Dunkirk: The Men They Left Behind (11 page)

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.’
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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.’
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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.’
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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.’

In the forward positions some of the men put their weapons to good use. One platoon found itself overlooking an open stretch of road being used by enemy traffic. With impunity they were able to pick off anyone trying to use the road: ‘We found that motorcyclists didn’t have a chance to survive, that nearly all tanks passed safely . . . and that troop carrying vehicles presented an easy target. We even had the pleasure of blowing an idle traffic controller to pieces with the anti-tank rifle.’
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With casualties growing, Les Allan had no choice but to keep working, which meant being outdoors, in full view of the enemy. At least the riflemen were supposed to keep their heads down. The medics and bearers just had one armband and a haversack with a Red Cross on it. Those he could help were taken to the cellars where the medics tried desperately to patch them up. Unfortunately for the wounded there were no doctors to help them. The medical officer had already been evacuated to find a safer position for the wounded. So many bodies were filling the floor that movement through the cellar became difficult: ‘As I entered I saw a man lying there in the entrance. It was a chap called Johnson, he had awful head wounds. His face was all torn open. There was blood everywhere. His jaw and skull were bashed in. I just kicked him out of the way. You soon realize you have to help those who can be saved, not those who are virtually dead.’ Many years later, at a battalion reunion, Les Allan came face to face with Private Johnson again. Amazingly, he had survived the destruction of the convent and his wounds had slowly recovered. As they chatted, Allan noted Johnson was smoking a pipe. He explained that he was unable to smoke cigarettes since the damage to his jaw meant he couldn’t keep a cigarette between his lips, however, he could comfortably hold a pipe up to his mouth.

As the battle raged, Allan moved around among the flaming wreckage of the battalion’s ammunition trucks and carriers. The wireless trucks were abandoned in the streets as movement became suicidal. Communication between HQ and the companies became impossible, as the runners were fired at whenever they tried to move in the open. No longer was the battalion making a coordinated defence of Hazebrouck, instead there were simply ‘penny packets’ of infantry desperately attempting to hold off the enemy for as long as possible. The survivors of D Company watched as German troops advanced towards the convent, yet they could offer no assistance. All the exits to the house they were defending were covered by enemy machine-guns; all they could do was watch the fate of their beleaguered comrades.

Eventually, the battle closed in on the defenders of battalion HQ. No longer did Allan need to go outside to find wounded to bring to the convent’s cellars, he could simply fetch them from the upper floors. At one point he found himself manning a Bren gun, convincing himself it was correct for a medic to bear arms in defence of the wounded. By dusk, stragglers from throughout the battalion had made their way back to battalion HQ for the final assault. Every available man was ready to fight and all the cooks and drivers were upstairs manning rifles and machine-guns. As the enemy assault continued, fire took hold of the upper floors of the convent and the defenders were forced to move down to continue the battles from the lower floors.

By dusk news had reached Hazebrouck that elements of the BEF were being withdrawn to Dunkirk, but it meant little to those within battalion HQ. Escape was impossible. All they could do was to sit tight inside their flaming position and pray for a miracle. Watching from D Company’s position, it became clear the defence of Hazebrouck was doomed: ‘The forward movement of the enemy could be observed by light signals which they fired as they advanced along each street, and I soon realized they were closing in on BN HQ from three sides.’
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Still the men within the convent continued to defy the enemy, firing their weapons and slowing the advance. Their defiance cost them dear: ‘Apparently by some pre-arranged signal four or five enemy bombers came over town and ruthlessly bombed the area.’
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Those watching soon realized the bombers were devastatingly accurate. An officer watching the scenes later wrote: ‘I then witnessed the most despondent scene of all my life . . . not fifty yards away was our battalion HQ which was simply being blown to pieces. Planes came down so low they couldn’t fail to miss it … at that moment the entire place was dead, there wasn’t a soul to be seen anywhere. I felt an utter wreck after seeing this.’
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With the terrible work complete, the planes flew off leaving the Wehrmacht to complete the destruction of the convent. Six tanks closed in, firing into the already burning building. Suddenly there was a terrific roar as the entire building collapsed. Still the tanks advanced, firing into the rubble as if to advertise their devotion to the cause of destruction. Then slowly a section of infantry appeared from the shadows, their every movement silhouetted against the flames of the burning town. No longer did they need to take cover. There was no one left inside to offer resistance. The defence of Hazebrouck was over. One last obstacle on the road to Dunkirk had fallen.

Yet the battle was not over for some within the convent. Despite the pounding of the HQ, Les Allan had kept working. Bloody bodies had filled the cellars, dust had been shaken from the ceiling, coating the wounded men in a film of dirt, but his work went on:The artillery had got the range. For the last hour we were down in the cellar for our own safety. We were keeping our heads down hoping to avoid the shelling. The convent was in flames, so the blokes upstairs were fighting in the gardens. They fought to the very last – at least to the end of their ammunition. It was a last-ditch stand, the Germans invited them to surrender but they refused. We couldn’t give the wounded much treatment. We just had first-aid bandages. All we could do was to stem the bleeding. We just helped those we could treat. But they were good – they were resigned to their position. We told them we’d get them out as soon as possible. I think the fact we didn’t desert them helped to ease their minds. None of us would have deserted them anyway – even if we wanted to there was nowhere to go.

Trying to ignore the roar of the bombers and the crackle of the flames, he made one final effort to help the wounded. As he tried to leave the cellar his world, quite literally, collapsed around him. For a brief moment the hideous roar heard across the town terrified Allan – and then it was over. Silence engulfed his world.

By 9.30 p.m. the whole town had fallen silent. Hazebrouck, along with its defenders, was a dead town. As the remnants of the battalion scattered northwards towards Dunkirk they had no idea of the fate of those left behind in the ruins of the convent. Just twelve officers and 200 men of the Buckinghamshire Battalion reached England. The commander of D Company took almost a week to reach the coast. Some of the stragglers who made their way northwards were captured before they could get away. A party led by Lieutenant Powell from D Company reached Dunkirk one day after the last boats had departed. The group led by CSM Baldrick reached the Dunkirk perimeter but were taken prisoner.