by Sean Longden
The situation was the same all around the town. Eventually the gunners of the 101st Anti-Aircraft Regiment also realized their guns could defend St Valery no longer. Their orders were to keep firing until they had just two shells remaining. These two were then fired together, the detonation of the second shell destroying the gun. Unfortunately, one of the sergeants forgot to use an extended lanyard and managed to destroy the gun and seriously injure himself. With the Bofors guns out of action, the gunners were ordered to take their rifles and rejoin the battle as infantrymen: ‘We were ordered to take up positions behind a low wall,’ recalled Fred Coster. ‘We were facing a wood waiting for the Germans to come through it. Some of the boys had even fixed bayonets. Suddenly a man beside me slumped down – he’d been shot. The fire was coming from a ruined building behind us. It was a Fifth Columnist – he shot another one. Then my mate Harry Champion turned and fired. Out of the window slumped a man dressed in a French uniform. Harry said, “You won’t shoot any more you bastard!” ’
On the morning of the 12th, there were few among the Highlanders who believed the fight could go on much longer. Dick Taylor had manned many defensive positions in the last few days but by that morning it was clear the fight was over. The previous day they had come under attack by enemy tanks and attempted to resist the attack with machine-gun fire. It was hopeless – one moment they heard the order ‘Open fire’ then the next order they heard was ‘Every man for himself!’ With no hope of escape, Taylor and his mates made their way to the high ground above the town but soon came under fire. Taking shelter behind a monument, they stayed low and hoped no one could see them. When one French soldier raised himself above the ground he was immediately shot in the chest. After nightfall, they returned to the town in the hope that the Royal Navy might be able to get boats into the harbour under the cover of darkness. Wounded men were laid out on stretchers awaiting evacuation, but there were no ships. That night Taylor slept in a local cinema before rising in the morning and making his way back up to the high ground and rejoining a detachment from his own regiment. There he and his comrades simply spent the last few hours waiting for the enemy to arrive to take them prisoner. His comrade Jim Charters recalled that, on the morning of the surrender, he soon realized any further resistance was futile since he had just half a belt of ammunition left for his ‘drill purposes only’ Vickers machine-gun.
The situation was much the same for the men Major-General Fortune had chosen to reclaim the ground around the town. Orders were given that the 23rd Field Regiment Royal Artillery should provide supporting fire. However, it was soon discovered many of the gunners had already stripped the breach blocks from the guns to prevent them falling into enemy hands. Despite the difficulties, some of the remaining gunners set to work to restore the guns to working order. Deprived of artillery cover, the infantry continued with the planned attack. As they advanced they found surrendering French troops crossing their path, preventing them from engaging the enemy. Under cover of the chaotic conditions, enemy tanks and infantry were soon able to outflank the Highlanders, surrounding the advancing infantry and forcing their surrender.
As dawn broke that next morning, the Germans watched as some troops attempted to continue the evacuation from the steep cliffs to the west of St Valery. Many became committed to one last desperate effort to reach safety. Surrounded by an ever-encroaching enemy they clung to the hope of rescue by Royal Navy vessels in the Channel. In desperation, some of the forlorn soldiers fell to their deaths while attempting to descend the cliff faces. Both British and French soldiers began to crowd around on the cliff tops, anxious to reach the beach below to board a boat back to England. In their haste to escape the enemy some tried to descend the cliffs on ropes that were too short for the job. They were left dangling in the air, lacking the strength to climb back up and unable to lower themselves any further. There they hung until their strength had gone, they lost their grip, and crashed on to the rocks below.
Not all of the men fell to their deaths accidentally. In some locations, as the troops attempted to lower themselves to safety, German soldiers arrived on the cliff tops. Although the men descending the cliffs were in a hopeless situation, some of the Germans showed them no mercy. David Mowatt remembered: ‘They had tied their rifle slings together to make ropes and the Jerries came along and were cutting them. These were ordinary soldiers! SS, you could imagine doing that, but not ordinary soldiers. It was murderous.’
Seeing the dilemma, others raided the lorries that had brought them to the cliff tops for anything that could help them descend to the beach below. One group, waiting at a fissure in the rocks, took the ropes that held the canvas covers on their trucks and joined them together. Eventually the rope was long enough to lower men the whole distance; this was then secured at the cliff top. Private Watt, serving with the Royal Engineers, remembered the scenes: ‘The method used was to pass a loop over a man’s head, he then walked backwards down a very steep incline and lowered himself over the edge, the men at the top lowering him hand over hand.’1
The journey down the rock face was a perilous one for the already exhausted soldiers. The rocks were muddy, making it easy for them to lose their footing. Private Watt soon discovered how difficult the descent would be: ‘Eventually my turn came to go down . . . I was fully dressed, overcoat, full equipment – less my pack – my clothes being sodden with rain, my rifle slung. I had grave doubts about the strength of the rope as I must have weighed a considerable amount, but there was no time to hesitate.’ Slinging the rope over his shoulder, he walked back and gave the signal for the others to begin lowering: ‘I risked one look then closed my eyes quickly. It was a very unnerving descent as I kept twisting one way, stop, then twirl the other way.’2
The survivors who gathered on the beaches prayed for salvation but none came. Around them they could see the bodies of those who had fallen to their deaths from ropes that had not been long enough for them to reach safety. With nowhere to take cover, they faced assault by German dive bombers and came under increasingly heavy fire from snipers who had taken up positions further along the cliff tops. As time passed, machine-gunners joined in, raining fire down on to those who dared expose themselves on parts of the beach. Finding themselves trapped by the advancing enemy, one group even took shelter in a cave, intending to fight it out from behind a barricade of rocks. When the Germans eventually reached the cave the men within realized their situation was hopeless. A few hand grenades thrown into the cave would cause chaos. They made the only sensible decision and surrendered.
Despite the dangers, other waiting troops began to wade out to sea, attempting to get on to the rowing boots that were ferrying men out to a destroyer waiting offshore. This ship was their only hope of escape. It was also firing its heavy guns towards German batteries on the cliffs and drawing some fire away from the desperate soldiers. Yet it was not enough. With shells continuing to land among the men on the beach, Private Watt and his mates decided to join the swimmers attempting to reach a French trawler waiting offshore. Discarding their equipment and rifles, stripping off all their uniform except their trousers, Watt and his mates swam out towards the boat.
Despite the strong currents they reached the trawler and climbed up a rope ladder on to the decks. In an attempt to stop the boat being swamped by desperate soldiers, sailors on board the trawler cut the rope ladder, sending men tumbling down on to the swimmers below. What happened next revealed that those on board were no safer than those struggling through the surf:
A shell landed right amidships, apparently in the engine room. There was a terrible noise of escaping steam. Two quick-firing guns on deck were still firing madly away . . . We could feel the shock as several shells hit the ship, mostly about the water line . . . Then they opened up with anti-tank guns . . . holes started to appear in the sides above our heads. Men all around were hit, very few escaping injury. Some were killed at once and many dying after only a few minutes.3
The men on board faced a t
errible dilemma. Surely if they remained on board they would be killed. Yet looking into the water around them, they could see swimming men being hit by rifle fire from the cliffs. With the boat ablaze and slowly sinking the survivors began to help the wounded men on to the decks. All they could do was to pray that salvation might come, but neither Allied nor German vessels appeared to save them. Some men even tried to build a raft to help ferry the wounded ashore, but it sank as soon as it was launched.
Realizing the wounded would not survive in the water if the boat went down, the troops raised a Red Cross flag to signal to the enemy that the men on board would resist no longer. Eventually, a German officer appeared on the beach and called out to the survivors. All the able-bodied men were to swim ashore and leave the wounded on board. If they did not comply immediately they would be fired upon. Their situation was hopeless. There was nothing they could do but to swim into captivity.
As the bedraggled men dragged themselves from the water, a German officer stood on the beach offering them a swig from a bottle of spirits. One of those who pulled himself up from the water was Frank Norman, of the Royal Corps of Signallers, who was only seventeen years old. He had volunteered in June 1939 at just sixteen, falsifying his age to show he was eighteen. Like the rest of his comrades, he was to endure five long hard years of captivity – in Frank Norman’s case working in the mines of Silesia.
As the walking wounded were taken away from the beach for treatment, the other survivors were given blankets and overcoats and put into a straw-filled bivouac for the night. Exhausted, they slept through an artillery barrage that landed around them. Such were the extremes of hunger experienced by these men, they were forced to scavenge for grain amid the straw of their bedding.
As this drama was being played out another ship was also sacrificed in the desperate efforts to rescue the division. The Dutch motor barge Hebe II was sunk off the French coast with eighty soldiers on board. There were no records of any surviors.
Not all those on the beaches were quite so unfortunate. Others were able to reach boats, such as the three officers and seventeen other ranks of the Lothian and Borders Horse who escaped by boat from the port of Veules. Similarly, thirty-one pioneers from the 7th Norfolks were picked up by HMS Harvester. When he rescued them from the beaches the commander of the ship told the lucky men it was no longer safe to attempt to reach the harbour of St Valery.
The events of the morning of 12 June remain confused. Some reports quote the French capitulation as forcing General Fortune to surrender. But when one flag of surrender was seen fluttering from a steeple close to the divisional HQ, Fortune insisted it be torn down and the perpetrator arrested. When the French officer responsible was found he explained that he was simply following his own general’s orders. Other sources quote incidents of French white flags being torn down by enraged British officers, then British officers crying when Fortune ordered them all to lay down their arms. Some British troops even recalled the vision of a British fighter flying above their positions displaying a white flag. What was clear was that the French had informed Fortune of their intention to surrender. It left the Scotsman in a hopeless situation. Without the French fighting side by side with his men there was no hope of holding out for another day. It was a stark choice – surrender or die.
Despite Major-General Fortune’s defiance and hope to keep fighting long enough to effect an escape, the situation was wretched. His infantry had not been able to push back the enemy from above the town and with the cliff tops occupied by the enemy any evacuation would most likely result in a slaughter, costing the lives of both his men and the sailors he had hoped might come to rescue them. At 11 a.m. Fortune received news from England that the previous night’s evacuation had been called off due to fog. Yet by that time the news was irrelevant. Half an hour earlier Major-General Fortune had already notified the War Office of his intention to surrender.
Most of the divison went quietly into captivity, knowing further resistance was futile. One group of soldiers, exhausted after a day of close-quarter fighting, bedded down in a field, sleeping through the night without sentries to watch over them. They awoke to discover they were surrounded by German tank crews who quickly spotted them and took them prisoner. Elsewhere others continued to fight. Each man became embroiled in his own personal war. The notion of escape filled the minds of many, while others hardly seemed concerned about the slim chance of slipping across the Channel. For some the desperate battles around St Valery were simply them following orders – they knew it was the duty of each man to fight on for the honour of his regiment and his country. For others it was a sign of personal defiance, a way of showing the enemy they were not beaten. For many more it was just a desperate fight for survival. Whatever happened, few seriously contemplated the possibility of being taken prisoner.
When the moment of surrender came, a deathly quiet fell over the troops. The gunners of the 23rd Field Regiment were still working to ready their guns for the attack on the Germans’ cliff-top positions when they heard the news. Rather than load and fire their guns, they were told to line up in a field ready for the surrender. Within a minute of receiving the order the gunners noticed a German tank entering the field. One man then shot himself, preferring to take his own life rather than be taken prisoner.
As the Germans began to round up the survivors of the 51st Division, most of the prisoners began to follow the shouted orders of their captors without daring to question them. Northumberland Fusilier Dick Taylor recalled that the process of surrendering was like anything else in the army: ‘You do as you are told – you don’t think about it. I threw the bolt away and destroyed my rifle. Elsewhere they were already dumping trucks into the sea so I realized everything was in chaos and our position was hopeless.’ Each man was submerged beneath waves of his own emotions. Bewildered by the speed of the collapse, Jim Pearce marched into a barbed-wire enclosure still carrying his rifle over his shoulder. The German guard knocked it from his shoulder, without Pearce even breaking his step.
Such was the depth of feeling that some soldiers felt a rage they could not express, barely able to suppress their anger that the division had been defeated. A few openly wept at the disgrace of defeat, while others were disgusted to see the behaviour of some among their comrades. John Christie found himself looking on in awe at behaviour he felt out of place in a modern war. He watched as officers changed into their dress uniforms ready for the surrender. It seemed ridiculous, within a formation that had not eaten a hot meal for a week, to be so concerned about appearances: ‘It could have been done in order to put on a “good show” for the Germans . . . I don’t go much on “good shows”, anyway I had more important things on my mind like how I was going to get out of this mess.’4
Others felt numb with disgust, fear, hunger, exhaustion or the simple relief they had survived. For days they had fought for the right to escape from France. Each step back towards the coast had been a step towards salvation, but it seemed they had been betrayed. The whirl of emotions experienced as the enemy approached to take them prisoner was shared by every able-bodied man in the division, leaving most barely able to express what that moment had meant to them. Fred Coster attempted to explain his feelings: ‘We were ready to fight but then the French surrendered and that was it – we gave up. There was no option. We would all have been massacred if we had fought on. We were numb – we were tired. We were wondering what was going to happen. What went through my mind was perhaps they would murder us. They lined my unit up in the field with a machine-gun facing us. We were just standing there.’ The gunner that approached Coster expressed the thoughts silently shared by each of them: ‘There was one little fellow, he came running up and said, “Bombardier, they’re not going to shoot us are they?” I said, “Of course not. They wouldn’t dare to!” He was happy and went off laughing. But I started to feel a bit timid. I thought they might shoot us, but I couldn’t tell him.’
Cut off from the rest of the division, with no way of co
mmunicating with General Fortune or the other senior commanders within St Valery, the 2nd Seaforth Highlanders at the St Sylvain position continued to fight their own battles. On 11 June it had been estimated the remnants of the battalion were facing around a hundred enemy Panzers. It was an ominous situation for the exhausted and lightly armed infantrymen. Despite their desperate situation they continued to fight hard.
Realizing that the Seaforths would not surrender without a hard fight, the German commanders decided on an unorthodox tactic to convince them to lay down their arms. Central to the German plan was Colour Sergeant Edwin Fields, known as ‘Gracie’ to his fellow Seaforths. After more than a month in the front lines, Gracie was exhausted and had finally been captured, along with a wounded sergeant and a young private. As a senior sergeant, he was selected for an unpleasant task. A machine-pistol-wielding German NCO appeared and forced him on to the front of a tank. With the German behind him, and a gun pointed at his back, the sergeant was driven towards the Seaforths’ positions. Some reports have the tank advancing under the protection of a white flag. Other reports suggest no white flag was shown. In any event, as they reached a crossroads close to the forward positions, the tank was hit by a burst of gunfire. Still, the worried sergeant had no choice but to remain on his perch – if he stayed his own men might shoot him, but if he ran the Germans would certainly shoot him.
