Dunkirk: The Men They Left Behind (6 page)

The impact of aerial attacks was obvious to the retreating British Army, nor was the lesson lost on the Royal Air Force. In a desperate attempt to stall the enemy advance, the RAF threw its bombers into action. They targeted bridges and railways across northern Germany and the Low Countries, hoping the damage they inflicted might win a breathing space for the hard-pressed army. Their valiant efforts cost the lives of many of the crews. In one afternoon the RAF sent seventy-one bombers against enemy targets; just forty returned to their bases – a loss of 56 per cent.

If the dive bombing of the clogged roads was not enough, the Allied forces had to contend with the constant attention of the highly mobile enemy reconnaissance units whose motorcycle patrols often followed just in the wake of the retreating forces, and who engaged the British with terrifying mortar attacks and deadly sniper fire almost as soon as they attempted to form defensive positions. The Allies also had to contend with ‘fifth columnists’. These were the German agents and spies whose job was to help sow confusion across the Allied front and in the rear areas. Long hours were wasted on fruitless sweeps through woodland, searching for non-existent spies and firing nervously into the shadows. At Boulogne officers reported how the rumours of fifth columnists created an atmosphere of distrust and tension.

Despite the impact these rumours had on morale, the real significance of the fifth columnists was in the front lines. During the siege of Calais there were numerous reports of snipers infiltrating into the town. One officer even reported a priest working as an artillery spotter from a church tower. Bob Davies recalled the fears: ‘There were eight of us put on a roadblock to check out the refugees. But how in the hell do you check out hundreds and hundreds of people, all pushing wheelbarrows and handcarts piled up with their belongings? For all we knew there could have been Germans among them.’ Without doubt some Germans did find their way through the roadblocks, as Davies later found out: ‘We realized we were being shot at from this row of old houses fifty yards away. We looked back and saw three or four French soldiers. They went into one of the houses and pulled a woman out. She had been hiding in the roof and firing at us. They belted the living daylights out of her and then carted her off.’

In similar incidents, soldiers of the 48th Division even reported ‘refugees’ pulling out weapons and attacking their positions. Although these were very real examples of the fifth columnists attacking Allied troops, there were plenty of other incidents where the truth was uncertain. Rumours had spread that the spies and saboteurs might be dressed as priests or nuns, resulting in many innocents being interrogated to determine their true identity. For those suspected of being spies, justice was rapid. When the Tyneside Scottish captured a German spy he was interrogated. Then, with no need for an investigation or trial, he was swiftly executed by a Sergeant Chambers.

The scenes of death and destruction were not entirely the work of the enemy and their agents. As British units withdrew they were forced to destroy anything they could not carry. Broken-down tanks and lorries had to be rendered unusable; petrol dumps were blown up; ammunition was dumped into rivers; assault boats were smashed by axe-wielding soldiers; even sandbags were set alight – anything that could be of use to the enemy was destroyed. At headquarters throughout northern France maps, plans, reports, stationery, official documents, and even unit diaries fed the bonfires that marked the retreat. When one regiment was forced to abandon their supply dump a total of 20,000 cigarettes were quickly divided up among the willing soldiers.

Yet amid the chaos not every unit continued the journey directly towards the coast. There were plenty among them who were given firm orders to stop and prepare defensive positions. If an entire army was going to escape from the beaches of France they would need someone to hold back the enemy. The units chosen to be the rearguard had little choice but to muster whatever weapons and ammunition they could find. The experiences of these units provided a fitting reflection of the chaos of the campaign as it would be remembered in the minds of the defeated army. When one unit of the RASC were pulled into the line to the east of the Dunkirk perimeter, they were taken off their previous duties, guarding a dump of redundant shells for howitzers that the BEF did not even possess. A company of the Gloucesters equipped itself with a French anti-tank gun. The problem was they had only practice shells for it. These were useless since they did not explode when they hit the target. The HQ staff of the same battalion found themselves unable to return enemy fire since they did not even have any rifles. When the War Office attempted to evaluate the performance of weapons in the aftermath of the defeat they were unable to report on the 2-inch mortar. Quite simply, too few high-explosive bombs had been supplied to be able to report on their effectiveness. Nor did the increasing chaos have any respect for rank. There were officers who had been separated from their men and who were adopted by other units, like the commander of an anti-aircraft battery who spent a week fighting as an infantryman.

For all those men detailed to hold off the enemy there was a sense of dread. Ever since the retreat had started, the troops had faced the realization that the enemy was far stronger and better organized than the Allied forces. Yet every day some unit – somewhere across the front lines – was thrown into battle to halt the enemy advance. Like King Canute, it seemed to the troops, they were being asked to do the impossible and hold off the tide. But unlike Canute, the troops of the rearguard were soon washed away.

Bill Holmes and the men of the Royal Sussex Regiment were among those forming the rearguard. On 22 May, at Anseghem, Holmes watched through the clear morning skies as German planes above them directed shellfire into their positions. From 4 a.m. onwards the battalion found themselves under fire. In the early afternoon they watched as their own 2nd Battalion withdrew through their lines, a sure sign the battle was not going well. Then, in the early evening, the Sussex infantrymen made contact with the enemy. This was the moment the volunteers among them had signed up for. For all among them it was a life-changing moment, the time when they first opened fire on a real, live enemy. Sid Seal, defending the battalion HQ, recalled: ‘It was a big step for us all. People have often asked me if I killed anyone. I don’t know. You are just firing at people in the distance. We were all firing. But when they go down you don’t know if it is you or the man next to you who killed them. You just think “Get him before he gets you.” The survival instinct takes over.’

For Bill Holmes it was something he had never expected, never wanted and yet could not avoid:You don’t aim as if you are shooting pigeons. You just lay in hedgerows and watch and wait making yourself scarce. I was on the Bren gun – I didn’t have trouble shooting at people, but you do feel guilty. But you can’t do anything about it. It’s awkward. When you get to war, every day you knew another of your mates would be dead. It was terrible but you got used to it – because you’ve got your mates with you. You’d go through hell for each other. We laughed about things. You had to have a sense of humour – we’d see the funny side of things, like somebody having their clothes blown off, or being shot. It seems awful but we lived with it every day.

His views were reflected by a soldier who was seen sitting on a wall reading a text in Latin. When asked why he was reading it he replied with a grim humour that Latin was useful because it was a dead language and he liked to be prepared.

That evening, following their first contact with enemy infantry, the Sussex withdrew to the River Lys. Unlike their experiences earlier in the day, the move went well and they retreated without difficulty, enjoying an uneventful march towards Courtrai. By the 25th the Sussex found themselves at Caestre, a position they held for the next three days. Having established themselves, the infantry came under fire throughout the 26th. For Bill Holmes, it was another of the violent introductions to man’s hideous appetite for destruction:We were tired from marching. That night our food was a long time coming. We were in dugouts – two per trench. The time came to get our food. My mate asked me should he go or would I? You had to run, crawl and jump to reach the food. So I went. When I got back to the trench he was dead, hit by a shell. I thought how lucky I was, ‘cause it was him or me. You can’t describe the sight – it was a charred, disfigured body still holding his rifle.

The horrors continued the next day when the battalion HQ came under artillery fire and then at midday around twenty enemy tanks approached. Sid Seal remembered the attacks on the HQ:We soon realized there was a war on! It was pretty terrible. You were seeing chaps alongside you getting killed and you just thought ‘God. Is it my turn next?’ It was a horrible thing to see chaps you’d known all your life get shot and killed or blown to pieces. I thought ‘What the devil’s happening?’ Fear just takes hold. All these silly buggers who say they were never afraid – well, they were! Everyone was. It was natural. It affects you terribly but after a time you get used to seeing dead people around you.

Thanks to the heroic efforts of soldiers manning the much-maligned Boyes anti-tank rifle – a weapon that was already obsolete since it was only effective against the enemy’s most lightly armoured tanks – six tanks were put out of action and the rest withdrew to harass the Sussex with machine-gun fire for the rest of the day. During the early afternoon a heavy rain began to fall, bringing further misery to the troops. So heavy was the rainfall that the flares they fired to call for supporting artillery fire could not be seen.

That evening, as the rain cleared, Bill Holmes and his comrades looked up to see enemy bombers in the skies above Caestre. It was an ominous sight. They slowly circled the village without opening fire. With each turn the watching infantrymen felt their mouths go dry with fear as they became certain the end had come. But for the moment they had been granted a reprieve. Like vultures circling their prey, the German pilots decided this was not a suitable target and flew off ready to unleash their destruction on some other poor target.

As the infantrymen of the Sussex Regiment held off the enemy in Caestre, they were unaware of the total chaos across the Allied front. It was clear the battle was not going well in their sector, but the position elsewhere was unclear. Even many officers were uncertain of the scale of the defeat being inflicted by the Germans. The progress of the enemy towards the Channel via the Somme valley was unknown to most. The fall of Calais and Boulogne had not been made known to them, nor the momentous decision to withdraw the army from the beaches at Dunkirk.

The fateful decision to withdraw to the coast and embark the army at Dunkirk had been brewing in the minds of the generals for some days. As early as the 19th Lord Gort had realized that unless the gap between the British and French Armies was closed the consequences would be dire. So he began to consider falling back as far as the River Somme or withdrawing to the coast. It seemed, with Army Group A facing a virtually unchallenged run towards the coast, that the retreat to the coast was the only logical option. Gort had telephoned the War Office to discuss the matter. It was the beginning of the process that saw the evacuation finally ordered on 26 May.

Oblivious of these orders, the infantrymen of the Sussex Regiment continued in their duty to fight as part of the rearguard. Meanwhile, their divisional commander, Major-General Osborne, was embroiled in his own battle. His enemy was not the German Army. Instead he was facing an indignant Frenchman. Osborne had been called to a conference in the town of Steenvoorde, to meet with General Prioux under whose command his division had been placed. Both men knew the British were withdrawing to Dunkirk but Prioux was pessimistic about the chances of escaping. He was convinced they would be slaughtered and maintained they should surrender to avoid further bloodshed. Furthermore, he insisted that evacuation was impossible and that it would cause bad feeling between the Allies. Osborne argued against the Frenchman’s defeatism, telling him that attemping to escape would be worthwhile if he could ensure the escape of French troops ready to continue the war from Britain. The Englishman told Prioux that nothing was impossible and that if he broke out ‘the whole world would acclaim his feat’.
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Osborne’s optimism was well placed – in the weeks that followed, the world was indeed astounded by the miraculous escape from Dunkirk.

It was a strange situation for Osborne. Some of the French officers openly supported the idea of fighting back to the coast. Others were gloomy, obediently siding with their defeatist commander. With no final decision made, Osborne left the French and returned to his HQ. When he returned to Prioux that evening the Frenchman was even more subdued. Osborne found him sitting with a pair of his staff officers in a room lit by just two candles. The gloom of the scene was a fitting situation for what followed. Prioux told the general he had made his final decision. He informed Osborne that he was preparing for the surrender of his forces and that the Englishman was at liberty to make his own decision over the future of the 44th Division.

It was decided that the positions would be held until midday on the 29th, when the 44th Division would withdraw towards the sea. However, Major-General Osborne was then given another shock at the headquarters of the British 3 Corps. He discovered his corps commander had decided not to wait for the time agreed with General Prioux. Instead the corps was going to commence the withdrawal at 11 p.m. that evening. The shock decision left Osborne with a dilemma – his men were fully engaged with the enemy, and could not simply disengage and head northwards. Indeed, as they spoke, the Sussex Regiment were engaging German tanks. Yet, with the rest of 3 Corps about to depart and with a French Army beside him about to surrender, Osborne had no choice but to order a withdrawal. And so at 10.30 that evening he ordered all units of the division to retreat north. There was an eerie sense of finality for the officers who received the orders. Not only were they told to destroy all excess transport but they were also instructed to destroy all secret papers. And so, the division withdrew to the nearest high ground, the Mont des Cats.