Dunkirk: The Men They Left Behind

by Sean Longden

  Gort’s assessment was spot-on: one officer in an anti-aircraft unit recalled that after four years in the Territorial Army he had learned no more than basic drill and knot-tying. In one tank unit the crews were only allowed to attend lectures on tank warfare after they had perfected sword drill. A War Office report of early 1939 had given a stark indication of the problems faced by the army:

  The instruction is incompetent. The instructors almost without exception, lack general intelligence; they have learnt the lessons parrot fashion and can only teach in that fashion; they cannot answer questions which are not in the drill book, and finally their method and speed of instruction is entirely ill-suited to their audience. They take in fact an hour to teach what their hearers can all fully grasp in five minutes . . . the system of training throughout the TA seems to have been designed to suit the stupidest class of recruits i.e. the rural ploughman.3

  There had been no more than a few short months of vigorous training to realign the mentality of the pre-war army and mould the expanding force into something fit for the modern battlefield. Despite the rigorous efforts that had taken place during 1939 – doubling the size of the Territorial Army, introducing new weapons and equipment and the induction of 200,000 men into the militia – it was easy for the men of this new army to realize that the nation was unprepared for war. Every man among them had watched in awe as the weekly newsreels displayed the might of the German war machine – modern aircraft, column after column of vicious-looking tanks, row upon row of field artillery, deadly machine-guns, tracked troop-carrying vehicles and unflinching belief in both the might and right of their cause – everything an army could need to guarantee victory.

  Despite the visible might of the German Army there remained a dogged self-belief within Britain’s armed forces. After all, by the end of April 1940 there were 394,165 British soldiers in France, with more still on their way. More than 235,000 were in the main fighting force, over 17,000 were training in France to join the main force and nearly 80,000 were performing duties in the lines of communication. In addition there were also 9,000 men on their way to join their units, over 2,500 unallocated soldiers and over 23,000 serving at various HQs. On paper, though small compared to the French Army, this seemed a formidable fighting force.

  For almost a year the media had fed the public a diet of propaganda about how their troops would ‘Hang out the washing on the Siegfried Line’ and myths about how the tanks they had seen on the German newsreels were actually made of cardboard. Such stories had boosted public confidence, but by 1940 their light-hearted tone was no longer appropriate. Almost from the very moment the Germans had launched their assault on 10 May, the smile had been wiped from the collective face of the British Army. As one NCO noted in his diary, his company went to war with just fifty rounds of ammunition per man, one box of hand grenades and only seven rounds for their Boyes anti-tank rifle. There was no longer anything humorous about being part of an army that had gone to war in requisitioned delivery lorries and butchers’ vans that had been hastily repainted as machines of warfare.

  Awaiting the assault at the Mont des Cats, Bill Holmes realized war was no longer a joke. Like all his comrades he had heard the tales of cardboard tanks and aircraft – he’d even listened to lectures on them back at his barracks – but now he knew the truth. They were real, made of steel and very, very dangerous.

  Among the thousands of men who gathered on the Mont des Cats, or streamed back towards Dunkirk, there were few that had not shared a vicious introduction to war. At daybreak on 10 May the long-awaited German offensive had begun, with the Luftwaffe striking at Allied airbases across northern France. At a quarter to six that morning the BEF received the official akrte from the French High Command and then half an hour later the British Headquarters issued the immediate order to advance. The so-called Dyle Plan entailed a sixty-mile advance through Belgium to take up positions along a seventeen-mile section of the River Dyle between Wavre and Louvain. To their left the Belgian Army were to hold the line and to their right it was the responsibility of the French. This was the moment of truth, the point at which they discovered whether all the propaganda had been no more than myth and whether their hurried training had been worthwhile. They were about to learn the harsh truth behind the prophetic words of a report written by Lord Gort exactly one month before: ‘The clash, when it comes, will be violent.’4

  Despite the violence sweeping the Low Countries, morale had remained high. Such confidence was openly expressed on 16 May when Lt-Colonel Chitty of the 4th Battalion Royal West Kent Regiment, like Bill Holmes’ regiment a part of the 44th Home Counties Division, had issued the following message to his men: ‘We are now on the eve of one of the great moments in the history of our Empire. The struggle will be hard and long but we can be confident of final victory.’5 Yet for all the confident predictions expressed publicly by some officers, there were plenty among them who were less certain of what the future might bring. Second-Lieutenant Peter Wagstaff, a young officer also serving in the 44th Division, as a platoon commander in the l/6th Battalion of the Queen’s Regiment, was certain Britain was not ready for war. He felt there was a smug complacency about Britain’s belief it could wage war against the Germans. As a twenty-year-old Supplementary Reserve officer serving in a Territorial Army battalion, of whose officers only two were regular soldiers, he recognized the lack of awareness of modern warfare displayed by so many in the British Army:

  Our defensive position was dug on the same zig-zag lines of the First World War – I still remember the specifications that the parapets had to be so high – it was chaos. Do you realize I had a Lewis gun from First World War in my platoon, instead of a Bren Gun? I think I’m right in saying we had two wireless sets in the battalion. One to brigade HQ and brigade had two, one to battalion and one to division. For messages I was given a message book. If I wanted to communicate with the platoon, or company, next door I wrote it down, gave it to my runner and said ‘Off you go’. Poor little bugger goes off and, if he didn’t get shot on the way, the message would arrive. It was incredible! There was a horrible foreboding. We didn’t know what was going to hit us.

  He later summed up the uncertainty of the period following the opening of the German offensive when he wrote of ‘a great fear engulfing me and the realization of what exactly I had to face … I passed through an hour of complete dread and the realization of the responsibility entailed by those lives under my command and not knowing whether I would come through or not.’6 He was not alone in expressing anxiety for the future. On the same day that Lt-Colonel Chitty had told his men of his optimism for the outcome of the battles ahead, the French commander in chief was admitting to Churchill that his armies had no reserves and that, effectively, all was lost.

  Despite the depth of such feeling, in the days immediately following the opening of the German offensive there was little reason for the optimists to be doubted. As they had crossed the Belgian frontier on 12 May, the men of the 44th Division could not fail to notice the enthusiastic flag-waving hordes that emerged to welcome them. Despite the welcome, there was a darker side to the experience, something that was noted by few but the officers whose job it was to make contact with the Belgian authorities. It seemed they were not gripped by the same sense of defiance displayed by their people. Maybe they just knew too much about the reality of the situation, or maybe they were simply drained by the notion that their lands would once again become the battleground of Europe’s great powers. Whatever their reason, one British intelligence officer noted how they were ‘singularly uncooperative or caught completely with their trousers down’.7 As one unit approached the border they were stopped by frontier guards who refused to allow them passage. The situation was resolved when a British lorry charged the barrier and the advance continued.

  For the troops advancing through France and into Belgium, this scarred landscape offered a constant reminder of the vicious impact of war. The names of the places they passed through were chilli
ngly familiar to them all: Ypres, Cambrai, the Somme valley, Vimy, Mons – all locations infamous for their connection with the Great War. The ruins of homes and signs of hasty repairs had been a constant sight on their travels. Most ominously, they marched past the innumerable cemeteries, shrines and memorials that had sprung up in the aftermath of war. As the men of 1940 slogged their way through the morning mist they appeared like ghosts of that earlier generation who had fallen in battle. When they looked at the names of the dead and missing, few did not feel an eerie sense of disquiet. These were the fallen comrades of their own fathers. These were the names of young men who, just like themselves, had been called to the colours to fight the Germans.

  Yet unlike their forebears, the new BEF would not halt the advancing enemy. It soon became clear the Dyle Plan had exposed the weakness of Allied planning. French thinking was submerged deep in the bunkers and tunnels of the Maginot Line. Whatever Germany did the French believed the strength of their defences would prove sufficient. Such singular faith in static defence strangled any hope of innovation. With France’s obstinate belief in the infallibility of the Maginot Line, and Lord Gort’s British Expeditionary Force placed under command of the French, the British role, along with French and Belgian units, was to hold firm on the French flank.

  The Allies had been further hampered by the Belgian government and its belief the Germans would respect its neutrality. As a result, Belgium had initially refused the British and French Armies permission to cross its frontiers to take up positions along the German border. Their naïve hopes had been cruelly dashed when the Germans punched across the frontier. Even with the British and French Armies coming to their aid, the Belgian forces had little hope of holding out. All their major defensive positions were soon redundant as the Germans advanced. As a result, the British found themselves occupying not carefully considered and fortified positions, but hastily dug trenches. The Dyle Plan had envisaged the Belgians holding out for long enough for them to fortify the line, something that had soon proved impossible. By the time most of the British units approached their intended positions the Belgian Army was already in retreat.

  Furthermore, the River Dyle did not offer the ideal defensive position since it was little more than a wide stream, with heavily wooded banks, within a valley between 500 and 1,500 yards (450–1,370 metres) wide. Added to that, the Germans advanced to occupy the eastern banks, thus holding the high ridge that gave them a commanding view of the British positions. The folly of those who had planned the move into Belgium was not lost on the men of the BEF. They had laboured for months to build comfortable dugouts and well-fortified positions across northern France. Yet these were abandoned to do battle in hastily scraped-out holes in the fields and canalsides of Belgium.

  Despite the clear deficiencies in the plan, the morale in the British Army remained high. There was a self-belief that even in defeat seemed hard to extinguish. Bill Holmes and his comrades in the Sussex Regiment were no different. As twenty-year-old Sid Seal, a pre-war Territorial and one of Holmes’ mates, explained: ‘It was all a big adventure. It was our first time out of England. We were all in it together – all mates together. I knew all the boys in the regiment. We were all enjoying it.’

  At first the situation for them and the rest of the 44th Division had been relatively safe, as they held reserve positions behind the intended front line. They had even found comfortable billets in a flax factory where the footsore infantrymen bedded down for the night in the soft flax. In the days that followed the crossing of the Belgian border they had a gradual introduction to war. There had been patrols to carry out, trenches to dig and strongpoints to fortify. Yet there were soon ominous signs of the reality of the situation on the Belgian front. Just four days after the opening of the German assault, patrols of the 4th Sussex encountered Belgian troops who had withdrawn from around Brussels. Three days later the same men found themselves sent out to control the tide of refugees who had begun to crowd the roads, all desperate not to be caught up in the battles. It was not until eleven days after the opening of the offensive that they finally faced the reality of war. On 21 May they met troops from the Royal West Kent Regiment who had been forced back from positions along the River Escaut. Attempts were also made to reconnoitre positions to the north but word came that the front ahead of them had collapsed, rendering the planned reconnaissance futile. At 5 p.m. that day the battalion moved to the village of Anseghem where they came under artillery fire. The battalion’s first fatal casualties were Captain Watson and Private Hemmings. They may have been the first, but they were certainly not the last. As the evening progressed no one bothered to keep any further record of where and when casualties were inflicted.

  The refugees encountered by the troops soon became a constant reminder of the terrifying disruption and dislocation caused by war. Military Police who attempted to control the first waves noted how the first they encountered were wealthy Belgian and Dutch refugees. These appeared with their cars, carrying mattresses, blankets, pillows and eiderdowns tied firmly to the roofs. Atop of the bedding were tied bicycles, prams and even children’s scooters. There was something resolutely bourgeois about the people within, as they sat there dressed in their Sunday best with the car windows firmly shut despite the summer heat.

  The following day they watched as more refugees arrived. First came the young people who had cycled ahead of the Germans, desperate to reach safety. Next came the most forlorn of all those who had left their homes. There were weary pensioners pushing handcarts, and mothers pushing prams loaded with both babies and family heirlooms. The roads were clogged with farm carts pulled by broad Flemish horses, all loaded high with household goods. There were ancient buses, crammed with refugees and their luggage, whose engines wheezed as they struggled to transport their loads. In the town of Avesnes British soldiers were shocked when the strangest of all refugee vehicles appeared. It was the lumbering hulk of a steamroller. Pulled behind it were two large farm carts carrying around thirty people. Behind that were two cows, tied to the wagons by rope.

  In some towns and villages the soldiers watched as the pitiful columns arrived. As they passed through, their numbers were swelled by locals who decided they too should join the rush to escape to safety. Once the columns had departed, the local tradesmen finally shut up shop and joined the exodus.

  Although many of the refugees came from rural communities, there were few animals among them. There were the ever-present horses pulling carts, and a few dogs trotting faithfully beside their masters, but little else. Some families had birdcages tied to the top of their possessions but most pets had been left behind. Everywhere, farm animals stood dejectedly in their pens, as if expecting to be let out into the fields. Livestock seemed to stare at the retreating soldiers, their eyes pleading for the feed their owners had neglected to leave for them. Dogs barked desperately for food as they strained at the chains that restricted their movements and prevented their joining the hordes fleeing the front. The most wretched among the animals were executed by retreating soldiers unable to endure the miserable sight of the abandoned creatures starving to death.

  For the refugees, there was a sense of hopelessness and confusion. They had left their homes far behind them but had no idea when they might reach safety. Exhausted people collapsed at the roadsides and burst into tears. Babies screamed, children cried and mothers wept – but everyone kept moving westwards. When asked where they were going, the people simply shrugged their shoulders and kept shuffling aimlessly towards the horizon.

  The true nature of warfare was most brutally exposed, not by the sad sight of civilians trudging away from the front lines, but by the carnage inflicted upon them by the Luftwaffe. The sight of German fighters and bombers sweeping down to attack refugee columns became a regular feature of the retreat. Many soldiers avoided any contact with the slow-moving columns that were such an easy target. Instead they hurried past them or took detours across fields. Some among the troops experienced a strange sense of c
alm as they sheltered beneath trees and watched as the exposed refugees were attacked by German warplanes.

  For Bill Holmes, his introduction to war came when the enemy bombed a bridge across the Albert Canal:

  The noise was terrifying. It was hell. The Stukas came right down at us. It was the first time I was really shaken. The planes blew up the bridge along with all the refugees who were on it. That horrified me, it was a terrible thing to see. There were women pushing prams along and they were all blown up. We saw bits and pieces of bodies everywhere. It really takes a toll on you. Especially when it’s the bodies of little kiddies. It was something you can’t forget – people really are worse than animals.

  For all the horrors and hardship he endured in the days, then years, that followed, this one image haunted Holmes for the rest of his life.

  Despite the horrors, the soldiers had no choice but to keep moving. One observer attempted to explain why he was able to watch the slaughter of civilians without being troubled by the scenes: ‘It was not that we were callous, we were not horrified nor indignant, it simply was we were disinterested . . . Did we feel it and know it? We could not. We were living in a continuous present and our consciousness was not registering.’

  Amid the crowds fleeing westwards were gangs of French, Belgian and Dutch soldiers. Some were disciplined, still fully armed and carrying their kit. Dutch soldiers on bicycles weaved in and out of the marching throng. Belgian recruits – called up when their homeland was invaded and who had been issued nothing more than a scarlet army blanket – appeared in the confusion, uncertain of where they should go or what their role was supposed to be. One gang of Belgian recruits told British MPs they had been ordered to cycle to the French town of Albert to report, little knowing the town would be in German hands long before they arrived. While they pedalled away, eager to receive arms and uniforms, ready to defend their homeland, others simply sat around in town squares as if waiting for someone – anyone – to tell them what to do. At Boulogne 1,800 unarmed sixteen-year-old Belgian Army recruits turned up and requested they be immediately shipped to England to be trained. When one British NCO watched as his men passed a gang of dispirited French soldiers, he decided to demonstrate that his own men were not yet beaten. The Frenchmen were leaderless, unshaven and had abandoned their weapons. With a precision born of years on the parade ground, the NCO called his men to fall in and march in step, showing their allies how soldiers should behave.