Dunkirk: The Men They Left Behind

by Sean Longden

  Yet such displays were futile. No amount of parade-ground precision could stop the rout. Such was the clamour to flee the advancing Germans that families upped and left their homes at a moment’s notice. British soldiers found themselves entering abandoned houses, with the tables laid for breakfast and the food still warm. It was as if the population of whole villages had become invisible. Yet the truth was simpler – they had joined the flight westwards without pausing to think of what might happen. One group of retreating soldiers were asked by some Belgian women to show them how to drive the family car – their brother was the only one with experience of driving but he had left to join the army. After a few brief moments of instruction the women drove away, the gears straining as they endeavoured to flee as fast as possible.

  The story was the same across the front. The British attempted to hold their positions but could do little to stem the advance of the enemy. At Audenarde on 19 May, the 4th Battalion of the Royal West Kent Regiment had been ordered to make a stand, something they had done with great success. For two days they held out against an enemy assault that had begun with thirty bombs dropped on their positions, inflicting twenty casualties. In the action that had followed, the West Kents stunned the enemy with a perfectly coordinated counterattack. First the British mortars had struck the enemy positions, then swift attacks had come in from Bren carriers, pouring fire at the German flanks, targeting troops who had fled the mortaring. After each attack the carriers swiftly withdrew then struck again at a different position. By the time the enemy replied with mortar fire the carriers were long gone, their crews already drinking beer outside a cafe to celebrate their bluff. Despite the valiant efforts of units such as the West Kents, there was little they could do to stem the advance and they eventually withdrew, joining in the retreat with a twenty-mile overnight march.

  There were plenty of heroic encounters that brought the Germans to a halt, but these were not enough to prevent collapse across the whole front. Hundreds of men were sacrificed in engagements that became futile when officers discovered that neighbouring units had retreated, leaving their flanks exposed. When the troops saw their allies, the Belgians or the French, withdrawing in such a manner it was the source of immense distrust. The growing sense of disharmony between the Allies would continue in the weeks that followed, with all sides accusing each other of betrayal.

  Unknown to the soldiers fighting in the north, theirs was not the only battle being fought. The advance to the River Dyle was further revealed as a folly as the Germans had surged through the Ardennes and punched through the French positions. By 13 May advanced parties had crossed the River Meuse near Sedan. The next day a full attack went in along the Meuse, preceded by a vicious aerial assault on the French defenders. This was the move that determined the entire campaign. With the British only making initial contact with the enemy at the Dyle, they were already threatened from the rear. Led by General von Rundstedt’s Army Group A, the German forces swung northwards, along the Somme valley and towards the Channel, thus potentially trapping the British and French Armies with their backs to the sea.

  The unfolding chaos of the drama facing the British became clear to one Royal Artillery officer, Lieutenant Tony Hibbert, as he moved his battery into a hillside position ready to face the enemy outside Armentières, where he expected an attack from the north-east:

  It was pure chaos. I went to the top of the hill and found a battery of guns on the other slope of the hill facing the other way. I knew the chap, I’d trained at Woolwich with him. I pointed north-east and said, ‘Nice to see you, but just in case it has slipped your attention the Boche are that way.’ He replied, ‘I know, but just in case it has slipped your attention, if you happen to look through your binoculars in the other direction you’ll see a column of dust.’ It was a lovely clear day and I could see it about three or four miles away. He said, ‘That is the head of an armoured column that is zapping along this road and will soon be in range.’ He asked for my help and I offered the assistance of my guns, which were ack-ack guns that were able to fire anti-tank rounds. He replied, ‘My dear boy, The very thing! Do come and join us.’

  But by the time Hibbert had returned to his guns the order had already come through to retreat to form the perimeter at Dunkirk, where his guns continued to engage the enemy until their ammunition was exhausted.

  Caught between the twin pincers of the blitzkrieg, and trapped amid the crowds of refugees, the British had little choice but to fall back into an ever-shrinking pocket. At first the fall back through Belgium had been intended to strengthen the line, hoping that by ensuring a balance between the British, French and Belgian forces their defences could hold. Yet, as each day passed, it became more obvious that something had to be done to prevent the enemy reaching the sea and trapping the BEF.

  Day by day the troops fought vicious engagements, falling back by night to occupy the next defensive line. Each day the British withdrew proud in the knowledge that at no point had the enemy broken the British line. Thus the troops, unaware of the danger of being cut off by the enemy’s advance to the south, were uncertain why they were falling back. Between 16 and 19 May the BEF withdrew, first from the Dyle to the Senne, then to the River Dendre, then to the Escaut Line. At every canal and riverbank the troops fought rearguard actions to give the engineers long enough to demolish bridges; at Audenarde just six pioneers were ordered to hold a one-mile front. Many among the retreating men noticed how every bridge they seemed to cross had a representative of the Royal Engineers standing at the roadside awaiting the opportunity to blow the bridge once the majority of the Allied forces had crossed.

  Surrounded by their exhausted comrades, the troops faced an almost constant struggle to keep moving. In the dark days of the retreat, physical strength, and indeed the mental will to keep marching, had an impact upon so many among them. Each step strained their last reserves of energy. Men stumbled from the roads and collapsed into ditches. Sleeping men somehow managed to summon up enough strength to remain upright and kept dragging one foot in front of the other. Like automatons, they kept shuffling along the roads to an unknown destination. All that mattered was that they were still alive – the lack of water assaulted their throats, the desire for hot food aggravated their bellies – but every step westwards was a step nearer home and safety.

  If marching taxed their dwindling reserves of energy, then to halt and have to prepare defensive positions only deepened their misery. The experiences of the 2nd Battalion of the Gloucestershire Regiment reflected the experiences of thousands of retreating soldiers. In one day they marched thirty miles, much of the time wearing gas masks, the result of unfounded rumours about imminent chemical attacks. Despite the heat of the summer sun they had marched onwards, the sweat collecting inside the rubber of their masks. The dust they kicked up from the roads as they marched further heightened their sense of despondency when the battalion’s exhausted anti-tank gunners mistakenly shot-up two British tanks. As the battalion’s adjutant later wrote, the men were ‘drunk from lack of sleep’.8 But if the Gloucesters were exhausted, the effects of the weather, constant marching, lack of hot food and shortage of sleep had an even greater effect on their officers whose responsibilities prevented them taking proper rest: ‘To stop moving: to sit down was to sleep at once. To obey an order was simple, to have to give one was torture to the brain. The desire for sleep predominated all others.’9 At one briefing of three officers it was found that none had been awake all the time. Eventually the meeting was abandoned when the adjutant had fallen asleep for the fourth time. At another briefing officers arrived, saluted the CO, then immediately sank to the floor and fell asleep. Once all the officers were slumbering, a liaison officer was forced to wake them. Eventually the RSM placed an upturned bayonet into his belt. His logic was simple: if he fell asleep, his head would slump forward, then the bayonet would prick him and cause him to awaken.

  Despite such deprivations, the BEF had slogged onwards, seldom more than one step ahea
d of the enemy. As they retreated, the troops were struck by the contrast between their advance into Belgium to meet the enemy and the disarray that now surrounded them. One unit had engaged the enemy for a total of thirty-six hours and then marched for twenty-seven hours, covering forty miles. The men of another battalion recalled stopping during the march into Belgium to change their socks and have their feet powdered. As they fell back there was no time for such niceties. Instead they had to scrounge socks and towels from a nearby convent and slumped down to sleep on grass verges as they waited for the endless columns of refugees to pass. Such was their exhaustion that their commanding officer was rendered speechless by exhaustion before finally collapsing. Weighed down by their weapons and equipment, some dumped their arms in the battalion carriers alongside the carcasses of pigs and chicken that had been taken from abandoned farms. Failing to carry their weapons was against all orders – they should always have remained ready to fight – but these were men approaching the limit of their physical endurance.

  Nature itself seemed to be working against them. In the mornings they awoke to the sun rising in the east, obscuring the day’s first movements by the enemy. For the rest of the day the summer sun scorched them, soaking their already dirty and stinking uniforms with sweat, while the heat assaulted throats parched by the clouds of dust kicked up from beneath their weary feet. On days when the sun failed to shine, the heavens opened and rain soaked the marching men. Their blistered feet squelched in sodden boots and the musty aroma of dirty, sodden clothes arose to suppress the stench of unwashed bodies. At the end of each day nature taunted the men marching westwards. As they looked towards the horizon they could see the sun setting far in the distance, mocking them as it signalled the seeming impossibility of ever reaching the end of their journey.

  This interaction with nature was experienced by many among the troops. There were brief interludes where the beauty of the early summer landscape was heightened by the juxtaposition between war and nature. Living in hedgerows and on riverbanks, the soldiers were drawn briefly into the natural world. Peter Wagstaff, of the l/6th Battalion Queen’s Regiment, later wrote of a night awaiting the inevitable enemy assault: ‘Over the river hung a thin pall of mist which had spread over the meadows in front of our battle positions, there the cattle waded almost belly deep, as if in some stream. There must have been half a dozen nightingales, all singing their heads off oblivious to the rattle of machine-gun and small-arms fire. What a fantastic world it was – nature could not have been lovelier and the face of man more brutal.’10

  Yet such scenes were soon eclipsed by the reality of their situation. It was not just the vast columns of refugees and retreating infantrymen that clogged the roads. Thousands of military vehicles also joined the retreat. With few Military Police to organize the columns, units became mixed up in the traffic jams. As drivers became increasingly exhausted, the usual convoy discipline was abandoned. All that mattered was to keep moving. Crowds of tired soldiers seemed to hang from anything with wheels and an engine. Alongside the overcrowded vans, trucks and lorries, moved soldiers pushing their kit in wheelbarrows. Every village seemed to have hastily constructed roadblocks that were little more than farm carts and barrels piled in the roads, then abandoned. If they could be dismantled by an exhausted army in retreat, they would surely prove no barrier to the headlong advance of the German Army.

  As lorries carrying men of the Gloucestershire Regiment became bunched up in a traffic jam, they were the ideal target for enemy fighters roaming the skies in search of prey. As the weary troops slumbered under the canvas of the trucks, nine Messerschmitt fighters swooped upon them: Approaching from the rear in threes, they first bombed then machine-gunned the column. Wheeling, they repeated the attack without bombing, once from the front and once from the rear, flying very low in each attack.’ Stunned by the speed of the attack, numbed and sleep-sodden, the troops struggled to dismount and find cover. The tarpaulins covering the trucks made escape difficult, trapping some unfortunate souls within. Nothing could be done to save the wounded trapped within the burning lorries. Of the five that received direct hits, two were carrying troops, one was carrying the cook’s equipment and one contained stores. The final vehicle was loaded with the battalion’s spare ammunition. As the ordnance ignited it became too dangerous to approach the flaming vehicles, sealing the fate of those trapped within. Once the fighters had flown off in search of more prey, the Gloucesters assessed the human cost of the tragedy. Around one in seven of the battalion’s total strength – 104 soldiers – were killed, wounded or missing.

  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 du
mp 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.