Dunkirk: The Men They Left Behind (39 page)

One of the few positive memories for the marchers was the attitude of the French, Belgian and Dutch women they encountered on their journey. While a minority of civilians attempted to exploit the prisoners, selling food at ludicrously inflated prices to men who had not eaten for days, most were genuine in their efforts to help the marching men. Every man who made the fateful journey that summer can recall the courage of the women who lined up buckets of water for the prisoners to drink from. Even to hear a heavily accented voice call out ‘Good luck!’ was a tonic for the troops, helping to raise their spirits for a few brief minutes. One soldier described the effect of a welcoming Belgian crowd: ‘overwhelming, and it gave us a boost and it encouraged us to straighten up and see it through’.
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Such was the clamour to come out on to the streets to see and assist the men that in the towns of Béthune and Lille the Germans used mounted military policemen to keep them away from the passing column. Elsewhere guards fired at the feet of civilians attempting to pass food to the starving men. In the pretty spa town of Forges-les-Eaux, the marchers were forced at bayonet point to run through the town at the double, preventing any contact with civilians. A man in the same column reported whips being used on soldiers who had dared to accept food from local children. It seemed there was no end to the vindictiveness of the guards. Passing through one town, Bill Holmes watched as nuns were beaten by German soldiers for daring to throw sticks of rhubarb to the passing soldiers. Elsewhere, British soldiers were lucky to escape with their lives when they attacked a guard who had assaulted a young girl who had passed food to them.

Despite these displays of viciousness from the guards, not all the prisoners were convinced it was entirely their fault that the prisoners were starved during their journey. As Bob Davies explained of his march from Calais to Germany: ‘Initially we were well treated. I think the Germans did not expect to have so many prisoners. Therefore feeding arrangements were non-existent. So as we staggered along the road we had to pick up swedes and potatoes.’ Blaming the collapse of the Allies and the enormous numbers of prisoners for the food shortages was an understandable reaction, one that may have been based in truth, but excuses were irrelevant to the thousands who were starving. The Germans may not have had enough food to provide them with a hot meal each day but it was simply cruel to deprive a man of the chance to accept alms from the villagers who lined the French roads. Every prisoner on the march witnessed women putting out water only to see a guard cycle or walk past, stick out a boot and upend the pail. Eric Reeves recalled the excuses the German guards later gave for their behaviour: ‘We’d been reduced to drinking water from ditches because the Germans were kicking over the buckets. When I complained the guard told me it was because German troops weren’t allowed to drink it unless they’d put purification tablets in it. I thought, that’s a likely tale! The way they kicked it over – it was just spiteful.’

Wracked by thirst, the soldiers were desperate for a drink. Nobby Barber watched in amazement as the men around him picked dead pigeons out of a trough before dunking their heads in to drink from the foul water. Fellow St Valery prisoner Jim Charters – his mind numbed by exhaustion – recalled pushing lilies from the surface of a pond in order to get a drink. Ken Willats explained how important water became during the long marches along dusty roads: ‘Survival is a very emotive feeling. The progression of need in extreme circumstances is water, food, cigarettes, ladies – in that order. Without being offensive to the ladies, they come a lot further down the list than water.’ This desperate desire to find something to drink even led some prisoners to confront the guards. Jim Pearce looked on, astounded, as one group of prisoners surged towards a well to pull up a bucket of water. When a guard intervened the frustrated prisoners simply pushed him down the well.

Despite this desperate thirst, some prisoners tried to discourage their mates from drinking stagnant water. Fred Coster was one of them. He had been fortunate enough to begin the march still carrying his emergency ration, which was soon consumed – ‘After all,’ as he pointed out ‘this was an emergency.’ Despite his exhaustion, Coster still remembered some of his training: ‘After 20 or 30kms we’d reach a village with a water butt. After that distance we were all terribly thirsty and the boys would rush to the water butts. I tried to stop them because of my medical training. I told them they’d all get dire diseases. They didn’t listen. But of course they didn’t suffer anything and I missed out because I didn’t get a drink.’

For those who wouldn’t drink stagnant water, the only relief came from the rain. It may have soaked their already weakened bodies, run down and seeped into their boots, and softened the bare earth they would be sleeping on, but it brought relief to their throats. Marching men lifted their heads upwards, allowing the water to fill their mouths. They cupped their hands in front of their bodies and caught the falling rain, drinking it greedily from their filthy palms. Others dropped to the ground and lowered their faces into puddles, eager to drive away the dry taste of the dust that filled their mouths. Their throats relieved, the soldiers raised their soaking hands and rubbed their faces, washing away the grime acquired in days of marching. As the rain soaked their hair, they ran their fingers through it, rubbing the water into their sweat-stained scalps.

Among the marching men were some for whom food was more vital than water. Those nursing wounds needed to sustain themselves not just for marching but to ensure their wounds could recover. Without food, open wounds would take longer to heal. Cyril Holness, whose dressings – on wounds he thought would get him sent home – had been torn off by Germans who had appeared in the field dressing station, was one of those who had no choice but to find food wherever he could:It was a tough old business, but you could still see the funny side sometimes. I was wearing a French jacket and trousers that I’d been given after leaving the aid post. As we went through Lille the women were raiding the pubs and cafes. We were calling out ‘
Du pain! Du pain!
’ One woman came out with one of those long loaves, she undone my trousers and stuck the bread down my legs. They were telling us they’d rather we had it than the Germans get it. And there was a Scots bloke, he was as high as a kite – drunk on what they’d given him. Then these nuns – Sisters of Mercy – gave us socks and boots and cleaned our feet.

On the occasions that the local population were able to pass food to the prisoners their desperation was such that the prisoners often fought to guarantee a share for themselves. Bill Bampton, a soldier serving with the East Surrey Regiment, recorded how his mate received a package from a civilian: ‘Suddenly he disappeared under the weight of other marchers all intent on having a part of the package. Charlie eventually reappeared, still clutching a handful of crumbs and a scrap of a paper bag.’
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For Jim Charters and his brother Jack, the assistance of one woman would bring far greater relief than they would realize for some time. Passing though one French village they handed over a hastily scribbled note to one of the women waiting by the roadside. On a page torn from a paybook, they had written their names and the address of their parents back in Ashington, Northumberland. It was dangerous for the women to have any contact with the prisoners; indeed some men later recalled seeing civilians forced to join the marching columns for having dared to feed or talk to the prisoners. For Jim Charters, the bravery of such women helped revise his thoughts about their French hosts. As he watched them being pushed, kicked and hit with rifle-butts he could not but admire the fact that they still tried to assist the prisoners. As Norman Barnett remembered it: ‘The Frenchwomen had guts – not like their menfolk!’

Of course, not all of the French civilians were charitable to the British prisoners. Dick Taylor, marching away from St Valery, remembered: ‘In some places French farmers stood there with shotguns to make sure their potato and turnip piles weren’t pillaged.’ The sight of farmers with shotguns was enough to deter even the most desperate of men. Yet in some cases opposition from the locals made little difference. Passing through a French village, Gordon Barber, who was no stranger to using his fists when necessary, found a butcher’s shop: ‘I had a few francs so I went in this little shop and saw this piece of meat hanging on a hook. I said, “How much?” He said, “No, no, no.” So I slapped the coin on the counter, ripped the meat off the hook, right handed him – smacked him out of the way a bit sharpish – but he didn’t go down. And I ran back into the crowd.’

The behaviour of the shotgun-wielding French farmers and defensive shopkeepers was a reflection of the relationship between many of the British prisoners and their French counterparts. There was certainly little love lost between the two factions. The efforts of the Germans to engender antagonism between the remnants of the defeated armies were helped by a mistrust that already existed among some of the troops. After a failed escape, Sergeant Stephen Houthakker was transported to Cambrai, where he was held amid hordes of French colonial troops. When he later wrote of his experiences he did not bother to conceal his contempt: ‘To my sorrow found myself thrown in with some of the most degraded and filthy men it has ever been my lot to meet. French Moroccans, Senegalese, Arabs, the scum of the world, members of the infamous Foreign Legion, tough men each and every one of them. Comforts of life and ordinary hygiene were as foreign to them as was fighting and honour.’
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As a professional soldier schooled in the proudest traditions of the British Army, he could not reconcile military life with what he saw before him: ‘In this hell I spent the two worst weeks of my existence. Lousy, hungry, depressed, but practising to the full the survival of the fittest theory.’
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Not all the British had such a low opinion of their allies. It was easy for both factions to blame each other – the British criticizing French fighting abilities and the poor showing of the French High Command, the French cursing the British for heading back to the Channel coast and abandoning their allies to certain defeat. Yet some of the defeated armies were able to view the débâcle from a wider perspective. At St Valery John Christie joined a group of drunken Frenchmen. Christie was no more impressed with the Frenchmen than he was with the antics of some of the British, such as the officers who had changed into their best uniforms ready to surrender with honour. The Frenchmen offered him cognac, which he shared: ‘I was duty bound to accept a swig to help maintain the very shaky entente cordiale. Don’t get me wrong, I could see things from their side, it was one thing to fight and die for “
La Patrie
”, quite another to die covering for us so that we could get off the hook.’
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Despite Christie’s thoughtful assessment of the situation, there were very real reasons for the British prisoners to feel a genuine antipathy towards their allies. As the United Nations later reported: ‘The fact that French prisoners of war, in much larger numbers, were comparatively well provided with food . . . tends to prove that the virtual starvation of British prisoners of war and the inadequate arrangements for their accommodation was deliberate.’
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It was an accurate assessment of the situation. Although there were genuine moments of kindness, such as when a German guard forced French soldiers to share their wine with British soldiers, most of the time the British faced appalling discrimination. While the Germans kicked over buckets and beat back Frenchwomen attempting to feed the British, they allowed the French troops to accept gifts from the villagers. The story was replicated throughout the march. One group, who had begun their march in Calais, finished their first day’s march in a stadium full of French and Belgian troops. They remained there for just one hour, then left again without being given any food. The following day, still unfed, they marched past their allies as they ate a meal of macaroni and army biscuits. It may have not been the most enticing of meals, but to the watching Britons it seemed like a feast – one to which they had not been invited. This became the pattern of treatment as experienced by the majority of marchers. The French received their rations first while the British were thrown the scraps.

The discrimination was noted by many among the columns. Eric Reeves was part of a group of around 5,000 British prisoners outnumbered three to one by French soldiers. Each night, as the column came to a halt, the Germans set up their horse-drawn field kitchen, allowing the famished marchers the comforting sight of its chimney smoking.It was always soup, of a sort. Then they’d shout, ‘All of the English over here – Do not sit down. All of the French here. French first.’ So the Froggies went off and filled their tins. Then the Germans would call us. The first blokes would get there and the lids would come down and the cooks would say, ‘All finished!’ They did that every day. It was psychological warfare because eventually the boys started muscling in on the French and pinching their soup. So the Froggies hated us. The first bit of French I learned was ‘
Poussez pas
’, Don’t push – you’d hear them all shouting out when our blokes were going for their food.

Gordon Barber decided to take matters into his own hands: ‘I saw the French getting issued dripping from these big vats. I had a French overcoat I’d pinched so I could go and get my share. As I came away with mine the French spotted my British jacket and I had to run for it. This Froggie went to grab it, he kicked my arm, so I nutted him hard. So I ran like bleedin’ anything and got back to my mates.’

It was not only the humiliation of being fed from the French leftovers that made life increasingly unbearable for the British troops. Reginald Collins of the Gloucestershire Regiment recorded the misery of being forced to march in a mixed column. The Frenchmen in the column were marched ahead of the British until a substantial gap had opened up. Then the Frenchmen were allowed to rest and the trailing British were made to run after them: ‘To encourage us in this the German guards stood on both sides of the column swinging the butt ends of their rifles and sticks and clubs. This treatment lasted all day, the heat was intense and many prisoners fell at the side of the road from exhaustion. Those who fell were kicked until they regained their feet. For the whole of this day we had no water.’
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This continued throughout the day with the British seldom allowed to rest; instead they were constantly marching or running.