne. Here he and his staff would be met by a launch and taken out to the destroyer Keith lying offshore. The Keith would then run the party back to Dover. Commodore Stephenson would be in direct charge, with Wake-Walker himself supervising.
As planned, Gort’s party left his villa at 6:00 p.m., but that was as far as they followed the script. For some reason the two staff cars carrying the group did not go to the designated rendezvous, but to a spot much closer to La Panne. This meant no small boats were waiting, and the departure from the beach became a very ragged affair. Ultimately Gort’s staff wound up on the Keith, he himself on the minesweeper Hebe, and his batman, driver, and luggage all on the motor yacht Thele.
Safely aboard the Hebe, Gort went to the bridge to greet the skipper, Lieutenant-Commander J. S. Wemple. There was time for only the briefest exchange of niceties; then the sea, the sky, the ships all seemed to erupt with explosions. The weather had cleared, and the Luftwaffe was back—ten separate raids this evening. As the Hebe’s crew rushed to their gun stations, Gort learned how useless his role had at last become. He settled quietly in a corner of the bridge, raised his binoculars, and gazed absently around.
“Won’t you go below and take cover, sir?” suggested Captain Eric Bush, one of Ramsay’s coordinators working with Tennant and Wake-Walker.
“No, thank you, I’m quite happy where I am,” the General replied politely. Finally the raid tapered off, and Gort—unruffled as ever—went below for a bite to eat,
The Hebe still did not head for England with her distinguished passenger. By now hundreds of ordinary soldiers were swarming aboard, delivered from the beaches by the ever-growing swarm of little ships. Wake-Walker decided to wait until she had a full load before sending her back.
Dover and London grew restless, then frantic. Seven hours had passed since the Admiralty had dispatched the four MTB’s to pick up Gort, and still there was no sign of him. Those boats could do 40 knots; they should have been back long ago. Worse, the latest radio traffic indicated that the MTB’s hadn’t even been used to get the General. What had happened to him anyhow?
“Report immediately why MTB’s sent for Commander-in-Chief were diverted to other duties,” Admiral Phillips, the Vice-Chief of Naval Staff, radioed Wake-Walker at 11:36 p.m. “Take immediate action to embark Commander-in-Chief and report steps taken.”
On the Keith, Wake-Walker sent one of the MTB’s to the Hebe to get Gort, but he was no longer there. He had taken a launch, hoping to reach the Keith. A half-hour passed, and still no sign of the launch.
Now it was Wake-Walker’s turn to agonize. The night was black; no lights showing. Had the launch missed the Keith? Was Gort out there somewhere drifting in the dark? Wake-Walker had visions of the disgrace that would be his if he botched this job and lost the Commander-in-Chief of the BEF.
It was after midnight, the opening minutes of June 1, when the launch finally loomed out of the dark. Gort climbed aboard the Keith, reunited at last with his staff.
But only briefly. He and Brigadier Leese quickly transferred to the speedboat MA/SB 6 and headed For Dover. At 6:20 a.m. they landed at the Admiralty Pier, where Gort gulped a cup of tea and caught the next train to London.
Anthony Eden and members of the War Cabinet were on hand to greet him, but the little group passed almost unnoticed amid the crowds swirling around Victoria Station. By now bedraggled soldiers were tumbling off every train from the south coast into the waiting arms of friends and relatives. Gort seemed to be just one more of them. He was already a fading figure of the past.
Far more important than the escape of a discredited chieftain was the rescue on May 31 of 53,140 more men who could help form the nucleus of a new British Army.
Thousands of them used the lorry jetties that had been improvised at Bray-Dunes and La Panne. Despite the ingenuity of the builders, these were rickety affairs that heaved alarmingly in the surf and changing tides. Still, a steady stream of soldiers clambered out along the duck boards, dropping into the row-boats and launches that came alongside.
“Well, my lucky lad, can you row?” a sailor greeted Private Percy Yorke of the 145th Field Ambulance, as he tumbled into a boat. “No? Well, now’s your time to bloody well learn.” Yorke learned by doing, and managed to reach the excursion steamer Princess Elizabeth.
Major E. R. Nanney Wynn, 3rd Division Signals, reached the end of a jetty and peered down at a waiting motor whaler. Manning it, improbably, was a ship’s steward immaculate in his short white jacket. It was almost like going Cunard.
Other troops made use of the growing mountain of debris that littered the beaches. Private C. N. Bennett of the 5th Northamptonshires came across a discarded army boat made of canvas. It was designed to carry six men across a river; now ten men jumped into it and headed across the sea. Using their rifles as paddles, they hoped to get to England. It was just as well that a motor launch soon spotted them and look them to the destroyer Ivanhoe.
Brigadier John G. Smyth, commanding the 127th Infantry Brigade, rallied nineteen men around a big ship’s lifeboat stranded well up on the beach. A heavy, bulky thing, it required all their strength to shove it down to the water. Even then their troubles weren’t over: it was a sixteen-oared boat, and not one of Smyth’s recruits could row.
They shoved on anyhow, with Smyth at the tiller and the men at the oars. After a few strokes the “crew” began falling over backwards; the oars were tangled up; and the boat was turning in crazy circles. As he later recalled, “We must have looked like an intoxicated centipede.”
There couldn’t have been a worse time to give a lesson in basic rowing. The Luftwaffe chose this moment to stage one of its raids, and the Brigadier’s instructions were punctuated by gunfire, exploding bombs, and geysers of water. The men tried again, this time with Smyth shouting out the stroke, “One-two, in-out!” The crew caught on, and the boat moved steadily toward a waiting destroyer. They even made a real race out of it, beating an overloaded motor launch carrying their division commander.
Farther along the beach, Private Bill Stratton of the RASC helped haul an abandoned lifeboat to the water’s edge, then watched a stampede of men jump in and take it over. Determined not to let all his hard work go for nothing, Stratton made a flying leap and landed on top of the crowd. Predictably, the boat soon swamped. Stratton was a good swimmer, but his greatcoat dragged him down. He was about to go under when a navy launch appeared. Someone pulled him over the side and flung him down on the bottom, “like a fish.”
Inevitably there were confrontations. Near Malo-les-Bains a column of wading men retrieved two small rowboats lying offshore. Suddenly a voice called, “Halt, or I fire!” It was a Scots colonel heading up an adjoining column, and he clearly felt his men had first call on the boats. Finally, a compromise was worked out allowing both columns to use them.
Near La Panne, Yeoman Eric Goodbody set out in a whaler with eight naval signalmen from GHQ. As they shoved off, an officer on shore ordered him to bring back four soldiers who had also piled in. Goodbody refused—he was in charge of the whaler and everybody in her, he declared. The officer pulled a gun … Goodbody drew his … and for a moment the two stood face to face, aiming their pistols at each other. At this point the four soldiers quietly volunteered to go back, and another crisis was passed.
At Bray-Dunes Sapper Joe Coles was aroused by a friend who had found a large rowboat swamped and stranded on the beach. They bailed it out, then were hurled aside by a mob of soldiers piling in. About to swamp again, it was emptied by a Military Policeman at pistol point.
Order restored, Coles and his friend tried again. This time they shoved off safely and took a load of troops to a skoot, then headed back for another load. Dozens of men were swimming out to meet them, when they were hailed by an officer floating nearby on a raft. Brandishing his revolver, the officer ordered them to take him first. Coles felt the swimmers should have priority—the raft was in no trouble—but that pistol was very persuasive. The officer had his way.
One reason for frayed nerves was the state of the sea. For the first time since the evacuation began, the wind was blowing onshore, building up a nasty surf throughout the morning of May 31. The loading went more slowly than ever, and at Bray-Dunes Commander Richardson finally decided that nothing more could be done. He ordered the troops on the beach to head for Dunkirk: then he, Commander Kerr, and the naval shore party salvaged a stranded whaler, rounded up some oars, and began pulling for England.
They didn’t realize how tired they were. Every stroke hurt. Soon they were barely moving, and they probably would have broached to and swamped; but the Margate lifeboat spotted them in time. It hurried over and picked them up.
At 10:35 a.m. Admiral Wake-Walker radioed the situation to Ramsay at Dover.
Majority of pulling boats are broached to and have no crews: Conditions on beach very bad owing to freshening onshore wind. Only small numbers are being embarked even in daylight. Consider only hope of embarking any number is at Dunkirk. …
By “Dunkirk” he of course meant the eastern mole. For Tennant and his aides, the mole was more and more the answer to everything. They were constantly trying to concentrate the boat traffic in that direction. Ramsay knew its importance too, but he also guessed that there were still thousands to be evacuated, and everything had to be used—including the beaches, even though the going was slow.
At 11:05 a.m. Wake-Walker tried again. “Dunkirk our only real hope,” he telegraphed Ramsay. “Can guns shelling pier from westward be bombed and silenced?”
This was a new problem. Until May 31, the German guns had been a nuisance, but that was all. Their aim was haphazard; the shells usually fell short. Now, batteries had been planted this side of Gravelines; and the result was soon apparent.
At 6:17 a.m. the minesweeper Glen Gower lay alongside the mole, ready to receive her first troops of the day. As the skipper Commander M.A.O. Biddneph waited on the bridge, he suddenly heard a whistling noise … then a bang, quickly followed by several more bangs. A mass of black fragments leapt up on the foredeck, just where the gunnery officer, Sub-Lieutenant Williams, was standing. At first Biddneph thought it must be a stick of bombs, but there wasn’t a plane in the sky. Then he realized it was a salvo of shells, one of them piercing the deck exactly between Williams’s feet. Miraculously, the gunnery officer wasn’t touched, but twelve men were killed or wounded in the explosion below.
The mole itself continued to lead a charmed life. Since its discovery by the Luftwaffe on May 29 it had been bombed by Stukas, pounded by artillery, and battered by rescue ships coming alongside too heavily. Rammed by the minesweeper King Orry, the seaward tip was now cut off completely. Yet for most of its length, it remained usable. Here and there gaps appeared, but they were bridged with boards, doors, and ships’ gangplanks. The loading went on.
Still, the dash to the waiting vessels was always unnerving. None felt it more than Private Alfred Baldwin of the Royal Artillery. He was carrying on his shoulders his friend Private Paddy Boydd, who had smashed a foot. Stumbling along the walkway, Baldwin came to a gaping hole, bridged by a single plank. Two sailors standing by said, “Take a run at it, mate,” adding, “don’t look down.” Baldwin followed their advice, except that he did look down. Dark water swirled around the piles twenty feet below. Somehow he kept his balance, and another pair of sailors grabbed him at the far end, cheering him on: “Well done, keep going!”
He struggled on, panting and stumbling, until he ran into two more sailors, who helped him maneuver Boydd up the gangplank to a waiting ship. She turned out to be the Channel packet Maid of Orleans, the very same vessel that had brought him to France at the start of the war.
Baldwin made his dash when the tide was high. At low tide the mole could be even more trying. Corporal Reginald Lockerby reached the destroyer Venomous, only to find there was a fifteen-foot drop to the ship’s deck. Several telegraph poles leaned against the side of the mole, and the troops were expected to slide down them to get aboard. Trouble was, neither ship nor poles had been made fast. Both were unpredictably swaying and heaving up and down. One slip meant falling into the sea and being crushed between boat and dock.
“I can’t do it, Ern,” Lockerby gasped to his friend Private Ernest Heming.
“Get down there, you silly sod, or I’ll throw you down!” shouted Heming. “I’ll hold the top of the pole for you.”
Somehow Lockerby mustered the strength and courage. He slid down the pole, then held it from the bottom as Heming followed.
No French troops were yet using the mole, but starting May 31, the new policy of equal numbers was very much in evidence along the beaches. When the motor yacht Marsayru arrived from Sheerness about 4:00 p.m., her first assignment was to help lift a large number of French waiting at Malo-les-Bains. The yacht’s civilian skipper G. D. Olivier sent in his whaler, but it was stormed by about 50 poilus, and immediately capsized. He edged farther east, “where the French troops appeared to be a little calmer,” and tried again. This time no problem, and over the next 48 hours he lifted more than 400 French soldiers.
Nearby a small flotilla of Royal Navy minesweeping craft was doing its bit. The Three Kings picked up 200 Frenchmen … the Jackeve, 60 … the Rig, another 60. The same sort of thing was happening at Bray-Dunes and La Panne.
How many French troops remained to be evacuated under this policy of equal numbers? Neither Paris nor Admiral Abrial in Bastion 32 seemed to have any idea. To the weary organizers of the rescue fleet in London and Dover, it didn’t make much difference. They were already sending everything that could float. …
In all her working years the 78-foot Massey Shaw had never been to sea. She was a Thames fire boat—or “fire float,” as Londoners preferred to say—and until now her longest voyage had been down the river to fight a blaze at Ridham. She had no compass, and her crew were professional firemen, not sailors.
But the Massey Shaw drew only 3.9 feet, and to the Admiralty this was irresistible. There was also a vague notion that she might come in handy fighting the fires sweeping Dunkirk harbor, an idea that conveys less about her effectiveness than it does about the innocence still prevailing in some quarters at the Admiralty.
A call for volunteers went out on the afternoon of May 30. Thirteen men were picked, with Sub-Officer A. J. May in charge, and in two hours the Massey Shaw was on her way. There had barely been time to buy a small marine compass. On the trip down the river, the crew busied themselves boarding up the cabin windows and dabbing gray paint on the various brass fittings and hose nozzles. The situation must be serious indeed: the Massey Shaw’s bright work had always been sacred.
At Ramsgate she picked up water and a young Royal Navy sub-lieutenant with a chart. Then across the Channel with the additional help of a pocket tide table that somebody found. Arriving off Bray-Dunes late in the afternoon of May 31, the crew studied the beach with fascination. At first glance it looked like any bank holiday weekend—swarms of people moving about or sitting in little knots on the sand. But there was one big difference: instead of the bright colors of summer, everybody was dressed in khaki. And what first appeared to be “breakwaters” running down into the surf turned out to be columns of men, also dressed in khaki.
The Massey Shaw sent in a rowboat toward one of the columns. It was promptly swamped and sunk by the troops piling in. Then a stranded RAF speedboat was salvaged in the hope it might be used, but 50 men crowded aboard, putting it out of action too. Toward 11:00 p.m. still another boat was found. A line was now strung between the Massey Shaw and the beach, and the new boat was pulled back and forth along this line, rather like a sea-going trolley car. The boat carried only six men at a time, but back and forth it went, ferrying load after load.
Finally the Massey Shaw could hold no more. There were now 30 men packed in the cabin, which had seemed crowded with six the night before. Dozens more sprawled on the deck; there didn’t seem to be a square foot of empty space.
It was dark when the Massey Shaw finally weighed anchor and started back for Ramsgate. So far, she had led a charmed life. The Luftwaffe was constantly overhead, but not a plane had attacked. Now, as she got under weigh, her screws kicked up a phosphorescent wake that caught the attention of some sharp-eyed enemy pilot. He swooped down and dropped a single bomb. It was close, but a miss. The Massey Shaw continued safely on her way, bringing home another 65 men.
Like the Massey Shaw, the Tilbury Dredging Company’s steam hopper dredge Lady Southborough had never been to sea. Plucked from rust-streaked obscurity in Portsmouth harbor, she checked in at Ramsgate, then set out for Dunkirk with three other Tilbury hoppers early on the morning of May 31. Arriving at 12:30 p.m., Lady Southborough anchored off Malo-les-Bains, lowered her port lifeboat with three hands, and began lifting troops off the beach.
As the Lady Southborough hovered several hundred yards offshore, a German plane dropped a stick of four bombs. No hits, but they lifted the ship’s lifeboat clear out of the water and whacked it down again, springing every plank. Nobody was hurt, but the boat was finished. Seeing that it was ebb tide, skipper Anthony Poole now drove Lady Southborough head-first onto the beach, so that he could pick up the troops directly from the water. They swarmed out, and one Frenchman—who evidently had not heard of the new British policy of equal numbers—offered to pay acting Second Mate John Tarry to get aboard.
Nearby, another Tilbury hopper dredge, Foremost 101, lay at anchor. The usual signs of disorder were everywhere: boats swamped by the surf … others sinking under the weight of too many men … others drifting about without oars or oarsmen. Amid this chaos was a single note of serenity. A petty officer had found a small child’s canoe in some boating pond ashore. Now he was ferrying soldiers one by one out to the waiting ships. As he threaded his way through the debris, none of the swimmers ever bothered him. By common consent he seemed to have a laissez-passer to work in peace, without interference.
Going home in the dark was the hardest part. As Lady Southborough groped uncertainly through the night, a destroyer loomed up, flashing a signal. None of the dredge’s crew could read Morse; so there was no answer. The destroyer flashed again; still no answer. Finally one of the soldiers on board said he was a signalman: could he help? Some more flashes, and the soldier announced that the destroyer had now demanded their identity three times; if they didn’t answer at once, she would blow them out of the water. Watching the signalman flash back the ship’s name, Second Mate Tarry cursed the day she had been christened Lady Southborough. Those sixteen letters seemed to take forever. But at last the destroyer was satisfied, and Lady Southborough crawled on to Ramsgate.
Meanwhile the cascade of little ships continued in all its variety—the stylish yacht Quicksilver, which could make twenty knots … the cockle fleet from Leigh-on-Sea … the Chris Craft Bonnie Heather, with its polished mahogany hull … the Dutch eel boat Johanna, which came complete with three Dutch owners who couldn’t speak a word of English … to name just a few. Countless other boats, which Admiral Ramsay called “free lances,” were now heading out of south coast ports like Folkestone, Eastbourne, Newhaven, and Brighton. Most never bothered to check with Dover; no one would ever record their names.
The French and Belgian fishing vessels requisitioned by Captain Auphan were beginning to turn up too, adding an international flavor to the rescue effort. Names like Pierre et Marie, Reine des Flots, and Ingénieur Cardin joined Handy Billie, Girl Nancy, and at least nine Skylarks. The French mailboat Côte d’Argent began using the east mole like any British steamer.
Most of the French crews were from Brittany and as unfamiliar with these waters as the cockle boatmen from the Thames estuary, but there was the inevitable exception. Fernand Schneider, assistant engineer on the minesweeping trawler St. Cyr, came from Dunkirk itself. Now he had the agony of watching his hometown crumble into ruins, but at the same time the comfort of visiting his own house from time to time.
Knowing the area, Schneider also knew where food was to be had, and the St. Cyr’s skipper occasionally sent him on foraging expeditions to bolster the trawler’s meager rations. He was on one of these forays on May 28 when he decided to check his house on the rue de la Toute Verte. It was still standing, and better yet, his father Augustin Schneider was there. Augustin had come in from the family refuge in the country, also to see how the house was faring. They embraced with special fervor, for the occasion was more than a family reunion, more than a celebration that the house was intact—it was Fernand’s 21st birthday.
The old man went down in the cellar and brought up a bottle of Vouvray. Then for an hour the two forgot about the war while they joyfully killed the bottle. Parting at last, father and son would not see each other again for five years.
Fernand Schneider was the only sailor at Dunkirk who celebrated his birthday at home, but the rescue fleet was full of improbable characters. Lieutenant Lodo van Hamel was a dashing Dutch naval officer, always conspicuous because he flew the only Dutch flag in the whole armada. Lieutenant-Colonel Robin Hutchens was an old Grenadier Guardsman, mired in a dull liaison job at the Admiralty. An experienced weekend sailor, he headed for Dover on his day off; now he was in charge of the War Department launch Swallow. Captain R. P. Pim normally presided over Winston Churchill’s map room; today he wallowed across the Channel commanding a Dutch skoot. Samuel Palmer served on the Plymouth City Patrol, but he was an old navy “stripey,” and that was good enough. In charge of the seven-ton Naiad Errant, a cranky motor yacht that was always breaking down, he split up the cabin door and told the soldiers on board to start paddling.
Robert Harling was a typographical designer, but as a student in Captain Watts’s navigation class, he had volunteered with the rest. Now he found himself one of four men assigned to a ship’s lifeboat stripped from some liner at Tilbury docks. His companions turned out to be an advertising executive, a garage proprietor, and a solicitor. They had practically nothing in common—yet everything, joined as they were in an open boat on this strange adventure.
The boat was one of twelve being towed across the Channel by the tug Sun IV, skippered at the moment by the managing director of the tugboat company. The afternoon was beautiful, and the war seemed very far away. For a long time there was little to do but shoot the breeze. As they neared the French coast, marked by the pillar of black smoke over Dunkirk, the conversation fell off, and the mood in Harling’s boat became tense.
“There they are, the bastards!” someone suddenly called, pointing up at the sky. Harling looked, and soon made out more than 50 planes approaching with stately precision. They were perhaps 15,000 feet up, and at this distance everything seemed to happen in slow motion. Gradually the planes drew closer … then were directly overhead. Fascinated, he watched the bombs fall lazily toward the earth. Then suddenly they were rushing down at breakneck speed, crashing into the sea, just missing two nearby destroyers.
Soon some RAF fighters appeared, tearing into the German formation. Harling was mildly surprised that the Hurricanes and Spitfires really did rout the enemy—just as the communiqués said. But that wasn’t the end of it. In a last gesture of defiance, one of the German fighters swooped down, strafing the Sun IV and her tow. Watching it come, Harling felt mesmerized—he couldn’t even duck in time—then in a second it was over. The bullets ripped the empty sea; the plane zoomed up and out of sight. Sun IV and her charges steamed on untouched.
The sky was not the only source of danger. After a night of ferry work, the six cockle boats started back for Ramsgate at 3:00 a.m., June 1. Most had fared very well, but Letitia had now broken down and was being towed by the drifter Ben and Lucy. Then Renown’s engine went, and she latched onto Letitia. The three vessels limped along, with Renown yawing wide at the end of the tow.
It was about 3:30 when Renown brushed a German mine, freshly laid by some bomber or S-Boat. There was a blinding flash, and every trace of Renown and her crew of four vanished completely.
The methodical German shelling continued taking its toll too—often with frightening suddenness. As the pleasure steamer New Prince of Wales lay off Bray-Dunes on the 31st, Sub-Lieutenant Bennett left the bridge to help start a balky engine. He had just reached the deck when there was a shrieking, tearing sound, coming at him straight from above. There was a shattering explosion … a momentary glimpse of gray streamers of smoke laced with bits of shell … pain in his left foot, left thigh, and the left side of his face … and he found himself lying on deck. As he lost consciousness, he decided this must be the end. He had seen enough war movies showing men dying with blood running out of their mouths. That was the way they always went, and that was what was happening to him.
He came to a few minutes later, happy to find he was still alive. But two of his men were killed, and the New Prince of Wales was a write-off. The motor boat Triton was nearby, and Lieutenant Irving eased her over to take off the survivors. By now Bennett was on his feet again and even feeling belligerent. His face was a bloody mess, but his mind was clear, and he took over as coxswain for Lieutenant Irving.
They weren’t all heroes. Off Bray-Dunes one Dutch skoot lay motionless for hours, doing little or nothing. The skipper was tipsy, and the second in command seemed less than enthusiastic. Troops rowed out to her anyhow, and finally she was reasonably full. At this point Corporal Harold Meredith of the RASC heard the skipper explain, “I’m supposed to take you out to the destroyers, which are lying farther offshore, but I’ve had a very rough day, and tonight I am Nelson. I’ve unfortunately put my telescope to my blind eye, and I cannot see any destroyers; so I’m taking you all the way home.”
One way or another, 68,014 Allied troops were evacuated this May 31. As usual, the most dramatic incidents occurred off the beaches, but the most effective work was again done on the east mole. The destroyer Malcolm showed what one ship could do—1,000 men lifted at 2:15 a.m. … another 1,000 at 2:30 p.m. … still another 1,000 lifted in the early hours of June 1. Her efficiency made the job look easy, yet it was anything but that. Warrant Engineer Arthur George Scoggins nursed his machinery in a steam-filled engine room where the temperature hit 140° to 150°.
For the first time British ships were carrying a really respectable number of Frenchmen—10,842 were rescued this day. Not enough to satisfy Premier Reynaud, but it was a start. And the difficulties were more than the critics in Paris could ever realize. Usually the poilus wanted to bring all their equipment. Many refused to be separated from their units. They seemed unable to comprehend that if too many people got into a small boat at once, it might capsize or run aground. The British crews were inclined to think that the French were just naturally landlubbers, in contrast to “our island race.” The evidence suggests that much of the trouble stemmed from the language barrier.
“En avant mes héros! Courage mes enfants!” Sub-Lieutenant A. Carew Hunt summoned up his limited store of French, trying to tempt some hesitant soldiers to wade out to his boat. Minutes later he was waving his revolver at them to stop the rush.
“Débarquez! You bloody fools, get out! Get out! Nous sommes ensables!” shouted one of Captain Watts’s scholars as his boat grounded under the weight of too many Frenchmen. Nobody understood, and nobody moved. Finally a French NCO caught on, reworked the language, and the order was obeyed.
Sub-Lieutenant Michael Solomon, who knew French well, never had any trouble during a brief stint as interpreter for Commander Clouston on the eastern mole. English officers shouting “Allez!” got nowhere—that was insulting—but the right words, plus a little tact, could work wonders.
So the loading went on, and one more crisis was passed. The equal numbers rule did not upset Ramsay’s timetable after all. Thanks to Clouston’s organizing ability, far more men were evacuating from the mole than anyone had dared hope. The surge of little ships across the Channel helped too. By now there were enough boats for everyone—both French and British.
But already a new crisis was at hand. All day May 31, German shells had been falling on the beach and shipping at La Panne. Now, as dusk settled over the battered town, the bombardment grew worse than ever. It suggested that all was far from well along the eastern end of the perimeter. If it collapsed, Bock’s seasoned troops could break into the beachhead and end the evacuation for good.