Dunkirk: The Men They Left Behind (21 page)

Not all those on the beaches were quite so unfortunate. Others were able to reach boats, such as the three officers and seventeen other ranks of the Lothian and Borders Horse who escaped by boat from the port of Veules. Similarly, thirty-one pioneers from the 7th Norfolks were picked up by HMS
Harvester.
When he rescued them from the beaches the commander of the ship told the lucky men it was no longer safe to attempt to reach the harbour of St Valery.

The events of the morning of 12 June remain confused. Some reports quote the French capitulation as forcing General Fortune to surrender. But when one flag of surrender was seen fluttering from a steeple close to the divisional HQ, Fortune insisted it be torn down and the perpetrator arrested. When the French officer responsible was found he explained that he was simply following his own general’s orders. Other sources quote incidents of French white flags being torn down by enraged British officers, then British officers crying when Fortune ordered them all to lay down their arms. Some British troops even recalled the vision of a British fighter flying above their positions displaying a white flag. What was clear was that the French had informed Fortune of their intention to surrender. It left the Scotsman in a hopeless situation. Without the French fighting side by side with his men there was no hope of holding out for another day. It was a stark choice – surrender or die.

Despite Major-General Fortune’s defiance and hope to keep fighting long enough to effect an escape, the situation was wretched. His infantry had not been able to push back the enemy from above the town and with the cliff tops occupied by the enemy any evacuation would most likely result in a slaughter, costing the lives of both his men and the sailors he had hoped might come to rescue them. At 11 a.m. Fortune received news from England that the previous night’s evacuation had been called off due to fog. Yet by that time the news was irrelevant. Half an hour earlier Major-General Fortune had already notified the War Office of his intention to surrender.

Most of the divison went quietly into captivity, knowing further resistance was futile. One group of soldiers, exhausted after a day of close-quarter fighting, bedded down in a field, sleeping through the night without sentries to watch over them. They awoke to discover they were surrounded by German tank crews who quickly spotted them and took them prisoner. Elsewhere others continued to fight. Each man became embroiled in his own personal war. The notion of escape filled the minds of many, while others hardly seemed concerned about the slim chance of slipping across the Channel. For some the desperate battles around St Valery were simply them following orders – they knew it was the duty of each man to fight on for the honour of his regiment and his country. For others it was a sign of personal defiance, a way of showing the enemy they were not beaten. For many more it was just a desperate fight for survival. Whatever happened, few seriously contemplated the possibility of being taken prisoner.

When the moment of surrender came, a deathly quiet fell over the troops. The gunners of the 23rd Field Regiment were still working to ready their guns for the attack on the Germans’ cliff-top positions when they heard the news. Rather than load and fire their guns, they were told to line up in a field ready for the surrender. Within a minute of receiving the order the gunners noticed a German tank entering the field. One man then shot himself, preferring to take his own life rather than be taken prisoner.

As the Germans began to round up the survivors of the 51st Division, most of the prisoners began to follow the shouted orders of their captors without daring to question them. Northumberland Fusilier Dick Taylor recalled that the process of surrendering was like anything else in the army: ‘You do as you are told – you don’t think about it. I threw the bolt away and destroyed my rifle. Elsewhere they were already dumping trucks into the sea so I realized everything was in chaos and our position was hopeless.’ Each man was submerged beneath waves of his own emotions. Bewildered by the speed of the collapse, Jim Pearce marched into a barbed-wire enclosure still carrying his rifle over his shoulder. The German guard knocked it from his shoulder, without Pearce even breaking his step.

Such was the depth of feeling that some soldiers felt a rage they could not express, barely able to suppress their anger that the division had been defeated. A few openly wept at the disgrace of defeat, while others were disgusted to see the behaviour of some among their comrades. John Christie found himself looking on in awe at behaviour he felt out of place in a modern war. He watched as officers changed into their dress uniforms ready for the surrender. It seemed ridiculous, within a formation that had not eaten a hot meal for a week, to be so concerned about appearances: ‘It could have been done in order to put on a “good show” for the Germans . . . I don’t go much on “good shows”, anyway I had more important things on my mind like how I was going to get out of this mess.’
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Others felt numb with disgust, fear, hunger, exhaustion or the simple relief they had survived. For days they had fought for the right to escape from France. Each step back towards the coast had been a step towards salvation, but it seemed they had been betrayed. The whirl of emotions experienced as the enemy approached to take them prisoner was shared by every able-bodied man in the division, leaving most barely able to express what that moment had meant to them. Fred Coster attempted to explain his feelings: ‘We were ready to fight but then the French surrendered and that was it – we gave up. There was no option. We would all have been massacred if we had fought on. We were numb – we were tired. We were wondering what was going to happen. What went through my mind was perhaps they would murder us. They lined my unit up in the field with a machine-gun facing us. We were just standing there.’ The gunner that approached Coster expressed the thoughts silently shared by each of them: ‘There was one little fellow, he came running up and said, “Bombardier, they’re not going to shoot us are they?” I said, “Of course not. They wouldn’t dare to!” He was happy and went off laughing. But I started to feel a bit timid. I thought they might shoot us, but I couldn’t tell him.’

Cut off from the rest of the division, with no way of communicating with General Fortune or the other senior commanders within St Valery, the 2nd Seaforth Highlanders at the St Sylvain position continued to fight their own battles. On 11 June it had been estimated the remnants of the battalion were facing around a hundred enemy Panzers. It was an ominous situation for the exhausted and lightly armed infantrymen. Despite their desperate situation they continued to fight hard.

Realizing that the Seaforths would not surrender without a hard fight, the German commanders decided on an unorthodox tactic to convince them to lay down their arms. Central to the German plan was Colour Sergeant Edwin Fields, known as ‘Gracie’ to his fellow Seaforths. After more than a month in the front lines, Gracie was exhausted and had finally been captured, along with a wounded sergeant and a young private. As a senior sergeant, he was selected for an unpleasant task. A machine-pistol-wielding German NCO appeared and forced him on to the front of a tank. With the German behind him, and a gun pointed at his back, the sergeant was driven towards the Seaforths’ positions. Some reports have the tank advancing under the protection of a white flag. Other reports suggest no white flag was shown. In any event, as they reached a crossroads close to the forward positions, the tank was hit by a burst of gunfire. Still, the worried sergeant had no choice but to remain on his perch – if he stayed his own men might shoot him, but if he ran the Germans would certainly shoot him.

Recognizing who it was seated on the front of the tank, the Seaforths held their fire, watching as their Gracie was driven ever closer. Eventually he was released and the tank withdrew towards the enemy lines. Reporting to the battalion HQ, the message he carried was simple. The Seaforths were in a hopeless situation. The rest of the division had surrendered and they were surrounded. If they did not stop resisting they would be bombed into oblivion.

But surrender was not an option for the proud Seaforths. Sergeant Fields refused to return with the message to the Germans. Instead he chose to remain with his regiment as the decision was taken to split up and attempt to reach safety. During the attempted escape, Colour Sergeant Fields managed to reach the coast but was taken prisoner. While in captivity he was able to report the incident to General Fortune.

One of those men who watched the arrival of ‘Gracie’ Fields was Jim Reed, the under-age soldier from Sheffield who had volunteered to fight as a Seaforth Highlander:It was a real shock to see ‘Gracie’ strapped on that tank. Then a sergeant came round and told us the division had surrendered, but that the Seaforths weren’t going to surrender. It was our last battle. We were in close-quarters fighting, holding the upper floor of a farm, overlooking a sunken road. A German half-track came along and stopped opposite us. I had one magazine – half-full – for the Bren gun. My mate said he’d take out the machine-gunner and I’d get the driver. I could see him clearly – he was just ten feet away. We fired down on to them. As soon as I hit the driver the half-track ran down and crashed into some woods. We didn’t waste any more ammo on them – anyway I only had a couple of rounds left. We could hear them calling to us to come and take them prisoner. We didn’t bother. That was just hours before we were taken prisoner.

Eventually it became clear such resistance could continue no longer. Jim Reed had used some of his final magazine on the crew of the half-track and realized there was little else he could do:We had no choice. What settled it was the wounded. They were in a barn and that got bombed. We said we would hang on until 6p.m. to see what happened. It was not worth carrying on. There was nothing for the 2-inch mortars, we had no ammunition. We could do nothing and we needed to save the wounded. We had to surrender but we had no idea what was going to happen. We realized how exhausted we were. We’d had no food that day and hadn’t slept for two or three days. But when we finally surrendered it was the worst moment of my life.

The 4th Seaforths found themselves in no less desperate a situation. In the trenches of his company HQ, David Mowatt’s company commander made the decision to go to the beach to check out the rescue situation for one last time. Mowatt and another man accompanied the major. Making their way down the rough path they discovered there was no possibility of escape and, returning to their positions, it was obvious to all that they had no choice but to surrender or be wiped out. When the moment came it was strangely numbing for the last of the defenders: ‘We just waited for them to walk in. Rommel came up – he was on one of the first tanks to come through – he spoke to us. He said, “I hope you will be treated fairly and that you will not be too long as a prisoner of war.” He was right there at the front with his troops – he probably knew we’d had it! He knew he was safe.’

Despite the German general’s words of sympathy, as the remnants of the St Sylvain defenders were rounded up there was little mercy shown to those who had fought so long and hard. Some paid a harsh price for their defiance. One group, including two officers and five other ranks, were forced to sit on the bonnet of a car, despite there being room inside, as they were driven for twelve miles (twenty kilometres). It seemed they were being deliberately paraded as trophies of war. The senior officer in the group, Major James Murray Grant, the grandfather of the actor Hugh Grant, noticed the pistol pointed at him throughout the journey, reminding him of the treatment of ‘Grade’ Fields, whose ordeal he had witnessed. With the surrender of St Valery a strange calm settled over the town. Jim Charters and his comrades abandoned their hopeless positions, destroying their guns as they left, then assembled in the town square. They arrived just in time to watch as General Rommel came into town on the leading German tank.

In scattered groups, sharing their last cigarettes, the exhausted soldiers simply hung around the harbour awaiting orders. For most it would take days for the reality of what had happened to sink in. Instead, with numbed emotions, they watched as the German troops took control of the town they had hoped would be their escape route. Frustrated British officers watched as German soldiers strolled along the quayside and their commander Major-General Fortune was photographed beside the battle’s victor, the soon to be legendary General Erwin Rommel.

So the entire 51st Highland Division went ‘into the bag’. Leaving his Vickers machine-gun behind him, Jim Pearce joined the lines of prisoners: ‘There were dead soldiers all around us. Some were people you didn’t know but some were my friends. It was hard to see your mates were dead, but you had to just accept it. You can do that when you are young. Luckily my brother had survived, so I had someone to support me.’ Thousands of men like Pearce and his brother were herded into barbed-wire enclosures hastily erected by the Germans to house the incoming prisoners. Some arrived in the pouring rain. Already exhausted by the week of fighting and dejected by defeat, their pitiful situation was heightened by the weather, especially when their captors insisted on the prisoners handing over the gas capes and groundsheets that were helping to keep them dry.

As they passed through the wire they were searched for any remaining sharp implements, like knives and scissors. Some men lost cigarette lighters and matches. Vast heaps of abandoned equipment were piled up as the dejected and defeated men faced their first day in captivity. A wave of helplessness and hopelessness swept over the Jocks as they slumped down on to the grass and contemplated what lay ahead of them. As the prisoners assembled some were in tears, others were praying, most were too tired to show emotion. John Christie later described the consensus of opinion: ‘The general feeling was that we had been “sold down the river” and “left holding the baby”. Don’t forget that for a week we had been listening to the details of the evacuation at Dunkirk and being told of how all the stops had been pulled out to make it succeed.’
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In the eyes of all those who went ‘into the bag’ that day, Christie was right. The 51st Highland Division had fought on, against hopeless odds, to ensure the survival of others. As a result the survivors of an entire infantry division marched off to face almost five years in captivity.