GERMAN SHELLS SCREECHED OVERHEAD as Captain P. J. Jeffries of the 6th Durham Light Infantry leaned over and plucked a small flower in the garden of the chateau at Moeres, a Belgian village toward the eastern end of the perimeter. Jeffries didn’t know what this flower was—sort of a cross between an azalea and a rhododendron—but he vowed to find out and plant some in his own garden … if he ever got home again.
At the moment his chances didn’t look too good. Jeffries was second in command of the 6th DLI, one of the units assigned to hold off the Germans while the rest of the BEF and the French escaped to England. For two days enemy pressure had been growing on the Durhams’ section of the canal defense line, and now on the morning of May 31 German shells began landing uncomfortably close to battalion headquarters.
The first actual penetration came not at Moeres, but still farther east near Nieuport, the coastal town that served as the perimeter’s eastern anchor. Here at 5:00 a.m. German infantry crossed the canal in rubber boats and stormed the brickworks held by the 1st/6th East Surreys. By noon they were in danger of being outflanked. Their “sister” battalion, the 1st East Surreys, rushed to the rescue just in time. Together they managed to stop the enemy, but it took every man. At one point the two battalion commanders manned a Bren gun together. One colonel fired the gun, while the other acted as “No. 2,” feeding it with ammunition.
Next, an even closer squeak. While the Surreys were clinging to their brickyard, a new German attack hit the British 8th Brigade three miles to the west. At 12:20 p.m. a hysterical sapper stumbled into Furnes, the main town in the area, blurting that the front had been broken and the Germans were pouring across the canal unopposed.
No time to lose. Reinforcements from the crack 2nd Grenadier Guards were rushed to the scene under a quick-thinking 2nd lieutenant named Jones. He found two battalions of the brigade about to retire without orders. If this happened, a gaping hole would open up in the perimeter, allowing the Germans to pour in behind the defenders. The few remaining officers were trying to rally their men, but nobody would listen.
Jones took more drastic measures. He found it necessary to shoot some of the panic-stricken soldiers, and others were turned around at bayonet-point. He then reported back to headquarters that the brigade was once again stabilized but in desperate need of experienced officers and ammunition. Lieutenant J. Trotter of the 2nd Grenadier Guards was then sent to help him, along with 14,000 rounds of ammunition. By 3:00 p.m. the men were all back in position and morale was high—proving once again the importance of that elusive quality, leadership, in shaping the fortunes of war.
During the afternoon the Germans shifted their efforts to the area southwest of Furnes, but with no better results. They managed to storm across the canal at Bulscamp, but soon bogged down on the other side. Flooded terrain and a spirited defense blocked any further advance. In such a predicament the standard remedy was to soften resistance with artillery, and shells were soon raining on the Durham Light Infantry’s chateau at Moeres. Toward evening the DLI abandoned the place with few regrets. This country was meant to be an epicure’s delight, but for three days they had lived on a diet of tinned pilchards in tomato sauce.
Evening, and the target was Nieuport again. It’s doubtful whether the exhausted East Surreys could have stood up to any serious attack. Fortunately, just as the German columns massed, help came from an unexpected direction. Eighteen RAF bombers, supported by six planes from the Fleet Air Arm, swept in from the sea, smashing and scattering the enemy force. The British troops forgot their weariness; leapt and waved and shouted with excitement. Until now they thought that only the Germans could pull off this sort of stunt.
While the British brigades to the east desperately parried the German thrusts, the Allied troops to the west had a relatively quiet day. The line from Fort Mardyck to the ancient walled town of Bergues was a French responsibility; General Beaufrère’s 68th Infantry Division lay waiting behind a patchwork of ditches. A mixed garrison of French and British held Bergues itself. Some long-range guns were shelling the place, but the medieval walls stood up to modern artillery amazingly well.
It was the Bergues-Furnes Canal Line to the east of town that seemed most exposed. While the flat fields were bound to reveal an advancing enemy, they also gave away the defenders. There was no cover, except for an occasional tree or farmhouse.
The 2nd Coldstream Guards eyed uneasily the 2,200 yards assigned to them. Lieutenant Jimmy Langley of No. 3 Company moved his platoon into a small brick cottage directly north of the canal. He was anything but a picture-book guardsman—he stood only five feet eight—but he was lively and immensely resourceful. He lost no time converting the cottage into a miniature Gibraltar.
From scores of trucks and lorries abandoned along the canal bank, Langley’s men brought back a vast haul of booty. The weapons alone were impressive—12 Bren guns, 3 Lewis machine guns, 1 Boyes antitank rifle, 30,000 rounds of ammunition, and 22 hand grenades. Considering there were only 37 men left in the company, this was fire power indeed.
Nor was food neglected. Stacks of bully beef, canned vegetables, and tinned milk were piled in the kitchen. And since Langley was especially partial to marmalade and Wiltshire bacon, there was a liberal supply of these too. They might, he decided, be there a long time; so they should be prepared for the good life as well—he added two cases of wine and two crates of beer. During the afternoon the company commander, Major Angus McCorquodale, dropped by and made his contribution too: a bottle of whiskey and two bottles of sherry. McCorquodale was one of those throwbacks to a glorious earlier age in British military history. Gleaming with polished brass and leather, he scorned the new battle dress. “I don’t mind dying for my country,” he declared, “but I’m not going to die dressed like a third-rate chauffeur.”
He liked Langley’s set-up so much he decided to make the cottage the Company’s forward headquarters, and the two of them bedded down in a small back room for some rest. They were up before dawn, June 1, removing roof tiles and turning the attic into a machine-gun nest. Neither the roof nor the end walls were really strong enough, but it was too late to worry about that now. Langley settled down to wait for Jerry with a pair of binoculars and two buckets of cold water by his side. The buckets were for cooling the wine, or the beer, or the Bren gun barrels—whichever seemed to need it most.
There was no night of quiet waiting at Furnes. Shells poured down on the old Flemish town, as they had all day. The 1st Grenadier Guards huddled under an avalanche of falling slate and masonry from the seventeenth-century buildings that ringed the marketplace. The churchyard of venerable Saint Walburge was so thick with shrapnel that walking on the grass was like tramping over a carpet of jagged glass.
In the roomy cellar that served as battalion headquarters, Signalman George W. Jones hunched over a portable radio listening to the BBC evening news. It was the first voice he had heard from the outside world in three weeks. It assured him that two-thirds of the troops trapped at Dunkirk were now evacuated and safely back in England.
Jones felt anything but assured. Here he was, stuck with the rear guard in a collapsing town miles from home, and now he heard that the best part of the army was safely back in England. It was a very lonely feeling.
Lance Sergeant John Bridges, also of the 1st Grenadier Guards, was sure they would never get away. He had originally joined the regiment as a drummer boy, hoping to see the world, play a little football, and ultimately become a writer. But now the dream was buried in the rubble of Furnes. His company commander, Major Dickie Herbert, showed him how to dig a round foxhole, so he could shoot in any direction. That could only mean they were about to be surrounded.
Then an unexpected reprieve. Toward evening Major Herbert returned from a brigade conference and immediately called a meeting of his own officers and NCO’s. He lost no time getting to the point: his first words were, “We’re going home.” A map was produced, and a staff lieutenant lined off the route to the beaches. There were no histrionics, no exhortations. It was all so matter-of-fact that to Bridges it seemed rather like planning a family outing.
At 10:00 p.m. the battalion began “thinning out”—first the headquarters personnel, the signalers, the quartermaster units; then the infantry companies, one by one; and finally certain hand-picked parties from No. 2 and No. 4 Companies, especially skilled in rear-guard work. Everything went very smoothly. After all, they had been doing it since Brussels.
The premium was on silence. The enemy must not find out. The rear-guard parties wrapped sandbags around their boots to deaden the sound on the cobblestone streets. Still, there were heart-stopping moments as the columns, tramping single file, noisily scrambled over piles of rubble, bricks, broken glass, and tangled telephone wire. How could the Germans miss hearing them?
Yet there was no sound of unusual activity in the sections of town now occupied by the enemy. Only the steady pounding of shells that had gone on for two days. By 2:30 a.m., June 1, the last Grenadier had pulled out.
For Sergeant Bridges the march to La Panne was a three-mile nightmare. He especially hated mortar fire, and tonight every mortar in the German Army seemed concentrated on him. Most of the shells landed ahead of the column, which meant few casualties but gave the terrifying impression that the battalion was always marching straight into hell. At one point Bridges’s rifle got caught in a tangle of telephone wire, and the more he tried to get it loose, the more he himself became enmeshed in the tangle. On the verge of panic, he was finally freed by his sergeant major, who also brought him to his senses with a good slap.
Adding to the confusion, hundreds of abandoned cattle, sheep, pigs, and chickens were loose and running among the stumbling men. They reminded Bridges of the stories he had heard about wild animals fleeing before a great forest fire.
All along the eastern end of the perimeter—the II Corps area—the battalions were thinning out and falling back on La Panne. As with the 1st Grenadier Guards, the process usually began about 10:00 p.m. and continued to around 2:30 a.m., when the last rear-guard parties retired. Probably the last unit of all to pull out was the carrier platoon of the 1st Coldstream, which hung around Furnes till 2:50 a.m., covering the withdrawal of the battalion’s infantry.
As always, silence was the rule—which could fool a friend as well as foe. Private F. R. Farley was on sentry duty that night in a lonely copse east of Furnes. He knew his battalion, the 1st/7th Middlesex, would be withdrawing, and he was to be called in when the time came. Hours passed, and nothing happened. From time to time he heard faint sounds: a car starting, a muffled word of command. Then complete silence. He listened—a sentry did not leave his post lightly—then decided to slip back, and see what was happening.
Everyone had gone. The NCO had forgotten to call him in. Desperately he sprinted through the copse to the main road. He was just in time to leap onto the last truck of the last column of the battalion, as it started down the coastal road for La Panne.
The convoy stopped on the edge of town; the men piled out; and the trucks were disabled in the usual way—a bullet in the radiator, the engine left running until it seized. Moving into La Panne, Farley joined a flood of troops converging on the place from every direction. The whole eastern end of the perimeter was being abandoned; all had instructions to make for La Panne.
Beyond that, there seemed to be no orders. Some men slumped in doorways; others lay exhausted on the pavé; others wandered aimlessly about, as officers and NCO’s called out unit numbers and rallying cries, trying to keep their men together.
The shelling had unaccountably stopped, and for the moment all was relatively quiet. As the men waited to be told what to do, a thousand cigarettes glowed in the darkness.
Eventually there was a stirring, but instead of moving onto the beach, the troops were ordered back a couple of streets. They were now further from the sea, but much better dispersed. It was just as well, for at this moment a spotter plane droned overhead, dropping flares that brilliantly lit up the whole scene. Then came the thump of distant guns, followed by the shriek of falling shells.
There was a shattering crash as the first salvo landed at the intersection near the beach. The hotels and shops in the area were mostly built in the “modern” style of the 30’s, full of chrome and plate glass. Now the glass came cascading down, adding to the general din.
“Into the shops! Off the streets!” The cry went up, and the troops needed no further urging. Rifle butts went to work on the doors and windows remaining, and the men swarmed in, just as a second salvo was landing.
Farley and several others from the 1st/7th Middlesex broke into a large corner shop, and once inside were thankful to find stairs leading down to a basement. Here they crouched in comparative safety as the shelling swept methodically up and down the streets salvo after salvo, turning the town into a dust-choked ruin. Flames began to lick through upper windows as fires took hold.
It was important not to go entirely underground. There was always the danger of missing some important order. The men took turns keeping watch at the door—very unpleasant duty with the town collapsing around them. Farley found the knack was to leap back to the stairs whenever a salvo seemed likely to be close. He got very good at it.
After an hour and a half, Captain Johnson of Headquarters Company slipped in with the latest orders: listen for some whistle blasts as soon as there is a lull in the shelling … then clear out and run for the beach at the double … turn left at the bandstand and keep going for half a mile. That would be where the battalion would reassemble and embark.
No one was to stop for anything. Casualties to be left where they fell. The medical orderlies would take care of these. The essential thing was to clear the streets without delay at the first feasible moment.
Just before 2:45 a.m. Private Farley heard the whistle loud and clear. His group raced up the cellar steps and out into the street. Other units were pouring out of other buildings, too. Jumbled together, they all surged toward the beachfront. The flames from the burning buildings lit their way; the crash of bursting shells spurred them on. The “lull,” it turned out, meant only a shift in targets. But the most unforgettable sound—a din that drowned out even the gunfire—was the steady crunch of thousands of boots on millions of fragments of broken glass.
Soon they were by the bandstand … across the esplanade … onto the beach—and suddenly they were in a different world. Gone was the harsh, grating clatter; now there was only the squish of feet running on wet sand. The glare of the fire-lit streets gave way to the blackness of the dunes at night. The smoke and choking dust vanished, replaced by the clean, damp air of the seaside … the smell of salt and seaweed.
Then the shelling shifted again, aimed this time right at the beach where the men were running. Private Farley of the Middlesex saw a flash, felt the blast, but (oddly enough) heard no “bang” as a close one landed just ahead. He was untouched, but the four men running with him all went down. Three lay motionless on the sand; the fourth, propped up on one hand, pleaded, “Help me, help me.”
Farley ran on. After all, those were the orders. But he knew in his heart that the real reason he didn’t stop was self-preservation. The memory of that voice pleading for help would still haunt his conscience forty years later.
Half a mile down the beach was the point where the Middlesex had been ordered to reassemble for embarkation. Private Parley had imagined what it would be like. He pictured a well-organized area where senior NCO’s would stand at the head of gangway ladders taking name, rank, and serial number as the troops filed aboard the waiting ships. Actually, there was no embarkation staff, no waiting ships, no organization whatsoever.
Nobody seemed to be in charge. The 2nd Royal Ulster Rifles had been told that reception camps would be waiting for them when they got to the beach, that a Division Control Staff would take over from there and guide them to the ships. They found no trace of either the camps or the Control Staff, and of course no sign of the ships.
The 1st Grenadier Guards reached the beach intact, but with no further orders, the battalion soon broke up. Some men headed for Dunkirk; others joined the columns hopefully waiting at the water’s edge; Sergeant Bridges led a small group of six or eight into the dunes to wait for dawn. Maybe daylight would show them what to do.
But would they last that long? At one point Bridges heard an ominous rumble coming toward them. It sounded like the whole German Army, and he crouched in the sand, awaiting that final confrontation. It turned out to be only horses, abandoned by some French artillery unit, galloping aimlessly up and down the sand.
But the next big noise might always be the enemy, and still there was no sign of any ships. To Lieutenant-Commander J. N. McClelland, the senior naval officer remaining at La Panne, the situation was turning into a hideous exercise in arithmetic. It was now 1:00 a.m.; the British couldn’t expect to hold La Panne beyond dawn at 4:00. Some 6,000 troops were pouring onto the beach; they had lifted off only 150 since nightfall. At this rate, nearly the whole force would be lost.
He conferred briefly with Major-General G. D. Johnson, the senior army officer on the beach at this point. Yes, McClelland assured the General, he had made a personal reconnaissance both above and below the position. No, there weren’t any ships. Yes, they were meant to be there. No, he didn’t think they would come now—something must have gone wrong. To McClelland the Royal Navy’s absence was almost a matter of personal shame. He formally apologized to Johnson for the nonarrival of the boats.
They decided that the only course left was to march the bulk of the troops down the beach toward Dunkirk and try to embark from there. Or perhaps they would run across some ships at Bray-Dunes along the way.
A few men—mostly wounded and exhausted stragglers—were not fit to march. These would be left behind, and McClelland headed down to the lorry jetties to look after them, on the chance that some ships might still turn up.
More German guns were ranged on the beach now, and McClelland was twice knocked down by shell bursts. One smashed his signal lamp; the second wounded his left ankle. As often happens, it didn’t hurt much at first—just a numb feeling—and he hobbled on down the beach.
At the embarkation point it was the same old story: no boats for over half an hour. McClelland now ordered the remaining troops to join the trek to Dunkirk. Even if they couldn’t keep up with the main body, they must try. He himself rounded up all the stragglers he could find and sent them on their way. Then he limped off after the rest.
About two miles toward Bray-Dunes he suddenly saw what he had been searching for all night—ships! Three vessels lay at anchor not far from the shore. A small party of soldiers stood at the water’s edge firing shots, trying to attract attention. There was no response from the ships. They just sat there, dark and silent.
McClelland looked farther down the beach. The night was filled with explosions, and in the flashes he could make out swarms of troops, but no trace of any other boat. These three anchored ships were the only chance. Somehow they must be told that the troops were moving steadily westward toward Dunkirk. Once these ships knew, they could alert the others, and the rescue fleet could finally assemble at the right place.
He plunged into the sea and began swimming. He was dead tired; his ankle began acting up; but he kept on. As he thrashed alongside the nearest ship, somebody threw him a line and he was hauled aboard. She turned out to be HMS Gossamer, one of Ramsay’s hard-working minesweepers. Taken before the captain, Commander Richard Ross, McClelland managed to pant out his message: La Panne abandoned; all shipping should concentrate much farther west. Then he collapsed.
For Commander Ross, it was the first piece of solid intelligence to come his way since leaving Dover at 6:00 p.m. The Gossamer was one of the group of vessels earmarked for lifting the rear guard at the eastern end of the perimeter, amounting to some 4,000 men. The plan called for three big batches of ships’ lifeboats to be towed by tugs across the Channel and stationed at three carefully designated points off La Panne. The rear guard would be instructed where to go, and at 1:30 a.m. the lifeboats would start ferrying the men to minesweepers waiting at each of the three points. Escorting destroyers would provide covering fire if the enemy tried to interfere. (“All tanks hostile,” the orders reminded the destroyers.) The final directives were issued at 4:00 a.m., May 31, and the “special tows,” as Ramsay called them, began leaving Ramsgate at 1:00 p.m.
Every possible contingency had been covered—except the fortunes of war. German pressure on the perimeter was too great. The covering position could no longer be held by the 4,000-man rear guard. Under heavy enemy shelling the troops were pulling back sooner than expected, and farther west than planned. The special tows must be alerted to go to a different place at a different time.
But Dover no longer had any direct communication with the special tows. Ramsay could only radio the accompanying minesweepers, hoping that the change in plans would be passed along to the tugs and their tows. He did this, but predictably his message never got through.
The armada chugged on to the originally designated spots, but now, of course, there was no one there. With no further directions, they groped along the coast, hoping somehow to make contact. Gossamer had, in fact, just stumbled on a sizable contingent when McClelland swam out, gasping his advice to look farther west.
The alert radio interception unit at General Georg von Kuechler’s Eighteenth Army headquarters knew more than the BEF about the special tows and where they could be found. At 7:55 p.m. on the 31st, Captain Essmann of Headquarters phoned XXVI and IX Corps command posts, giving the latest information along with some instructions on what should be done.
Beginning at twilight, a heavy harassing fire was to be concentrated on the approach roads leading to the supposed embarkation points. … Armored reconnaissance patrols were to check whether the enemy had managed to evacuate. … If so, an immediate thrust was to be made to the coast.
Not exactly an inspiring blueprint for an army closing in for the kill. A lackadaisical mood, in fact, seemed to permeate most German military thinking these past two days. To Colonel Rolf Wuthmann, Operations Officer of General von Kluge’s Fourth Army at the western end of the perimeter, it was a cause for alarm. “There is an impression here that nothing is happening today, that no one is any longer interested in Dunkirk,” he complained to General von Kleist’s Chief of Staff on May 30.
Quite true. All eyes were now on the south. “Fall Rot”—Operation “Red”—the great campaign designed to knock France out of the war, would jump off from the Somme in just six days. Its immense scope and dazzling possibilities easily diverted attention from Dunkirk. Guderian and the other panzer generals—once so exasperated by Hitler’s halt order—now wanted only to pull out their tanks, rest their men, prepare for the great new adventure. Rundstedt, commanding Army Group A, had already shifted his entire attention to the Somme. On the 31st Bock, commanding Army Group B, received a fat bundle of papers from OKH regrouping his forces too. At OKH, General Haider, the Chief of Staff, spent most of the day far behind the lines, checking communications, the flow of supplies, the status of Army Group C—all for the great new offensive.
As for Dunkirk, it was hard to escape the feeling that it was really all over. Some ten German infantry divisions now pressed a few thousand disorganized Allied soldiers against the sea. Kluge’s Chief of Staff Kurt Brennecke might scold, “We do not want to find these men, freshly equipped, in front of us again later,” but no German command was more thoroughly preoccupied with the coming drive south than Brennecke’s own Fourth Army. General Haider might complain, “Now we must stand by and watch countless thousands of the enemy get away to England right under our noses,” but he didn’t stand by and watch very much himself. He too was busy getting ready for the big new push.
It always seemed that one more try would finish up Dunkirk, but no one was quite in the position to do it. With the closing of the trap, there were too many overlapping commands and too little coordination. Finally, in an effort to centralize responsibility, General von Kuechler’s Eighteenth Army was put in complete charge. On May 31, at 2:00 a.m., all the various divisions along the entire 35-mile length of the perimeter passed under his control.
It wasn’t long before Kuechler was getting advice. The following evening General Mieth of OKH telephoned a few “personal suggestions” from the highest levels. General von Brauchitsch suggested the landing of troop units from the sea in the rear of the British forces … also, the withdrawal of German units from the Ganal Line so as to open up opportunities for the Luftwaffe without endangering friendly troops. And finally, an idea from Adolf Hitler himself: Kuechler might consider the possibility of using antiaircraft shells with time fuses to compensate for the reduced effectiveness of ordinary artillery fire on the beaches, where the sand tended to smother the explosions. Like many shakers and movers of the earth, the Fuehrer occasionally liked to tinker.
For the moment, these intriguing ideas were put aside. Kuechler had already made his plan, and it called for nothing as offbeat as a landing behind the British forces, even if that were possible. Instead, he simply planned an attack by all his forces at once along the entire length of the perimeter on June 1.
First, his artillery would soften the enemy up with harassing fire, starting immediately and continuing the whole night. The attacking troops would jump off at 11:00 a.m., June 1, closely supported by General Alfred Keller’s Fliegerkorps IV.
Everything was to be saved for the main blow. During the afternoon of the 31st, Eighteenth Army issued a special directive warning the troops not to engage in any unnecessary action that day. Rather, their time should be spent moving the artillery into position, gathering intelligence, conducting reconnaissance, and making other preparations for the “systematic attack” tomorrow.
All very sound, but this inflexibility also suggests why so little use was made of the radio intercept about Ramsay’s special tows. It clearly indicated that the British were abandoning the eastern end of the perimeter this very night—leaving themselves wide open in the process—yet the German plans were frozen, and nothing was done.
If anybody at Eighteenth Army headquarters sensed a lost opportunity on the evening of May 31, there’s no evidence of it. Preparations went steadily ahead for the unified attack tomorrow. The artillery pumped out shells at a rate the British Tommies would never forget, and the Luftwaffe joined in the softening-up process.
Special emphasis had been placed on the Luftwaffe’s role, and for the duration of the attack Eighteenth Army was virtually given control of its operations. General Kesselring’s Air Fleet 2 was simply told to attack Dunkirk continuously until the Eighteenth told it to stop.
Making use of his authority, around noon on the 31st Kuechler requested special strikes every fifteen minutes on the dunes west of Nieuport, where the British artillery was giving his 256th Infantry Division a hard time. Kesselring promised to follow through, but later reported that ground fog was keeping some of the planes from taking off.
Bad weather was a familiar story. It had scrubbed almost all missions on the 30th, and curbed operations on the 31st. It was, then, good news indeed when June 1 turned out to be bright and clear.