But they were enough, considering the size of Taylor’s little ships. Most held fewer than 40 at a time. The Mermaiden was so crowded the helmsman couldn’t see to steer. Directions had to be shouted over a babble of French voices.
As Taylor loaded the last of the marines, a German machine gun began chattering less than half a mile away. No more time to lose. Packing a final load into the Marlborough, he shoved off around 2:00 a.m. on the 4th. Dodging one of the many small craft darting about the harbor, Marlborough scraped over some fallen masonry and lost both her propellers and rudder. She was finally towed home by the large yacht Gulzar, piloted by a Dominican monk.
Mishaps multiplied. Nobody really knew the port, and the only light was from the flames consuming the waterfront. The Portsmouth Admiral’s barge ran into a pile of rubble and was abandoned… .The trawler Kingfisher was rammed by a French fishing boat… The minesweeper Kellet ran aground against the western breakwater. A tug towed her off, but she was too badly damaged to be of further use. Wake-Walker sent her home empty—one of only two ships not used this last hectic night.
The Admiral himself nipped about the harbor in MTB 102, busily juggling his fleet. The Quai Félix Faure was cleared … the eastern mole was under control … but the short jetty just west of the mole was a problem. The whole French 32nd Infantry Division seemed to be converging on it. At 1:45 a.m. Wake-Walker guided over a large transport, then the packet Royal Sovereign to help lift the crowd.
On the jetty, Commander Troup landed from the War Department’s boat Swallow, took one look at the confusion, and appointed himself pier master. His chief problem was the usual one: the French troops refused to be separated from their units. Enlisting the help of a French staff officer, Captain le Comte de Chartier de Sadomy, Troup urged the poilus to forget their organization. In two hours they would all meet again in England. Take any boat. They seemed to understand: the big Tynwald came alongside, loaded 4,000 men in half an hour.
2:00 a.m., June 4, two small French torpedo boats, VTB 21 and VTB 26, rumbled out of the harbor. Admiral Abrial and General Fagalde were leaving with their staffs. Behind them the massive steel doors of Bastion 32 now lay open and unguarded. Inside there was only a clutter of smashed coding machines and burnt-out candles.
2:25, gunboat Locust, stationed off the harbor mouth, received her last load of troops from Admiral Taylor’s little ships. Her skipper, Lieutenant-Commander Costobadie, had done his duty, and it must have been a temptation to run for Dover. But he still had room; so he went instead to the eastern mole and topped off with another 100 men. Finally satisfied that Locust could hold no more, he headed for home.
2:30, the last French ships, a convoy of trawlers commanded by Ensign Bottex, emerged from the innermost part of the harbor. Packed with troops fresh from the fighting, he too turned toward Dover.
2:40, “heartened by bagpipes playing us out,” the destroyer Malcolm slipped her lines at the eastern mole. Twenty minutes later the last destroyer of all, Express, left with a full load, including Commander Buchanan’s berthing party.
3:00, French troops still crowded the short jetty just west of the mole. Commander Troup had been loading transports all night, but the jetty continued to fill up with new arrivals. Now the last big transport had gone, and Troup was waiting for a motorboat assigned to pick up himself, General Lucas of the French 32nd Division, and the general’s staff at 3:00. The minutes ticked by, but no sign of the. boat—not surprising on a night like this when a thousand things could go wrong.
Troup was beginning to worry, when at 3:05 the War Department’s boat Pigeon happened by. She was miraculously empty, making a final swing through the harbor. Troup hailed her, and Sub-Lieutenant C. A. Gabbett-Mullhallen brought his craft alongside.
A thousand French soldiers stood at attention four deep, as General Lucas prepared to leave. Clearly they would be left behind—no longer a chance of escape—yet not a man broke ranks. They remained motionless, the light from the flames playing off their steel helmets.
Lucas and his staff walked to the edge of the pier, turned, clicked their heels, and gave the men a final salute. Then the officers turned again and made the long climb down the ladder to the waiting boat. Troup followed, and at 3:20 Sub-Lieutenant Gabbett-Mullhallen gunned his engines, quickly moving out of the harbor.
As these last ships left Dunkirk, they met a strange procession creeping in. Destroyer Shikari was in the lead. Following her were three ancient freighters, and flanking them were two speedboats, MTB 107 and MA/SB 10. Captain Dangerfield was once again trying to bottle up the harbor by sinking block ships across the entrance. As the little flotilla moved into position, they were buffeted by the bow waves of the last ships racing out. Lieutenant John Cameron, skipper of the MTB 107, pondered the trick of fate that had brought him, “a settled barrister of 40,” to be an actor in this awesome drama.
Suddenly an explosion. Enemy planes had apparently mined the channel—a parting present from the Luftwaffe. The first did no damage, but a second exploded under the leading block ship Gourko, sinking her almost instantly. As the two speedboats fished the survivors out of the water, the remaining block ships steamed on. But now there were only two of them, and the job would be that much harder.
While the block ships edged deeper into the harbor, Shikari paid a final visit to the eastern mole. It had been nearly empty when Express left, but now it was beginning to fill up again. Some 400 French troops tumbled aboard, including General Barthélémy, commanding the Dunkirk garrison. At 3:20 Shikari finally cast off—the last British warship to leave Dunkirk.
But not the last British vessel. Occasional motorboats were still slipping out, as Captain Dangerfield’s two block ships reached the designated spot. With helms hard over, they attempted to line up at right angles to the Channel, but once again the tide and current were too strong. As on the previous night, the attempt was largely a failure. Hovering nearby, MA/SB 10 picked up the crews.
Dawn was now breaking, and Lieutenant Cameron decided to take MTB 107 in for one last look at the harbor. For nine days the port had been a bedlam of exploding bombs and shells, the thunder of artillery, the hammering of antiaircraft guns, the crash of falling masonry; now suddenly it was a graveyard—the wrecks of sunken ships … abandoned guns … empty ruins … silent masses of French troops waiting hopelessly on the pierheads and the eastern mole. There was nothing a single, small motorboat could do; sadly, Cameron turned for home. “The whole scene,” he later recalled, “was filled with a sense of finality and death; the curtain was ringing down on a great tragedy.”
But there were still Englishmen in Dunkirk, some of them very much alive. Lieutenant Jimmy Langley, left behind because the wounded took up too much room in the boats, now lay on a stretcher at the 12th Casualty Clearing Station near the outskirts of town. The station—really a field hospital—occupied a huge Victorian house in the suburb of Rosendaël. Capped by an odd-looking cupola with a pointed red roof, the place was appropriately called the Chapeau Rouge.
The wounded had long ago filled up all the rooms in the house, then overflowed into the halls and even the grand staircase. Now they were being put into tents in the surrounding gardens. A French field hospital also lay on the grounds, adding to the crowd of casualties. The total number varied from day to day, but on June 3 there were about 265 British wounded at Chapeau Rouge.
Tending them were a number of medical officers and orderlies. They were there as the result of a curious but most fateful lottery. Even before the decision to leave behind the wounded, it had been clear that some would not be able to go. They were simply too badly hurt to be moved. To take care of them, orders had come down that one medical officer and 10 orderlies must be left behind for every 100 casualties. Since there were 200 to 300 wounded, this meant 3 officers and 30 orderlies would have to stay.
How to choose? Colonel Pank, the Station’s commanding officer, decided that the fairest course was to draw lots, and at 2:00 p.m. on June 1 the staf
f gathered for what was bound to be a very tense occasion. Two separate lotteries were held—one among the 17 medical officers, the other among the 120 orderlies.
In each case all the names were put in a hat, and appropriately enough an English bowler was found in the cellar and used for this purpose. The rule was “first out, first to go”; the last names drawn would be those left behind. The Church of England chaplain drew for the enlisted men; the Catholic padre, Father Cockie O’Shea, drew for the officers.
Major Philip Newman, Chief of Surgery, listened to the drawing in agonized silence as the names were read out. Ten … twelve … thirteen, and still his name remained in the hat. As it turned out, he had good reason to fear: he was number seventeen of seventeen.
Later that afternoon a farewell service was held in the cupola. At the end Father O’Shea took Newman by the hand and gave him his crucifix. “This will see you home,” the padre said.
One of those who stayed took no part at all in the lottery. Private W.B.A. Gaze was strictly a volunteer. An auctioneer and appraiser in peacetime, Gaze had been a machine gunner with a motor maintenance unit until the great retreat. Separated from his outfit, he had taken over an ambulance abandoned by its regular driver and was now a fixture at 12th CCS. The other men might know more about medicine, but he had skills of his own that came in handy at a time like this. He was a born scrounger, could fix anything, and had even located a new well, when Chapeau Rouge was running out of water. Major Newman regarded him as an “honorary member” of the unit, and Gaze reciprocated—of course he wasn’t going to leave.
Most of the staff pulled out on the night of June 1. The 2nd was largely spent making futile trips to and from the docks, as false reports circulated that a hospital ship had arrived. That night a dispatch rider roared up with the news that walking wounded could be evacuated, if brought to the eastern mole. This last chance of escape was seized by many men who, under any normal definition, were stretcher cases. They rose from their cots and limped, hobbled, even crawled to the waiting trucks. One man used a pair of crutches made from a coal hammer and a garden rake.
June 3 was a day of waiting. The French troops were falling back, and Newman’s main job was to keep them from occupying the house and using it for a last stand. A large red cross, made from strips of cloth, had been laid out on the lawn; the Luftwaffe had so far respected it; and Newman wanted to keep things that way. The French commandant seemed to understand. He didn’t occupy the house, but he did continue digging on the grounds. Occasional shells began falling on the garden.
At dusk the French began pulling out, retiring still further into Dunkirk, and it was clear to everyone at Chapeau Rouge that the next visitors would be German. When, was anybody’s guess, but the white German “victory rockets” were getting close.
While the wounded lay quietly on their cots and stretchers, the staff gathered in the basement of the house for a last dinner. They ate the best food they could find, topped off by some excellent red wine from the Chapeau Rouge cellar. Someone produced a concertina, but no one had the heart to sing.
Upstairs, Major Newman sought out a wounded German pilot named Helmut, who had been shot down and brought in several days earlier. It was clear to both that the roles of captor and captive were about to be reversed, but neither made much of it. What Newman did want was a crash course in German, to be used when the enemy arrived. Patiently Helmut taught him phrases like Rotes Kreuz and Nichts Schiessen—“Red Cross” … “Don’t shoot.”
By midnight, June 3–4, the last French defenders had retired toward the docks, and there was nothing to do but keep waiting. As a sort of reception committee, Newman posted two enlisted men by the gate. An officer was stationed on the porch outside the front door. They had orders to call him as soon as the first Germans appeared. Then he laid out a clean uniform for the surrender and curled up on the stone floor of the kitchen for a few hours’ sleep.
On the front steps Jimmy Langley lay on a stretcher just outside the front door. It was so hot and sticky—and the flies were so bad—he had asked to be moved into the open. He too was waiting, and even as he waited, he began thinking about what might happen next. He was a Coldstream Guards officer, and in the last war, the Coldstream were not known for taking prisoners. Had that reputation carried over? If so, there seemed a good chance that the Germans would pay him back in kind. He finally had a couple of orderlies carry his stretcher to a spot near the gate and set it down there. If he was going to be killed, he might as well get it over with.
15
Deliverance
“THE GERMANS ARE HERE!” a voice was shouting, as an unknown hand shook Major Newman awake at 6 o’clock on the morning of June 4. Dead tired, Newman had been deeply asleep, even though lying on the stone floor of the kitchen at Chapeau Rouge. He gradually pulled himself together and began putting on the clean uniform he had laid out for the surrender.
Down near the gate Jimmy Langley lay on his stretcher watching a small party of German infantrymen enter the grounds. They might be about to kill him, but they looked as tired as the British. As they walked up the drive toward him, Langley decided his best chance lay in playing to the hilt the role of “wounded prisoner.” Pointing to the Red Cross flag on the cupola, he gasped a request for water and a cigarette. The leader of the squad gave him both. Then Langley asked, a little tentatively, what would they like from him.
“Marmelade,” was the reply. For the first time Langley felt there was hope. No one about to kill him would be thinking primarily of marmalade.
Troops were pouring into the grounds now—some dirty and unkempt, but most freshly washed and cleanly shaven, the way Supermen should look. They fanned out over the yard, checking the tents and stretchers to make sure no armed Allied soldiers were still lurking about. “For you the war is over,” a trooper curtly told Guardsman Arthur Knowles, lying wounded on his stretcher.
Satisfied that Chapeau Rouge met the standards of Geneva, the Germans relaxed and were soon mixing with their captives, swapping rations and sharing family pictures. Major Newman stood on the porch watching the scene, resplendent in his clean uniform but with no officer to take his surrender.
In two hours these Germans pushed on, replaced by administrative personnel who were far less friendly. The curious bond that sometimes exists between enemies at the front is rarely felt in the rear.
“Wo ist das Meer?” a departing infantryman asked Jimmy Langley, still lying on his stretcher. Langley had no idea where the sea was, but pointed confidently where he thought it might be. This couldn’t be “helping the enemy”—they’d find it anyhow.
The French guns were completely silent now. As the Germans moved into town, white flags began sprouting everywhere. Sensing no opposition, Major Chrobek of the 18th Infantry Division piled his men into trucks and lurched through the debris-filled streets right to the waterfront. “Then our hearts leapt,” exulted the division’s normally staid Daily Intelligence Summary: “Here was the sea—the sea!”
At 8:00 a.m. a detachment of German marines took over Bastion 32. There was, of course, nobody there except a handful of headquarters clerks left behind by the departing generals and admirals.
Twenty minutes later a German colonel rolled up to Dunkirk’s red brick Hôtel de Ville in the center of town. Here he was met by General Beaufrère, commanding the 68th Infantry and senior French officer left in the city. Beaufrère had taken off his steel helmet and now sported a gold-leaf kept for the surrender ceremony. Sometime between 9:00 and 10:00 a.m. he met with General Lieutenant Friedrich-Carl Cranz, commanding the 18th Division, and formally handed over the city.
By 9:30 German units reached the foot of the eastern mole, but here they faced a problem. French troops were packed so tightly on the mole, it was impossible to round them up quickly. As late as 10:00 o’clock, a French medical officer, Lieutenant Docteur Le Doze, escaped from the seaward end of the mole with 30 men in a ship’s lifeboat.
It’s hard to say exactly whe
n Dunkirk officially fell. The Army Group B war diary put the time at 9:00 a.m. … X Corps said 9:40 … the 18th Army, 10:15. Perhaps the most appropriate time, symbolically anyhow, was the moment the swastika was hoisted on the eastern mole—10:20 a.m.
Now it was a case of mopping up. While Beaufrère dickered with Cranz, small parties of his 68th Division tried to escape to the west, but they were soon run down and captured. General Alaurent led a group from the 32nd Division in an attempt to break out via Gravelines, but they were rounded up at Le Clipon, just outside Dunkirk.
By 10:30 the last shots had been fired and the city was at peace. At Chapeau Rouge Major Newman could hear a golden oriole singing from the top of the oak tree close to the mansion. “This was his day.”
A handful of dazed civilians began emerging from the city’s cellars. Staring at the blackened walls and piles of rubble, a gendarme—covered with ribbons from the First World War—cried like a child. On the rue Clemenceau a small fox terrier sat guarding the body of a French soldier. Somewhere in the ruins a portable radio, miraculously intact, was playing “The Merry Widow Waltz.”
Father Henri Lecointe, assistant curate of Saint Martin’s parish, picked his way through the rubble to his church. The door was blown in, the windows gone, but it still stood. Entering, he was surprised to hear the organ playing a Bach chorale. Two German soldiers were trying it out—one at the console, the other in the loft, pumping the bellows.
Foreign correspondents—never far behind when the Wehrmacht was victorious—poked among the ruins, interviewing survivors. The Assistant Chief of Police, André Noël, remarked that he was an Alsatian from Metz and had served in the German Army during the First War.
The World War II Collection Page 29
