Dunkirk: The Men They Left Behind

by Sean Longden

  In the darkness, Lowden could hear the cries of a madman in the adjoining cell. He could hear the sounds of other men receiving beatings from their captors. It was an ominous sign. Was his neighbour a lunatic or a sane man driven mad by captivity and torture? Day upon day, Lowden faced interrogation from the Gestapo, always careful not to reveal the names of the kindly French people who had given him shelter. His cell was five paces long and four paces wide. It had one small window and no artificial light. He had a single blanket and a straw palliasse to sleep on. Through the dark, damp days of winter the captain survived on a diet of soup, coffee and bread.

  After six months of enduring the misery of solitary confinement, Lowden was fortunate to be transferred to Oflag 9. Maybe it was his advanced age that prevented the Gestapo from inflicting more severe punishment on him, since others were not so fortunate. At the prison in Loos a number of British escapers and evaders were held in detention. Among them was Corporal Norman Hogan, a reservist who had been called up in September 1939. He had been wounded during the last week of May 1940 and sent to hospital in Boulogne, then to a convalescence depot in the seaside resort of Paris-Plage. After escaping from the hospital he went on the run until he was captured by the Gestapo and imprisoned at the civilian prison in Loos. For five months Hogan was held in solitary confinement. In all that time he was never given an opportunity to exercise. Instead, like Captain Lowden, he spent his hours awaiting the next interrogation.

  The methods employed by the Gestapo were less than subtle. They tried planting documents on Hogan, hoping he would feel pressured to reveal the names of those who had assisted him. When he refused to talk he was kicked and beaten by military guards. When he tried to complain about their behaviour he was beaten again, losing a tooth in the process. After five months of mistreatment, Hogan was released and sent to a POW camp. In 1943 Hogan was repatriated to the UK as a result of his wounds and the mistreatment inflicted on him by the Gestapo. Another of the evaders held at Loos prison, Private Hoyle, fared better. He was also severely beaten by the Gestapo, but when he was transferred to a POW camp he was able to escape and reached home via Gibraltar.

  Between September 1940 and March 1941 thirty-five evaders were captured in northern France and held in the prison at Loos. One of the thirty-five was Lance-Corporal Robert Dunbar of the London Scottish. He had been captured at St Valery but had escaped on the ninth day of the march into captivity. After being at large for three months, posing as a Belgian refugee and working in a French cafe, he was eventually captured. Initially held at Loos, he was then transferred to Lille, where he was interrogated by the Gestapo, who knocked one of his teeth out with a pistol-butt. At his trial his French helpers were sentenced to a year’s imprisonment and he received five months in solitary confinement. The sentence was carried out at Frontstalag 190 near Stuttgart. He survived on black bread, one cup of coffee and one bowl of soup a day, which left him so weak he could hardly move around his cell.

  Despite this treatment Corporal Dunbar was not disheartened. Two days after his release from solitary confinement he escaped from the stalag and made his way to the south of France. From there he crossed into Spain where he was interned before being released upon the intervention of the British military attaché in Madrid.

  In February 1941 a report reached London suggesting that as many as 1,000 British soldiers remained in hiding in villages around Brussels, with one valiant Belgian industrialist collecting money to ensure the men could be fed. In April that year thirteen Belgians were tried for harbouring British troops. One man and one woman were sentenced to death while others received sentences of up to eight years’ imprisonment. In September 1941 another report arrived from Spain giving the figure of 5,000 men believed to be in hiding or working on farms under assumed identities in the towns and villages of the Pas de Calais.

  Derrick Peterson, who remained in hiding throughout the summer, continued to record the rumours that wove their way around the men’s emotions. Through June and July he had heard stories of a German invasion force of 60,000 men heading for Britain that was foiled by a secret British ‘death ray’. On 1 August he heard that the Germans had used poison gas over British cities. Fortunately the stories were nothing more than that.

  The question of what course of action the evaders should take continued to vex every man among them. Those who had settled comfortably into life on French farms knew that, if they were caught, their hosts faced savage reprisals. That summer, signs were posted across France threatening execution for anyone caught harbouring Allied soldiers. A few men chose to put their travel plans on hold in order to assist their hosts with gathering the harvest. They felt it was all they could do to help repay them for their kindness.

  Once such considerations had passed, there was the question of what the best route home would be. It seemed ridiculous to some to even consider walking south – to Spain or Switzerland – when home was little more than twenty miles away across the Channel. Surely, they reasoned, a boat would have to become available one day. Other groups discussed whether the safety of neutral Switzerland would be worth having to spend the rest of the war in internment. Some argued that would mean swapping the freedom of occupied France for the captivity of a neutral country. For many southern France – the unoccupied zone of Vichy – was their best bet. At least there they would be able to attempt escape to North Africa or Spain and Gibraltar.

  As the year progressed the soldiers also realized they would not be able to spend the entire winter hiding in woods and barns. They would need permanent shelter to survive the cold. One evader estimated there were at least a dozen men hiding within a mile of his location. Each man needed to be fed and each mouth was a drain on their hosts. So, with such thoughts in mind, most of the evaders gave up on the notion of sailing home and prepared themselves for the long trek south. Derrick Peterson, who had faithfully recorded all the rumours about the course of the war, was one of the men who joined the march south. With just two companions, out of an original group of twenty-three evaders from his regiment, he took a haversack of food and began the long trek to the south of France. He and his comrades travelled by day, always attempting to look like farm workers, an image that was helped by carrying farm implements.

  How to look like French civilians rather than British soldiers was something that perplexed many of the evaders. In the early days following the German victory some continue to brazenly wear their uniforms and walk around French villages as they had done back in the days of the phoney war. If they hoped to remain free they had to change these habits – if not for their own sakes, then for the sake of their French hosts. Even in civilian clothing they had to make sure they did not march like soldiers and had to remember that French farm labourers would never be seen with highly polished boots. Similarly they had to forget the daily shaving habits of the British Army and develop facial hair. More importantly, the evaders had to learn to walk, sit and gesticulate like Frenchmen. However, above all else, the soldiers needed to at least learn to grasp the basics of the French language. The most successful evaders tended to be those who could read road signs and railway timetables, who could order food and drinks in cafes and ask for assistance from French civilians. Some chose to adopt the identity of foreign labourers as cover for their poor command of French, claiming to be Flemish-speaking Belgians in search of employment. Some of the most proficient French-speaking evaders even dared to engage German soldiers in conversation. One evader started a conversation with a German only to discover the German spoke no French. The British soldier asked if the man spoke English, which he admitted he did. The two men then conversed in English until the British soldier departed, leaving the German blissfully unaware he had just been speaking to an English evader.

  Fortunate to escape the attentions of the Germans, John Christie and his mate Arthur spent the entire summer of 1940 in hiding in the northern French town of St Pol, where they soon became aware of large numbers of troops amassing ready for the intended inva
sion of southern England. Despite these ominous troop build-ups, the local people disregarded their own safety to take the two Britons into their homes. Christie later wrote of this spirit of cooperation which seemed so far from the bickering between the politicians of the two Allied nations that had marred the military campaign: ‘One thing my travels taught me at this period of my life was that there is a tremendous amount of goodness going around. It’s only when you are really down that you get a chance to find out.’7

  As the summer months passed, they began to make preparations for the journey south. Like all evaders, their intention was to reach Vichy France in the south. But first they would need passes and identity cards to allow them to travel. Their friends stole passes from the Germans to make counterfeits, concentrating on finding a copy of the necessary pass to leave the so-called Forbidden Zone around the French coast. The stamps for their passes were made by cutting up the rubber heel of a shoe with a razor blade. The ink was obtained by extracting blue dye from a sheet of carbon paper.

  By August 1940 they were finally ready to begin their journey: ‘We set out that first day with high hopes and it was goodbye to cross-country travel, because armed with our false papers we decided that we could travel on the open roads once more.’8 The irony of their first few days travelling was that some locals were reluctant to help them since they had accepted the truce, and were not enamoured with British soldiers attempting to continue the war, while they were able to hitch lifts in German convoys who allowed the two make-believe Frenchmen to travel in the backs of their trucks.

  Although months had passed since the two men had been at the heart of the defeated army, it was not long before they were once again reminded of the scale of the defeat. Passing through Amiens they witnessed a compound filled with the detritus of war: ‘It was a huge concentration of artillery of all shapes and sizes, mainly British. Some of the guns had been “spiked”, that is done by exploding a shell inside the barrel to burst the metal. The majority of them appeared to be undamaged . . . It brought home the measure of the massive amount of equipment that the British Army had lost to the Germans.’9

  Many of the evaders preferred to avoid the big cities, but Christie decided Paris was the perfect place from which to head south. Quite simply, a city was easy to hide in – people were too concerned with their own problems to worry about two itinerant labourers who claimed to be heading south to find work in the grain harvest. Their main problem was how to avoid the crowds of German soldiers out on the streets. But they soon noticed the Germans were too busy visiting tourist sites and taking photographs to worry about them. One French-speaking evader later wrote of how he deliberately misdirected Germans who asked him for street directions.

  Paris was also a city ravaged by war. The Germans may not have needed to fight their way into it but they had still made a vast impact. The requisitioning of French industrial goods caused ripples throughout France. Vast numbers of locomotives and railway wagons had been commandeered, leaving transport in short supply. Even French horses had been pressed into service for the enemy. Bread rations had fallen, shops were bereft of consumer goods and the sale of alcohol was restricted. There was also a curfew in force, limiting the movement of any would-be evaders during the hours of darkness. Such were the deprivations caused by the defeat and division of France that the death rate in Paris rose by 24 per cent.

  These conditions encouraged the growth of a hostile population, some of whom welcomed the British evaders and were eager to offer assistance. There were also Irish citizens with links to the UK, Americans and Polish émigrés who were more than willing to do anything to assist the army of a country still fighting the enemy. William Broad, a British officer in hiding in Paris while looking for a way to get his party of soldiers away from France, was one such man taken into the care of French civilians. He began to circulate openly in their company, dining in some of the best restaurants in Paris. One night in Maxim’s he found himself enjoying his evening meal when Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering entered the room and sat down to dine.

  Christie and Arthur were given food and shelter in Paris by a disabled French Great War veteran, who provided them with the ever-popular British dish of egg and chips. Welcome as it was, food and shelter was not all they needed. If they were to reach the south of France in safety they would need enough money to feed themselves and pay for train tickets. It was decided that the best source of funds would be the American embassy, which was still operating in the city. Using their forged French identity papers, the two soldiers gained entry to the embassy, where they met a Mrs Deacon. She listened to their story and proved willing to assist. Handing them 600 francs each, she advised them to leave the city as soon as possible. They took her advice and that night they boarded a train at the Gare d’Austerlitz heading for the town of Angoulême.

  On leaving Angoulême, the biggest problem was how to cross the demarcation line into the unoccupied zone without being apprehended. Forged identification papers were not enough; a special pass was needed to make the crossing legally. As a result most evaders attempted to cross in secret. It was not an easy process, nor was it helped by the fact there were no detailed maps available that showed the precise location of the border. After an attempted night crossing, during which they got lost, John Christie and his mate decided it would be safer to cross in daylight, when there was less chance of accidentally bumping into a patrol. Daylight meant they could see the border and, keeping a German camp within their view, at a safe distance, the two men passed safely into Vichy France. They were not yet home, they were not yet free, but at least they were safe, for the time being, from the Germans.

  Not all the evaders were able to make a safe crossing. After weeks of walking, Derrick Peterson and his comrades passed safely into the unoccupied zone of France. It seemed they were free, but five miles into Vichy they were picked up by French police, marched back to the demarcation line and handed over to a German patrol. After thirty-two days in a POW camp Peterson made good his escape in the company of a French artilleryman. From October 1940 until March 1941 he managed to evade detention within France. After arriving in the unoccupied zone for the second time, his French companion was forced to rejoin his unit and sent to North Africa, while Peterson teamed up with a fellow Briton who had escaped from a POW camp via the sewers. During this period he was assisted by the Americans. A letter from the American consul in Lyon detailing his escape from the stalag had actually reached the Peterson home before his parents had received official notification that he was a prisoner. In October they wrote to the Home Office, asking if it would be possible to forward money to their son. They received the reply that the Americans were funding him to the tune of £10 per month. Peterson’s relieved parents immediately offered to repay all the American money. In April 1941 the two men crossed the Pyrenees into Spain and walked to Gibraltar. That month another two soldiers reached Gibraltar. It was Second-Lieutenant Parkinson of the Sussex Regiment, accompanied by Private Bertie Bell, the only survivor of the massacre of British prisoners in the Forêt de Nieppe.

  The Americans were not the only nationality able to help the evaders from the BEF. As a neutral state, the Irish retained diplomatic facilities within France. This opened up an obvious course of action for some evaders. Those with Irish heritage were able to request Irish passports. By claiming to be civilians trapped in the south of France they were able to acquire the necessary documentation to make the journey out of France, through Spain and into Gibraltar.

  Arriving in Marseilles, the evaders had a number of options. Some men went straight to the Red Cross for assistance, visiting their canteen to get a hot meal. After days and weeks of walking, a hot meal was the one thing they needed more than anything else. Once that was finished they gravitated to the American Seaman’s Mission at 35, Rue de Forbin, where they were able to collect money from the amiable Church of Scotland minister who ran the institution. Reverend Donald Caskie had been the minister at a church in Gretna, Scotland, p
rior to moving to France in the late 1930s. Following the fall of France he had moved south to Marseilles to assist the stranded British merchant seamen, airmen and soldiers who had congregated at the Seaman’s Mission in hope of shelter before finding a way home. Though a sign outside the mission read ‘Civilians and Seamen Only’ it had become a beacon for soldiers arriving in Marseilles. Indeed, 100,000 French francs had been made available to Donald Caskie by the British government for the relief of the British soldiers. Once settled at the mission, the evaders gravitated towards the port to seek a way out of France by boat. But although the quaysides were full of ships, each one was guarded by French police and troops. There seemed to be little chance of either stowing away or finding a berth on a ship.

  From the mission the kindly minister used his own money to forward mail to the UK via American diplomatic channels. It was a vital channel to ensure that the families of the evaders received the welcome news that their husbands and sons were alive and safe. The wife of Lance-Corporal Fred Verity, of the East Lancashire Regiment, received a telegram sent from Marseilles on 10 August 1940. It informed her: ‘Fred safe in Marseilles’10 and had been sent by someone named Osborn. The message amazed Mrs Verity since she had already been officially informed of her husband’s death. One officer used the minister’s mail service to request the Foreign Office repay £17 he had borrowed from the American consulate to aid his journey to Marseilles. He need not have worried since they had already requested financial assistance from the Americans. In addition, the Foreign Office asked the American embassy in France to hand over $100,000 to the representative of the Quakers in Marseilles in order that he too could assist the evaders.