For the French side of Dunkirk I found especially useful the official French Navy study, Les Forces Maritime du Nord, 1939–1940, prepared by Dr. Hervé Cras. It is not generally available to the public, but I was given access to a set, and also to several important letters written by Admiral J. Odend’hal, head of the French Naval Mission in London, to his superiors in Paris.
Published memoirs of the French leaders are not very satisfactory. Premier Reynaud’s In the Thick of the Fight, 1955, is heavy and self-serving. (He even calls it his “Testimony.”) General Weygand’s Recalled to Service, 1952, comes from an obviously bitter man. Jacques Mordal’s Dunkerque, 1968, tries to combine a memoir with straight history. ‘Jacques Mordal,” incidentally, is a pseudonym used by the historian Hervé Cras. Edmond Perron’s Journal d’un Dunkerquois, 1977, depicts what it was like to be an ordinary citizen of Dunkirk trapped in the battle.
Good general histories include Rear-Admiral Paul Auphan (with Jacques Mordal), The French Navy in World War II, 1957; General André Beaufre, 1940: The Fall of France, 1967; Guy Chapman, Why France Collapsed, 1968; and William L. Shirer, The Collapse of the Third Republic, 1969.
The German archival sources are amazingly complete. It’s difficult to understand how, in the final Götterdämmerung of the Third Reich, so much could have survived, but the very swiftness of the collapse enabled the Allied armies to seize vast quantities of records intact, to be examined and later returned to the owners.
It’s all now in the lovely city of Freiburg, meticulously filed in the Bundesarchiv/Militärarchiv, and the Dunkirk material can be easily located. I found most useful the war diaries and situation reports of Army Groups A and B; the Sixth and Eighteenth Armies; IX, X, XIV, and XIX Corps; 18th Infantry Division; 1st, 2nd, and 10th Panzer Divisions; Luftwaffe Air Fleet 2; Fliegerkorps VIII; First Naval War Command; the motor torpedo boat 550; and the submarine U 62.
The Bundesarchiv also contains a number of unpublished firsthand accounts covering the Dunkirk campaign. File Z A3/50 includes recollections of Field-Marshal Kesselring and Luftwaffe Generals Hans Seidemann and Josef Schmidt. File RH37/6335 contains a vivid account by an unidentified soldier in XIX Corps, covering the whole period from the dash to the sea on May 20 to the fall of Bergues, June 2. File Z 305 is the published diary of Hans Waitzbauer, an observant young radio operator serving in the 102nd Artillery Regiment.
The most important diary of all was that kept by General Franz Haider, Chief of the Army General Staff at the time of Dunkirk. It provides not only an hour-by-hour record of events but candid comments on the various personalities at OKH and OKW. The copy I used is an English translation on file at the Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte in Stuttgart.
The contemporary published material faithfully follows the Nazi line, but the press does convey the feeling of euphoria that swept Germany that intoxicating May and June of 1940. Three good examples: Der Adler, June 11 and 25; Die Wehrmacht, June 19; and Völkischer Beobachter, almost any day.
The German books of the period are just as slanted, but occasionally something useful turns up. Fritz Otto Busch, Unsere Schnellboote im Kanal (no date) gives a good picture of S Boat operations. Herbert W. Borchert, Panzerkampf im Westen (1940) has interesting anecdotes on the thrust of the panzers. Heinz Guderian, Mit den Panzern in Ost una West (1942) is really a compilation of eyewitness stories brought out under Guderian’s name, but it does include a good piece on Calais by a Colonel Fischer, who was there. Hans Henkel, Blende auf-Tiefangriff (1941) has a chapter on Dunkirk that gives a vivid picture of the utter desolation that greeted the entering German troops.
The years since the war have seen an enormous output of German articles and books touching on Dunkirk. The propaganda is gone, often replaced by wishful thinking, second-guessing, and buck-passing. Some of these sources have English translations: Guenther Blumentritt, Von Runstedt: The Soldier and the Man, 1952; Adolf Galland, The First and the Last, 1954; Heinz Guderian, Panzer Leader, 1952; Hans-Adolf Jacobsen, Decisive Battles of World War II, 1965; Albert Kesselring, Memoirs, 1953; Werner Kreipe, The Fatal Decisions, 1956; Walter Warlimont, Inside Hitler’s Headquarters, 1964. Pertinent interviews can be found in B. H. Liddell Hart, The German Generals Talk, 1948.
Hitler’s “halt order” is picked apart by all these authorities, as it is by other, less familiar writers who have not yet been translated into English: Wolf von Aaken, Inferno im Westen, 1964; Peter Bor, Gespräche mil Haider, 1950; Gert Buchheit, Hitler der Feldherr; die Zerstörung einst Légende, 1958; Gerhard Engel, Heeres-Adjutant bei Hitler, 1938–1943, 1974; Ulrich Liss, Westfront 1939–1940, 1959.
For general background I often turned to Len Deighton’s Blitzkrieg: From the Rise of Hitler to the Fall of Dunkirk, 1980; William L. Shirer’s classic The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich; Telford Taylor’s The March of Conquest, 1958; and John Toland’s immensely readable Adolf Hitler, 1978. All helped fill me in, and Taylor’s appendices proved indispensable.
Acknowledgments
“MY OWN FEELINGS ARE rather of disgust,” writes a member of the 67th Field Regiment, Royal Artillery. “I saw officers throw their revolvers away … I saw soldiers shooting cowards as they fought to be first in a boat.”
“Their courage made our job easy,” recalls a signalman with the Naval Shore Party, describing the same men on the same beaches, “and I was proud to have known them and to have been born of their generation.”
To a clerk in 11th Brigade Headquarters, the evacuation was “absolute chaos.” To a man in III Corps Headquarters, it was a “debacle” … a “disgrace.” But to a dispatch rider with the 4th Division, it was thrilling evidence “that the British were an invincible people.”
Could they all be talking about the same battle? As I pieced the story together, sometimes it seemed that the only thing the men of Dunkirk agreed upon was their desire to be helpful. Over 500 answered my “call to arms,” and there seemed no limit to the time and trouble they were willing to take.
Lieutenant-Colonel James M. Langley spent three days showing me around the perimeter, with special attention to the segment of the line held by the 2nd Coldstream Guards. Harold Robinson, Hon. General Secretary of the Dunkirk Veterans Association, arranged for me to join the DVA’s annual pilgrimage in 1978. It was a splendid opportunity to get to know some of these men personally, listen to their recollections, and feel the ties that bind them together. I’m especially grateful for the time given me by the Reverend Leslie Aitken, Fred Batson, and Arthur Elkin.
The DVA Headquarters in Leeds generously put me in touch with the organization’s branches all over the world, and as a result I’ve received valuable assistance from such varied places as Cyprus, Zimbabwe, Malta, Libya, Italy, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. The London Branch was particularly helpful, which calls for an extra word of thanks to Stan Allen, Ted Rabbets, and Bob Stephens. For making my cause so widely known, I’m indebted to Captain L. A. Jackson (“Jacko”), editor of the DVA’s lively Journal.
Everyone was helpful, but as the work progressed, I found myself leaning more and more on certain individuals, whom I came to regard as “my” experts in certain areas. These included the Viscount Bridgeman on events at GHQ; Captain Eric Bush on the Royal Navy; Air Vice-Marshal Michael Lyne on the RAF; Captain Stephen Roskill on the Dynamo Room; John Bridges on the Grenadier Guards; Sam Love on the Hird; W. Stanley Berry on the Small Vessels Pool; and Basil Bellamy on the Ministry of Shipping. General Sir Peter Hunt gave me a crash course on British Regiments, and it’s a lucky American indeed whose tutor on such an intricate matter is a former Chief of the Imperial General Staff.
The participants not only poured out their recollections; they cheerfully rummaged through trunks and attics for long-forgotten papers that might throw further light on their experiences. Old diaries were dusted off by A. Baldwin, J. S. Dodd, F. R. Farley, A. R. Jabez-Smith, W. P. Knight, J. M. Langley, R. W. Lee, I.F.R. Ramsay, and N. Watkin. Others sent in detailed accounts originally written when memor
ies were green—for instance, G. W. Jones, E. C. Webb, and R. M. Zakovitch. Fred Walter contributed a remarkable 31-page handwritten account of Calais, which gave a better picture of that controversial episode than anything else I’ve seen.
Families gallantly pitched in where the participants themselves had passed on. Mrs. E. Barker sent in the diary of her father, Major J. W. Gibson; Roy L. Fletcher contributed a fascinating account by his father, Seaman C. L. Fletcher. Mrs. D. Forward extracted an interesting letter from her brother Syd Metcalf. Helpful widows included Mrs. Nancy Cotton and Mrs. C. Smales.
Two cases deserve special mention. First, David F. Ramsay made available some personal correspondence of his distinguished father, Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay, including a file of letters to Mrs. Ramsay that vividly depicts the blend of desperation and determination that permeated the Dynamo Room. Second, through the good offices of my friend Sharon Rutman, Mrs. Sylvia Sue Steell contributed a letter from her gallant uncle, Commander Charles Herbert Lightoller. It mirrors the spirit of the men who sailed the little ships, and shows that Commander Lightoller had lost none of the zeal that served him so well as Second Officer on the Titanic.
Other firsthand accounts were collected and forwarded to me by various branches of the DVA, and for this good work I’m particularly grateful to E. C. Webb of the Glasgow Branch and A. Hordell of the Stoke-on-Trent Branch. A special word of thanks, too, for my friend Edward de Groot, who called my attention to Lieutenant Lodo van Hamel, the only skipper in Admiral Ramsay’s rescue fleet to fly the Dutch flag. Further details on van Hamel’s service were generously provided by Commander F. C. van Oosten, Royal Dutch Navy, Ret., Director of Naval History.
In France I was lucky to have the all-out assistance of Hervé Cras, Assistant Director of the Musée de la Marine, who survived the destroyer Jaguar and the minesweeper Emile Deschamps, both lost at Dunkirk. Besides being a participant, Dr. Cras lent me important French records and arranged for two key interviews: one with Rear-Admiral Paul Auphan, who explained the thinking at Darlan’s headquarters; and the other with Vice-Admiral Gui de Toulouse-Lautrec, who described the loss of his destroyer, Siroco. I only wish Hervé Cras were still alive to read these words of heartfelt gratitude.
At a different level F. Summers (then Fernand Schneider) provided a fascinating glimpse of life on a French minesweeping trawler. Mr. Summers came from Dunkirk, and he enjoyed the unusual distinction of starting the war in the French Navy and ending it in the Royal Navy—all in all, a unique point of view.
In Germany I concentrated on old aviators, since so much of Dunkirk revolved around the successes and failures of the Luftwaffe. I felt my questions were answered with candor, and I’m deeply grateful to Wolfgang Falck, Adolf Galland, and Hans Mahnert. Colonel Rudi Erlemann was only a small boy in 1940, but by the time I cornered him he was Air Attaché at the German Embassy in Washington, and full of insight on the Luftwaffe’s performance.
For other glimpses of the German side, I’m indebted to Willy Feigner, a signalman with the 56th Infantry Division; Vice-Admiral Friedrich Ruge, a wise old sailor full of thoughtful comment on the German Navy’s performance; Georg Smidt Scheeder, photographer with Goebbels’s propaganda company; and Albert Speer, who had at least one conversation with Hitler touching on Dunkirk. Speer felt, incidentally, that anyone who believed that Hitler wanted to “let the English escape” didn’t understand the Fuehrer very well.
The written material on Dunkirk is voluminous; fortunately an army of dedicated archivists and librarians stands ready to aid the probing scholar. At the Imperial War Museum in London, Dr. Noble Frankland’s helpful staff made me feel like one of the family. Rose Coombs, Keeper of Special Collections, is a heroine to countless American researchers, and I’m no exception.
David Brown, head of the Naval Historical Branch, gave me a warm welcome, and his assistant, Miss M. Thirkettle, made available her encyclopedic knowledge of what ships were and what were not at Dunkirk. Andrew Naylor, Librarian of the Royal United Services Institute, and Richard Brech of the Royal Air Force Museum both had many useful suggestions.
The Secretaries of the various Regimental Headquarters scattered throughout Britain were invariably helpful. I’m especially grateful to Lieutenant-Colonel F.A.D. Betts of the Coldstream Guards; Major Oliver Lindsay of the Grenadier Guards; Lieutenant-Colonel R. E. Humphreys of the Durham Light Infantry; Lieutenant-Colonel H.L.T. Radice of the Gloucestershire Regiment; and Lieutenant-Colonel W.R.H. Charley of the Royal Irish Rangers. Miss E. M. Keen of the Queen Victoria’s Rifles Association not only produced records but organized a session where I could meet and talk with several of the veterans of Calais.
On the nautical side, the Association of Dunkirk. Little Ships was always helpful in identifying various vessels. This organization must be the most unusual yacht club in the world: the boat, rather than the owner, is elected to membership. Through the Association’s efforts, 126 of the Dunkirk little ships have now been carefully preserved. The group’s Archivist, John Knight, knows them all and generously shares his knowledge. A special word of thanks to Harry Moss, owner of Braymar, who hosted me at the 1978 Fitting-Out Dinner.
A visit to Tough’s Boatyard paid great dividends in learning how these little ships were collected and manned. Mr. Robert O. Tough, present head of the family enterprise, took time off from a busy day to dig out the yard’s files on the evacuation. I was unable to get to Tilbury, but that didn’t deter Mr. C. E. Sedgwick, Group Secretary of the Tilbury Contracting Group. He generously struck off for me photocopies of the actual reports submitted by the masters of three of the company’s dredges at Dunkirk.
The German archivists matched their British counterparts in patience and helpfulness. Nothing seemed too much trouble, as they tirelessly pulled books and records for my perusal. Heartfelt thanks to the splendid staffs at the Bundesarchiv/Militärarchiv in Freiburg, at the Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte in Stuttgart, and at the Institut für Zeitgeschichte in Munich. The Bundesarchiv in Koblenz is a treasure house of photographs, and I appreciate the effort here, too, in providing everything I needed.
A writer can always use helpful leads, and fortunately there were any number of knowledgeable people on both sides of the Atlantic willing to point me in the right direction. In England this loyal band included Leo Cooper, David Curling, David Divine, Dick Hough, Peter Kemp, Ronald Lewin, Roger Machell, Martin Middlebrook, Denis Richards, Stephen Roskill, and Dan Solon. In America there were Dolph Hoehling, Tom Mahoney, Sam Meek, Drew Middleton, Roger Pineau, Ed Schaefer, Jack Seabrook, Bill Stump, and John Toland. Some, like Ronald Lewin and John Toland, took time out from their own books to help me—a sacrifice that perhaps only another writer can truly appreciate.
One bit of unusual generosity deserves separate mention. In 1970 the late Robert Carse wrote Dunkirk—1940, an interesting book that made use of many firsthand accounts. Ten years later—to my grateful surprise—Mr. Carse’s daughter Jean Mitchell and a family friend, Vice-Admiral Gordon McLintock, USN (Ret.), turned over to me Mr. Carse’s notes and correspondence with various Dunkirk participants. Although in the end I did not include any of this material in my book, it served as valuable background and a useful cross-check on my own sources. I deeply appreciate the thoughtfulness of both Mrs. Mitchell and Admiral McLintock.
There remain those who worked directly on the project over the long haul. Marielle Hoffman performed all sorts of heroics as my interpreter/translator in France. Karola Gillich did the same in Germany. I’m also indebted to my friend Roland Hauser, who scanned for me the German press coverage of Dunkirk in 1940 and took on several special research assignments.
In England Caroline Larken excelled in lining up interviews, checking various points, and helping me screen the press. Alexander Peters did useful reconnaissance at the PRO. Susan Chadwick efficiently handled the traffic at Penguin as the accounts poured in. My editor there, Eleo Gordon, constantly performed services above and beyond the call of duty.
In
New York Scott Supplee came to town intending to write short-story fiction—and stayed to become the city’s greatest authority on British regimental histories. Preston Brooks, whose father did research for me in 1960, carried on the family tradition. His fluent knowledge of French also came in handy at a critical time. Patricia Heestand not only carried out her share of research, but did yeoman work in compiling the List of Contributors and the Index. Colin Dawkins lent his shrewd eye to the selection and arrangement of illustrations. At Viking my editor, Alan Williams, was as patient and perceptive as ever.
Finally, there are those who lived with the book on an almost daily basis. Dorothy Hefferline handled the voluminous correspondence and helped out on all sorts of dire emergencies. The long-suffering Florence Gallagher deserves a medal for completing her 34th year of deciphering my foolscap.
But all these people—helpful as they were—would not have been enough without the cooperation of the participants listed on the following pages. They get no blame for my mistakes, but a full share of the credit for whatever new light is thrown on the events that unfolded at Dunkirk in the memorable spring of 1940.
List of Contributors
THE MIRACLE OF DUNKIRK was largely the achievement of British soldiers, sailors, fliers, and civilians—all working together—so it is fitting that the same combination has made possible this book. All contributors are listed alphabetically, regardless of rank or title. Where supplied, retired rank and honors are indicated.
Each name is followed by the participant’s unit or service, to give some idea of vantage point; where appropriate, ship names are also included. In a few cases the participant is no longer living, and his account has been made available by some member of the family. These names are marked by an asterisk.
The World War II Collection Page 32
