Dunkirk 1940 Read online

  In memory of 4604110 Private Philip Smith, 9th Battalion West Yorkshire Regiment, 1903–1982

  And the forgotten men of the battle for France.

  Acknowledgements

  This book began as an attempt to find out about the experiences of my grandfather in the defence of Arras in 1940. He had not spoken of it when I was a child and died a few months before I returned from the Falklands, having perhaps learned the questions I should have asked. The records of the 9th seem to have been lost in the battle and the Battalion disbanded soon after its return to England. No-one seems to have thought it necessary to record its part in the war and so far I have found only a few tantalising references, a letter on an internet auction site and a scattering of misfiled lists in other war diaries. The search, however, led me to reading of the 2/5th Battalion of the Regiment and from there to the history of 137 Brigade whose unsung experiences encapsulate all that was good and bad about the army sent to France in 1939. This book is dedicated to all those who served the lines of communication. I would like to thank Shaun Barrington of Spellmount at The History Press for recognising that this was a story worth telling.

  In researching the book, I have had the pleasure of getting to know a wide variety of people whose passion for their subject and willingness to share what they know has added a depth to the story I could never have managed alone. Hugh Sebag-Montefiore was kind and courteous enough to make efforts on my behalf to track down information about the 9th. Martin Marix Evans shared his new-found details about the impact of the geography and geology of the Dunkirk area on the German attack plans.

  Adrian Noble, whose father served with the Tyneside Scottish, sent me his files on the battle at Ficheux and Jeremy Moor his father’s own diary of the events around Robecq. These were subsequently to form the basis of the official account given by Major Parks in his 1941 article but included insights that were later dropped. Both added the vital element of remembering that this is not ancient history.

  I owe a very great debt of gratitude to Kim James, whose own excellent book The Greater Share of Honour (Troubador Books, 2007) is a moving account of what these events meant to real people. Kim’s friendship is something to treasure and he has been generosity personified in sharing the fruits of his years of research, including a number of war diaries and personal accounts. It was he who produced Rex Flower’s unpublished story that forms an important part of this book. It was also through Kim that it was possible to access the papers of Archibald Bentley Beauman, courtesy of his daughter, Lavender Scaramanga. Beauman deserves far greater recognition than he ever received.

  Other accounts were gathered from the collections of the Imperial War Museum and the BBC WW2 People’s War, an online archive of wartime memories contributed by members of the public and gathered by the BBC. The archive can be found at bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar.

  Finally, as ever, my thanks go to my wife, Jacqueline and daughter Bethany for letting me get on with writing. My son, Joshua, was supportive in the way only a five-year-old can be. Had he been in France in 1940, his help for Beauman et al would have been worth another division – to the Germans. All three help keep me sane by driving me mad. Thanks.

  Tim Lynch

  Contents

  Title

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter One

  ‘A specified dimension within a specified time’

  The BEF Destroyed and Rebuilt, 1919–1939

  Chapter Two

  Wagging the Dog

  The Expansion of the Logistical ‘Tail’

  Chapter Three

  ‘You are no longer Saturday night soldiers’

  The Mobilisation of the Territorial Army, 1939

  Chapter Four

  Leaving Much to be Desired

  The Deployment of the ‘Digging Divisions’, April 1940

  Chapter Five

  Seeing the Wood for the Trees

  The British High Command and the Allied Plan, 1940

  Chapter Six

  The Matador’s Cloak and the Revolving Door

  Fall Gelb, the German Invasion Plans

  Chapter Seven

  ‘More gallantly than advisedly’

  Committing the Digging Divisions, May 1940

  Chapter Eight

  ‘Very brave, but very, very stupid’

  The Slaughter of the Innocents, 20 May

  Chapter Nine

  ‘We happen to be going that way’

  The 2/5th Yorkshires and the Road to Dunkirk

  Chapter Ten

  ‘Heroic but thoroughly unsound’

  The Stranding of 137 Brigade, 20 May

  Chapter Eleven

  The Sixth Wheel

  Losing Command and Control in Normandy, June 1940

  Chapter Twelve

  ‘Houses covered in rambler roses’

  The 2/6th Dukes and the Highland Division, St Valery

  Chapter Thirteen

  ‘Non-swimmers stay back!’

  Crossing the Seine, the 2/7th Dukes at Les Andelys

  Chapter Fourteen

  ‘I was never a boy any more’

  The 2/4th KOYLI and the battle for Pont de L’Arche

  Chapter Fifteen

  Epilogue

  Homecomings, 1940–1945

  Bibliography

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  ‘A specified dimension within a

  specified time’

  On 11 October 1939 Minister for War Leslie Hore-Belisha announced to the Commons that he was:

  … able to inform the House that we have fulfilled – and more than fulfilled – our undertaking recently given to France to dispatch to that country in the event of war a British Expeditionary Force of a specified dimension within a specified time … Within six weeks of the outbreak of war in 1914, we had transported to France 148,000 men. Within five weeks of the outbreak of this war we had transported to France 158,000 men. During this period we have also created our base and lines of communication organisation so as to assure the regular flow of supplies and munitions of every kind and to receive further contingents as and when we may decide to send them.

  Further, he said, 25,000 vehicles of some 50 different types, ‘some of them of enormous dimensions and weighing 15 tons apiece or more’, had been delivered via harbours with specialist equipment.1

  This, he said, was not the ‘light army’ that had gone to France twenty-five years before:

  Nearly sixty per cent of the fighting troops in 1914 were infantrymen, relying on their rifles and bayonets and two machine-guns per battalion. Now only twenty per cent of the fighting troops are infantrymen, with fifty Bren guns and twenty-two anti-tank rifles, and other weapons as well with each battalion. It will be seen from this one example how much more effectively armed with fire-power is the present Expeditionary Force.

  ‘He might have added’, wrote one observer, ‘that even in 1914 the Kaiser’s generals were astounded at the firepower of the British line; they could not believe that the men were armed only with rifles and not machine-guns, so rapid and accurate was their fire.’2

  ‘Knowing the precise situation regarding the British Field Army in France in general, and in particular in my own division’, wrote Bernard Montgomery, then a Major-General in command of 3rd Division:

  I was amazed to read in a newspaper one day in France in October 1939, the speech of the Secretary of State for War in Parliament when he was announcing the arrival of the BEF in France. He gave Parliament and the British people to understand that the Army we had just sent to France was equipped ‘in the finest possible manner which could not be excelled. Our Army is as well if not better equipped than any similar Army.’3

  In fact, Montgomery claimed, the Army was
‘totally unfit to fight a first class war on the continent of Europe … Indeed, the Regular Army was unfit to take part in a realistic exercise.’4

  Twenty-five years on, there was much about the men arriving in France in 1939 that was familiar to the veterans of their fathers’ war. Despite the introduction of new battledress and webbing equipment in 1937, many men still wore the same uniforms and equipment and carried the same basic weapons as the previous generation. Crucially, though, the men arriving in 1939 differed most from those of 1914 in their ability to make use of the firepower Hore-Belisha so admired. His emphasis on the greater number of machine guns, for example, glossed over the fact that there were now only a third the number of men available to fire them. According to his statement, 60 per cent of the 1914 BEF – 88,000 men – had been infantry soldiers able to man positions along the front. Now, even heavily armed, only 20 per cent – 31,600 – were available to do the same job.

  In 1914, every soldier of the small but highly professional army prided himself in his ability to use the Short Magazine Lee-Enfield rifle to maximum effect. Every year, each soldier completed a weapons training test in which he fired 250 rounds at ranges of 100–600 yards, followed by a ‘mad minute’ in which he fired 15 rounds at a target 300 yards away. Part III of the test involved firing 50 rounds at various ranges. He scored four points for each ‘bull’ (a 24-inch wide target), three for an inner and two for an outer. To qualify as a marksman with an extra sixpence a day pay, a soldier had to score a minimum of 130 points out of a maximum 200. To be assessed as a ‘first class shot’, he needed 105 points and 70 to become a second class shot. Any commanding officer of an infantry unit with fewer that 50 per cent of his men qualified as marksmen after the test would be required to face a very embarrassing interview with his brigadier. As a result, the initial German attacks of the First World War faltered in the face of heavy rifle fire and any enemy showing himself within 600 yards of a British soldier would be very lucky to live long enough to learn from the experience.5

  In marked contrast, in 1939 many men would arrive with their unused weapons still packed in greased crates having never had the opportunity to fire them. Others arrived having fired their weapons only once to complete their basic training. Inspecting a Regular Army machine gun battalion under his command in November, II Corps Commander Lieutenant General Alan Brooke noted, ‘It would be sheer massacre to commit it to battle in its present state.’6

  Leslie Hore-Belisha, Secretary of State for War, May 1937–January 1940.

  Twenty years earlier, in 1918, Britain had the largest navy in the world, a newly created Royal Air Force and fielded the biggest, most experienced and well equipped army it had ever known. That year had seen it defeat the bulk of its main enemy in a continental war for the first time in its history, yet the victories and the lessons they brought were soon forgotten and in the popular imagination the First World War became the story of mud, blood and stalemate it remains today. At the highest level, Lloyd George’s hatred of the Western Front, and of Haig in particular, meant he tried to ignore the successes that had finally come from it. Disenchantment among veterans and the emergence of the ‘lions led by donkeys’ attitude towards the conduct of the war focused on the failures, not the victories. ‘By robbing Haig and his army of their laurels’, wrote historian John Terraine, ‘the lessons they had so painfully learned were wasted, and this augured ill for the conduct of the next war. It also made it more certain that there would be a next war.’7 Having defeated the German Army in the field, logistical problems had prevented the Allies from entering Germany and the only troops to parade through the streets of Berlin were Germans, proudly wearing oak leaves in their helmets and already proclaiming that they had not been defeated in battle, instead they had been betrayed by ‘communists and Jews’ at home. It was a legend the Nazis would trade heavily on.

  For the British and French, exhausted economically, socially and psychologically by the enormous costs of the past four years, the problem was what to do with their huge forces now that the war was over. In March 1919, Parliament debated the annual army estimate and agreed that ‘a number of Land Forces, not exceeding 2,500,000, all ranks, be maintained for the Service of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland at Home and Abroad, excluding His Majesty’s Indian Possessions, during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1920’ and that ‘a sum not exceeding £125,000,000 be granted to His Majesty on account for or towards defraying the charges for Army Services.’8 Soon after, it agreed a budget of ‘a further sum, not exceeding £50,000,000, be granted to His Majesty on account for defraying the Charges for Army Services, which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1920.’9 At the same time, the navy would be provided with £120,000,00010 and the Air Force another £45,000,000.11

  Heavy taxation to pay for the war had combined with a decline in overseas trade and particularly in Britain’s traditional exports of textiles and coal. In the chaotic reorganisation of the economy after the war, rather than adapt to the new emerging industries, the narrow view prevailed that economic problems must stem from poor management of public money. In 1921 the Anti-Waste League was formed by Lord Rothermere to campaign against what they considered wasteful government expenditure and in August Sir Auckland Geddes was appointed to chair a committee to consider sweeping cuts to public expenditure with a brief to:

  … make recommendations to the Chancellor of the Exchequer for effecting forthwith all possible reductions in the National Expenditure on Supply Services, having regard especially to the present and prospective position of the Revenue. Insofar as questions of policy are involved in the expenditure under discussion, these will remain for the exclusive consideration of the Cabinet; but it will be open to the Committee to review the expenditure and to indicate the economies which might be effected if particular policies were either adopted, abandoned or modified.12

  ‘The tendency to waste must be reckoned as an element of original sin’ wrote Henry Higgs in his report on the committee in 1922, ‘and it is better to be dead than a “waster” or wastrel’.13 Social spending on education, health and housing were all targeted under what would become known as the ‘Geddes Axe’ and budgets were slashed mercilessly. With peace in Europe seemingly assured, the armed forces were obvious candidates for cutbacks and a defence spending fell from £766 million in 1919–20 to £189 million in 1921–22.14

  By that time the Government had adopted a policy known as the ‘Ten Year Rule’ which ordered that from 15 August 1919 ‘it should be assumed for framing revised estimates that the British Empire will not be engaged in any great war during the next ten years, and that no Expeditionary Force is required for that purpose.’15 Now, the Geddes Axe fell on the Army with a vengeance. After the creation of the Irish Free State, 5 Irish infantry regiments were disbanded in their entirety followed by another 22 infantry battalions of various regiments whilst the cavalry were cut from 28 to 20 regiments and 7 battalions were withdrawn from overseas garrisons. Meanwhile, the Territorial Army establishment was cut from 216,041 in 1922–23 to 184,161 by 1925–26.16

  The cuts were supported by the agreements reached at the Washington Naval Conference of 1921–22 – the first international disarmament meeting to be held under the auspices of the League of Nations – which decided there should be parity between the British and American navies but set a lower quota of battleships for the Japanese, French and Italian navies along with a ten-year moratorium on the building of warships. It also set down the maximum size of battleships, cruisers and aircraft carriers and limited the size of the gun armament on existing ships. For Britain, dependent on maintaining its naval power in order to protect its overseas trade, the decision was a potentially dangerous one but based on the belief that further conferences would address air and land forces it was deemed an acceptable risk. In 1927, however, a further conference in Geneva failed on the problem of reaching agreement on the number and size of cruisers needed by Britain for
trade defence.

  Despite this, in 1928 Winston Churchill, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, fought off doubters and succeeded in making the Ten Year Rule permanent. Whereas previously it had been reviewed on an annual basis, now each year the ten-year clock would automatically be reset back to year one and the armed forces would never get any closer than a decade away from a state of readiness for war. Initially, as well as diverting defence spending into the peacetime economy, the concept had been designed to allow equipment programmes to be smoothed out over the medium-term, with an aim of having the armed forces ready in ten years. Now, with the rule reset year by year, the forces stagnated because the government had decreed there was no need to spend money on modernising them for at least another decade. The Treasury was satisfied but the armed forces were deeply worried.

  In 1930 the London Naval Conference extended the terms of the Washington Conference to last until 1936 and Britain agreed to reduce its fleet of cruisers to 50 – much against the wishes of the Admiralty. The cutbacks had already had a serious impact on the economy with the shipbuilding, steel and engineering industries and specialist manufacturers of guns, ammunition and naval equipment all being badly hit.

  In April 1931 the First Sea Lord, Sir Frederick Field, claimed in a report to the Committee of Imperial Defence that the Royal Navy had declined not only in relative strength compared to other Great Powers but that ‘owing to the operation of the “ten-year-decision” and the claimant need for economy, our absolute strength also has … been so diminished as to render the fleet incapable, in the event of war, of efficiently affording protection to our trade.’17 Field also claimed that the Royal Navy was below the standard required for keeping open Britain’s sea communications during wartime; that if the Navy moved to the East to protect the Empire there would not be enough ships to protect the British Isles and its trade from attack and even that no port in the entire British Empire was ‘adequately defended.’