Dunkirk: The Men They Left Behind

by Sean Longden

  In keeping with the desperate need to get infantry battalions to France, the Queen’s received just ten weeks’ training before they were sent to France in April 1940, as Ken Willats remembered:

  Things were going berserk at that time. It was frantic. You can’t learn much about being a soldier in ten weeks. We drilled, did route marches, went on the rifle range, had kit inspections – lots of squarebashing. It was just getting us into the ways of the army. I wasn’t particularly enthusiastic. I just went along with things. Basic training couldn’t have been more basic. No one had great patriotism or enthusiasm. We were mostly twenty-one-year-old working-class boys. None of us had a military bias. All the enthusiasts had already volunteered. They were really scraping the bottom of the barrel and we were the scrapings!

  What made matters worse was that, just before the Germans launched their attack on France, Willats had been told he was going to be sent back to England to be posted to the School of Army Cookery as an instructor – a better use of his talents than being a cook in a front-line battalion. But his orders had never come through and as the Germans reached Abbeville he had found himself in a farmhouse holding a rifle rather than a wooden spoon. For all the good his rifle did in the next few hours, the wooden spoon might have been just as effective.

  Although Willats knew the Germans were advancing towards Abbeville, the realization of how close they were was a tremendous shock:

  We looked out of the back of the farmhouse and saw tracer bullets being fired towards us. There were about twenty or thirty of the crack tank regiments of Hitler’s Panzers in front of us on the heath. We had a rifle and five rounds of ammunition each. We fired – not knowing who or what we were firing at, I think we probably never killed any Germans, we just fired blindly in the direction of the tanks. When you’d used those five rounds, you went back to Colour Sergeant Davey and asked, ‘Can I have five more rounds please?’ It was ridiculous. But I don’t remember being frightened. I just did what I was told.

  What Willats didn’t know was that these tanks were from the German 2nd Armoured Division, the spearhead of von Rundstedt’s Army Group A. This was the force that had punched through the Ardennes, crossed the River Meuse, then headed north to endanger the BEF from the rear. Such strategic considerations, and the implications for the BEF, were far from Willats’ mind as the battle for Abbeville continued: ‘The Sergeant Major sent me to help a chap manning a Boyes anti-tank rifle. I went out to fetch him because he’d been wounded. It was strange. The road was as quiet as a tomb. I found him. He was wandering about, very badly wounded. His eye was out hanging out on his cheek. So I led him back to the farm.’ Safely back, Willats continued to fire at the tanks but soon realized the situation was hopeless when they heard the sound of German vehicles entering the farmyard: About thirty Germans appeared, led by an SS man. We knew there was no hope so we came out. That was the end of my military career, it was all over in a flash.’

  Uncertain of their fate, Willats and his four comrades were marched away to a barbed-wire enclosure that had been hastily erected in a nearby field. What happened next was the natural reaction for men who had been on the move for days: ‘The first thing I did was to fall asleep. I’d been awake for two nights and sleep was the biggest enemy of the soldier. The body can only go so far without rest. I was completely exhausted. It was uncontrollable. I just went to sleep.’

  For the men within this enclosure, surrounded for the first time with barbed wire, there was a terrible feeling of emptiness. It was the same for all the men taken prisoner in the battles across France and Belgium. They were physically, and often mentally, exhausted. Many had not eaten for days, or washed and shaved – but it was not a time for NCOs to start berating men for being unshaven. Some had mates around them, others had seen their mates die and were left alone among unfamiliar faces. Each of them began to learn the skills that would help them survive through all the trials that lay ahead. Some tried desperately to find someone they knew. Others retreated into a state where the mind focused entirely on self-preservation. Fighting for a comfortable place to sleep became as much a part of their lives as showing discipline or defiance of the enemy. It was the beginning of the dog-eat-dog existence that would follow them through their lives within Germany’s prisoner of war camps.

  Those taken prisoner around Abbeville were marched from their makeshift enclosure. Their journey took them northwards, spending the first night in the grounds of a local gendarmerie. Once again they dropped to the cold, bare earth and slept where they lay. Those still with blankets blessed their good fortune. Those without were too exhausted to care, since there was hardly a man among them who would not have swapped a blanket for a hot meal.

  In the final days of May and the early days of June, groups of prisoners were collected all over the battlefields. The battered and bloodied survivors of the defeat and the rearguard actions were slowly herded together, ready to begin the long march into Germany. In twos and threes, men stumbled out with their arms raised and were marched to large pens with hundreds of others. Then the crowds joined up with other crowds until thousands were bundled together into vast khaki-clad hordes. It was not long before the men captured at Abbeville were joined by similarly dazed and desperate survivors from one of the most vicious encounters of the entire campaign.

  Of all the battles leading up to the Dunkirk evacuation none was more significant than the siege of Calais. What made it so important was that the soldiers sent to the port only arrived in France on 23 May. With the BEF already retreating, the 1st Battalion, the Rifle Brigade, the 60th Rifles (officially known as the 2nd Battalion, the King’s Royal Rifle Corps), the Queen Victoria Rifles and the 3rd Royal Tank Regiment were sent to Calais to help secure the route back to Dunkirk. However, when they arrived it was soon clear there was little they could do to help the BEF. Instead it would be a miracle for them to survive.

  One of those who did survive was Bob Davies, a former Harrods clerk and pre-war Territorial. He was so typical of many young Territorials who had joined, not out of a sense of patriotism but because it was like a club. In his case, he loved motorcycles and had joined the TA’s only motorcycle battalion, the Queen Victoria Rifles. The irony was they arrived in France without their transport, which, had been left languishing in Kent: ‘When we unloaded all we had was our rifles and the ammunition we carried – bugger all else. We just had Bren guns and no heavy machine-guns. That’s all we needed. What can you do with a rifle against a tank?’ When he first reached the front line Davies found himself firing at every opportunity: ‘Every time I saw a bird fly I thought it was a German and fired at it.’ He was soon able to calm himself, finding that his training had worked and military discipline meant he was able to follow orders without question.

  For four days the battle raged through the town. Stukas rained down their screaming high explosives. Artillery fire poured down into the British and French positions. German Panzers advanced and blew apart the buildings held by the desperate defenders. Like its northerly neighbour Dunkirk, Calais was pounded to prevent its use. However, unlike Dunkirk, no ships came to rescue the soldiers. Instead they were to fight on, holding up the advance on Dunkirk.

  Valiant British tank crews attempted to advance from the town, only to be destroyed by the far superior enemy armour. All manner of makeshift units, including anti-aircraft units and searchlight crews, found themselves, rifle in hand, manning strongpoints and trenches. The lightly armed infantrymen did their utmost to hold off the enemy advances, slowly pulling back towards the port. Every hour brought fresh casualties who made their way back to the safety of the sixteenth-century citadel, where they sheltered in deep, vaulted cellars, listening to the rumbling of gunfire above them. The citadel, with its formidably thick walls, along with later bastions added to protect the port from attack from the sea, were Calais’ main defences. Fortunately, there was also a series of canals and basins protecting the port area. As the defenders were forced back, these played an increasingly
important role in holding off the German advance.

  The pounding of Calais took its toll on the defenders. From his position on the eastern edge of town – with little enemy activity in front of them – Bob Davies counted his blessings. He could see the flames rising above the town and could hear the constant roar of explosions, knowing that plenty of his mates were fighting and dying. As the Germans took control of large parts of Calais, they occupied the imposing Hôtel de Ville, from where their snipers were able to cover vast swathes of the port area. As the battle raged above them, desperate doctors did their best to treat the wounded, despite a shortage of equipment. In order to amputate limbs, the doctors attempted to use knives until a rusty hacksaw was found in the corridors of the citadel cellars. This was soon sterilized and put to work.

  For four days the defenders hung on. Short of food, water and, above all, ammunition, their position became desperate. By 26 May there was no longer a cohesive defence of the town, rather pockets of men were still fighting. Determined young officers and the remnants of their men fought on, some even attempting to counterattack the enemy, until their ammunition was exhausted. Extraordinary acts of heroism were performed by men whose actions were never rewarded since there were no witnesses to report their deeds. Stretcher-bearers defied machine-gun fire to run out into the open to rescue the wounded. In desperate hand-to-hand encounters, the defenders used fixed bayonets to prevent the enemy overrunning their positions. Throughout the shrinking perimeter, machine-guns were fired to the very last round, mortars fired until they were out of ammunition – and then it was hopeless. With the bastion surrounded there was no point in fighting on. Any further resistance would only endanger the wounded men sheltering underground. And so with a heavy heart, the British commander, Brigadier Nicholson, finally surrendered Calais.

  At the end of the four-day battle, Bob Davies found himself walking about in a dream:

  About six of us went down to a boat and rowed across to this flat, marshy area that went out to the sea. We just headed for the sea. I don’t know why, I suppose we thought that was the direction of home. We found an old cargo boat washed up on the beach. We thought there might be food on it, so we climbed up on to the deck. There were the dead bodies of the crew everywhere. We searched everywhere – through the cabins and the wheelhouse – looking for food. It was a real mess. Then all of a sudden we heard a yell, turned and saw a Jerry at the top of the ladder.

  Then Davies heard the words dreaded by soldiers: ‘For you the war is over.’ Looking over the side of the boat, they could see a tank with its gun pointed towards them. Worried they might be shot, Davies and his comrades descended to the beach. They were immediately marched to a field where they gathered with other survivors of the battle. There was little chance to think about what was happening, as Davies admitted: ‘I don’t know what my feelings were. Everything had happened so quick. One day we were tucked away in a hop farm in Kent, then we were in Calais with no hope of getting home again. But it didn’t sink in. Maybe if we’d been older and more worldly wise we would have understood it better. It was like a dream gone wrong.’

  The sense of utter mental confusion suffered by Davies was also illustrated by the experience of another man captured on the same beach. Vernon Mathias, like Bob Davies, a London shopworker, was shot in the arm while patrolling the sand dunes outside Calais. Weak and confused from the loss of blood, blacking out as he walked, with his fingers numb where the tourniquet was cutting off circulation, Mathias headed for the same boat that had run aground. As he approached the boat he asked a man he assumed to be a Belgian soldier if he had any food. The man nodded and passed him a tin of blood sausage. Then Mathias spotted a group of his comrades and approached them. One called to him: ‘Hello Taff. How does it feel to be a prisoner of war?’ Only then did he realize the Belgian soldier had in fact been a German.

  Around 60 per cent of the defenders of Calais were killed or wounded in the course of the four days’ fighting. Approximately 500 wounded men were left in the cellars of the citadel. As the exhausted defenders began the long march into captivity, they surveyed the scene. The blackened wrecks of army trucks and civilian vehicles of all descriptions littered the streets. The hulks of tanks sat amid the ruins, abandoned in the rubble alongside machine-guns, ammunition and equipment. Five of the tanks had actually been destroyed by their crews who, expecting to be evacuated by sea, had not wanted them to fall into enemy hands.

  Yet it was not just the destruction of the town that appalled the survivors. One group of prisoners marched past truckloads of dead French soldiers whose vehicles had been spotted and dive bombed by the Luftwaffe. Alongside the numerous corpses of those who had fallen in the battle for Calais lay the seriously wounded. Their pitiful cries seared into the minds of the prisoners as they marched past. The begging of the wounded for water went unheeded as the victorious Germans refused to let the prisoners break ranks to offer assistance.

  However, some of the prisoners who went into captivity at Calais showed quite different emotions from the men captured in some of the other battles. Since they had been surrounded, and had fought virtually to the last round, they did not feel their own role in the battle for France had been so pathetic. Unlike Eric Reeves, who had been captured before he had been able to fire his weapon, they had upheld the proud traditions of the British Army. They had fought against the odds, had held the enemy off for days and – even as the town collapsed into flames around them – they had continued to stall the enemy advance. Captain Munby, one of the officers taken prisoner when the defenders of Fort Neuilly finally surrendered, later explained why he felt no shame in having been captured: ‘I must confess that I was secretly relieved at the decision being taken out of my hands – a resolve to make a last stand would only have resulted in the sacrifice of some forty lives and would have merely delayed the enemy advance a few more minutes. This will be seen as unheroic to those not on the spot.’2

  As the night skies closed in, the prisoners were herded into a churchyard where they lay down upon the cobblestones. They were so tightly packed there was little room to move. One soldier tripped over a wounded man. He bent down to help the man, only for him to die in his arms. South African-born Sergeant Stephen Houthakker recalled how he ‘slept the sleep of one who was completely oblivious to his surroundings. What pleasure was that sleep! Dreams of pleasant days that seemed centuries ago. Thus ended my first day of captivity, but the dawn of horrors was only just starting. Little did we know what fate had in store for us.’3

  That valiant band of Calais’ defenders who marched into captivity had fought hard, known fear, endured hardship and then finally surrendered. Yet they had one thing that helped them through the days of hardship ahead. They were captured alongside their comrades. As Sergeant Houthakker marched out of the port he had his commanding officer beside him. He later watched with pride as the colonel offered eggs to his famished men. For the regular soldiers among them, the men marching beside them were men who had shared barrack rooms and drill squares for years. Even the Territorials went into captivity with friends around them. All had lost plenty of good mates in the battles, but all had those who remained to help sustain them in the trials that awaited them.

  Yet for others the moment of capture was one of great loneliness. It seemed their world had collapsed as they were left alone amid the chaos of defeat. One of those who experienced this sense of isolation was Les Allan, a young Territorial in the Buckinghamshire Battalion of the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry. Allan had never wanted to be an infantryman, but fate had determined he would relinquish any notion of joining the artillery. Back in 1938, he and a mate had made the decision to join the Territorial Army: ‘We were always hearing about Hitler on the radio and like everyone else we thought this chap needed to be taught a lesson. We were young, naïve and patriotic’ However, when they attempted to sign on as gunners in their home town of Slough: ‘we couldn’t find the office for the artillery so Pete went to ask
the infantry recruiting sergeant. That was it. The RSM wouldn’t let him go. It turned out the artillery recruitment centre was six miles away and we had no way of getting there. So we joined the Territorial Army as infantrymen.’

  Fate again took charge of Allan’s destiny when it was decided he would not go to war armed with a rifle but with a stretcher. There were not enough bearers in one company and, since the colonel knew Allan had some experience of first aid from his days with the St John Ambulance, he was chosen to fill the vacant position. This was why, on 27 May 1940, Les Allan was not manning a slit trench or sniping from the window of some battered house. Instead he was deep within the cellars of a convent, in an aid post filling up with the battered and bloodied victims of battle.

  But this was not some rear-echelon hospital, well marked with Red Cross flags and fed by streams of ambulances. Instead it was in the town of Hazebrouck, some twenty-five miles south of Dunkirk and directly in the line of the German advance. If that was not enough, the supposed sanctuary of the aid post was directly beneath the headquarters of a battalion whose commanding officer had received the stark order: ‘Hold at all costs.’4 In the final day of fighting at Hazebrouck, Les Allan and his comrades would discover the price of such words – the orders that meant the majority of the BEF would be able to escape. As Les Allan later remarked: ‘We were waiting for reinforcements, but the reinforcements were busy being evacuated from the beaches of Dunkirk.’

  Throughout the day, the full fury of war descended on the defenders of Hazebrouck. All day the enemy bombarded the town. From their fortified houses the Ox and Bucks did their best to fend off the attacks but with just four field guns and two anti-tank guns there was little they could do. Light tanks and infantry probed their defences, artillery fire and mortar bombs rained down in the streets and on the houses, planes circled overhead bombing and machine-gunning the men below. These aerial attacks made a great impression on Les Allan as he ran around the town trying to bring in casualties for treatment: ‘The Germans were very infuriated that they were being held back. They were anxious to push past us. So the bombing was terrific. They say that Stukas were no good – maybe that’s true, they may have been no good in a dogfight against a Spitfire – but they were deadly when against men armed with just rifles and bayonets.’