My thoughts on Dunkirk

As regular readers will know by now, this blog isn't usually in the business of film reviews, so please don't expect a Mark Kermode or Barry Norman style appraisal. As readers will know, I belong to the generation brought up on the classic British war films of the 1950s and 60s and have an in-built suspicion of anything made later than about 1977. In my opinion at least, many of the more recent films of the genre are pretty ordinary and I struggle to take them seriously. It's difficult for me as a military historian and guide to watch these films without forever nit-picking about the accuracy, or lack thereof concerning the uniforms, the equipment, the aircraft, the ships and so forth, at which point my long suffering friends who have been dragged along to watch the film, usually begin to lose the will to live!

However, the new Dunkirk directed by Christopher Nolan is an important work that has attracted much attention and it was because of this that I decided to go along and watch it for myself at the cinema with (hopefully) an open mind.

I still had a fair amount of trepidation and maybe even some misgivings as I entered the Barbican Centre yesterday and perhaps this was because subconsciously, I was allowing comparisons with the 1958 Ealing Studios version of Dunkirk, which starred Richard Attenborough, Bernard Lee and John Mills to prejudice my thinking and was wondering whether the new film would measure up to this British classic.

Firstly - and this doesn't give away any spoilers - the new Dunkirk cannot be compared to the 1958 film as they look at the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) in completely differing ways. The old film tells the story of the whole campaign and covers the fighting withdrawal through Belgium and northern France to the coast and the subsequent evacuation, as well as telling us something of the mood in Britain, of the complacency of the 'Phoney War' period and how people were shaken out of that complacency with a jolt. By contrast, Nolan's work establishes where the British and French allies are inside the opening shots of the film. They have already been defeated and pushed back inside the Dunkirk perimeter, where the armies await evacuation back to England.

The new film contains very little dialogue and is a series of three separate threads that gradually become interlinked. Firstly we follow the stories of two British soldiers, Tommy and Alex played by Fionn Whitehead and Harry Styles (who can act and does so very well) and their various attempts to get home. Next we see the evacuation through the eyes of a small boat owner, Mr Dawson who is assisted by his son Peter and a deck hand, George. Mr Dawson is a plausible character played with great authority by Mark Rylance as are his two young helpers played by Tom Glynne-Carney and Barry Keoghan. The last of the three stories shows the evacuation through the eyes of Farrier and Collins,  two Spitfire pilots played by Tom Hardy and Jack Lowden respectively. In a nice nod to British war films of an earlier era, we hear the voice of Michael Caine as the RAF Fighter Controller coming over the radios of the Spitfires. As would be expected, the Royal Navy features strongly in this film and one of the major supporting characters is Commander Bolton, played by the excellent Kenneth Branagh, who is the Naval Beachmaster in command of the evacuation through the East Mole (a breakwater) in Dunkirk Harbour.

Without giving too much of the plot away, the film follows the attempts of the two soldiers to get away as various ships they are on board are sunk by bombs, torpedo and gunfire in some harrowing and suspenseful scenes before they are eventually rescued by Mr Dawson and his small boat, the Moonstone. On their way to Dunkirk, Mr Dawson and his son rescue a soldier played by Cillian Murphy, who appears to be the only survivor of a destroyer that has been sunk and who is not surprisingly, suffering from severe shock. He at first unwillingly, becomes part of their crew and we see how the Moonstone is first on the scene when one of the Spitfires is shot down and ditches in the sea adjacent to the small boat. Collins the pilot, is rescued just before the aircraft sinks with him inside it and he too ends up helping the others with the evacuation. The Moonstone, along with the remainder of the armada of small boats eventually reach Dunkirk harbour, where they assist in rescuing Tommy and Alex from their sinking minesweeper, as well as the remaining small craft lifting men from the beaches and from the Mole.

There is much more to the plot than this but I do not want to spoil the film for those wishing to see it for themselves. There are, in my opinion, one or two slight holes in the plot and there are some minor criticisms as to the equipment and the look of some of the scenes. For example, we never see more than one large ship alongside the East Mole at any one time and we know that in reality, the breakwater was used extensively by multiple numbers of destroyers, minesweepers and requistioned ferries. This can probably be explained by budgetary restraints and the director's aversion to using CGI in his films, so this criticism can be tempered by Nolan's quest for realistic looking scenes. Another small gripe is that the beaches never quite looked crowded enough for me, although this can probably be answered in a similar way - you can only have so many extras and the days of a "cast of thousands" are probably long gone. Some of the equipment is not quite right but it is not possible to find an authentic 1940 vintage destroyer or minesweeper without resorting to CGI - the vessels used do by and large, have the right look to them. Also, in one scene, we see container cranes in the background when we are supposed to be in 1940, some thirty years or so before the invention of the shipping container - could these not have been airbrushed out of the picture?

We also see the three Spitfires buzzing across the Channel at wavetop height - this is absurd, as for them to enter into any sort of air combat with the Luftwaffe, they would need to be at height in order to have any sort of advantage with the Bf109s that they were likely to encounter. This was the main reason for the perception amongst the soldiers of the BEF that the RAF were not there to protect them. Of coure, the RAF were there but much of their combat with the Luftwaffe took place at high altitude or inland from the beaches. The Spitfires in the film also seem to have an unlimited supply of ammunition for their machine guns, when in reality the Mark 1 only had enough for fourteen seconds firing. There is also too much emphasis placed on the role played by the 'Little Ships', which in reality were only responsible for lifting between five and seven percent of the total number of 338,226 British and French soldiers evacuated, although they did perform vital work in ferrying men off the beaches. The vast majority of those evacuated were lifted from the Mole at night by the Royal Navy destroyers and minesweepers, as well as the requisitioned ferries and excursion steamers of the Merchant Navy and in this respect, the film does perpetuate the myth of the Little Ships of Dunkirk. My only other very slight criticism is not specifically aimed at this film but is a more general complaint in that it is extremely loud. I know war is loud but whenever I see any film in the cinema these days, the volume in the theatre does always seem to be set at level eleven but perhaps this is more to do with the vagaries of my ears rather than anything else!

However, the above are minor criticisms in the scheme of things and there are a whole lot more positives than negatives about this film. Much of the location filming was shot in and around Dunkirk and that counts for much with me, at least. The three Spitfires we see are all Mark 1s, absolutely authentic for the period. Amongst the ships used for the film, we see MTB 102, which in reality was one of the final vessels to leave Dunkirk in June 1940 and some twelve of the surviving 'Little Ships' were also used in various scenes to recreate the evacuation.

The film is also extremely respectful to the period as well as to the people of this time and succeeds in capturing something of the real spirit of 1940. Also, although there are some understandably harrowing scenes of battle and of ships sinking - it would be impossible to make a film of this nature without showing people getting killed - it is done in a restrained way. There is no gratuitious blood and gore in the way that some recent war films seem to delight in. 

In one important respect, this film does resemble the 1958 version of Dunkirk, as well as many other British war films of the period, in that it is extremely understated and almost modest in the portrayal of events that helped shape history and director Christopher Nolan together with his cast and crew are to be congratulated on having achieved this, especially as this is an American production that covers events from a British perspective during a period that was long before America entered the war.

As has to be the case with any film portraying real life events, much of the action is compressed and many of the characters are amalgams of several real people. For example, Branagh's character, Commander Bolton appears to be a mix of Captain Bill Tennant, the Senior Naval Officer at Dunkirk and of Commander James Campbell Clouston, a Canadian officer in command of the East Mole, who was drowned when his motor launch was bombed and sunk whilst returning to Dunkirk from Dover after a short rest period. Mark Rylance's character, Mr Dawson seems to be at least in part based upon Charles Herbert Lightoller, one time Second Officer of the Titanic, who survived that particular disaster and who in retirement, took his yacht named Sundowner, across to Dunkirk with his son as a deck hand and rescued the implausibly large number of 130 soldiers, squeezed into the cabin and on deck. On arrival back at Ramsgate, the men filed out in a seemingly never ending stream, at which point a bystander suddenly said to Lightoller "God's truth mate, where did you put them all?" a line that is repeated in the film. Some of the exploits of the Spitfire pilot played by Tom Hardy appear to be at least in part based on Al Deere, the New Zealander who became a Battle of Britain 'ace' and who also took part in fierce air combat over Dunkirk.

There was one scene towards the end of the film that even had this cynical old military historian slightly moist eyed. As they disembark from the Moonstone at Dover, one of the young soldiers we have been following and who is by now caked in oil and dirt says to an elderly man who is handing out blankets "I'm not a hero, all I've done is survive." The old man, who we assume is himself a veteran of the previous conflict replies "Well, that's good enough - well done!"

If you haven't yet seen this film, I urge you to do so as I feel it is a respectful and moving tribute to all of those who took part in the real life evacuations some seventy seven years ago.

A-Z of the Blitz (E)

Evacuation: Why & How? (author's photo)

After a holiday break, we resume our occasional series with a look at the letter 'E' and connections with the Battle of Britain and the Blitz.

Perhaps the most obvious 'E' is for Evacuees and when one thinks of this facet of the war in Britain, most people immediately and correctly think towards the mass exodus of children that was instigated two days before the official declaration of war, on September 1st 1939, under the title of 'Operation Pied Piper.'

In a superb piece of organisation, spread over four days, over half a million people were evacuated from London alone, largely using London Transport buses and the main line railways. Children were evacuated to all manner of places in the countryside, some as near to London as High Wycombe and some as far away as Torquay, Newton Abbot and South Wales but all out of the way of the dreaded and expected appearance of huge fleets of German bombers. Apart from children, others evacuated included expectant mothers, blind persons, the mentally ill and hospital patients, the latter so as to free up valuable bed space for the vast numbers of casualties expected to arise when the bombing began. 

"We are not going to win a war by running away." (author's photo)

As can be expected with this massed parting of children from their parents, there were more than a few tears shed both from children and from mothers and although some children came to enjoy the experience and found the country life a great adventure, it has to be said that some frankly hated every moment of it and were quickly brought back to London by mothers who could not bear to be parted from their children, especially when the bombers failed to materialize and Britain entered the period now known as the 'Phoney War.'

Schoolchildren from Woolwich awaiting evacuation at Victoria Station (Greenwich Heritage)

This was unfortunate; whilst the evacuation scheme for children was recommended, it was never mandatory and although the great majority of children stayed away from danger for the duration, the commencement of the Blitz on September 7th 1940, saw more children in London than had been the case exactly one year previously. Needless to say, the bombs falling on London did see a renewed exodus to the countryside.

One scheme that was stopped in it's tracks was the evacuation of children across the Atlantic to the absolute safety of Canada. Unfortunately to reach this safe haven, the vessels being used for the evacuation had to run the gauntlet of U-Boats and German raiders in order to reach safety. On September 27th 1940, the Ellerman liner City of Benares, carrying ninety children was torpedoed by U-48. Only thirteen children were rescued and six of those rescued had to endure a week in an open lifeboat before they were picked up by the destroyer HMS Anthony. One of the childrens' escorts on this voyage, Miss Mary Cornish, a 41 year old music teacher was awarded the George Cross for her efforts in evacuating children from the ship and subsequently caring for them whilst adrift in the lifeboat awaiting rescue.

Evacuees from Charlton Manor School, London at Torquay (Greenwich Heritage)

Another evacuation, strictly outside the scope of this article but worth mentioning nonetheless, was the evacuation that occurred during the onslaught of the so-called 'Terror Weapons', the V-1s and V-2s. Many people, thinking perhaps that the war was as good as won, decided that London was not the place to be in the summer of 1944 and the numbers of 'official' evacuees - i.e. those recorded by their local authorities soared from around 319,000 in March 1944 (which was the lowest number recorded) to an astonishing 1,012,200 by September of that year, which was almost on a par with the peak figures recorded in early 1941. On top of these official figures, it was estimated that a further half million made their own arrangements and left the capital by July 1944. It has to be said that the vast majority of these evacuees were people in the categories mentioned previously and those with war jobs or business in London remained at their posts.

The Daddy of all evacuations was that which occurred at Dunkirk in late May and early June 1944, together with other similar operations from the Channel ports which secured the escape of the bulk of the British Expeditionary Force as well as a sizeable French contingent from under the noses of the advancing German forces. Whilst this evacuation did not directly concern Londoners, it was once again a masterpiece of organisation, combined with not a little good fortune. The magnificent role of the Royal Navy and of the little ships has been well documented but perhaps lesser known is the effort in distributing the evacuated soldiers once they arrived back in England. This was again a stunning piece of logistics, this time on the part of the railway companies, mainly the Southern, who ran some 573 troop trains for evacuees, including ambulance trains for the wounded, many of which passed through London on their way to their various centres where the troops were able to rest and recuperate before returning to their proper units.

Another 'E' synonymous with the Blitz is the Emergency Water Supply, or EWS, with their distinctive signs, some of which still survive in London and other cities as fading reminders of our wartime past. Like many innovations brought about by the necessity of war, the idea of the EWS was a stunningly simple one. It was quickly realized, often through bitter experience that the regular supply of water to the fire services could easily be disrupted by bomb damage as the mains water supply was extremely vulnerable to even the smaller high explosive bombs in the Luftwaffe's arsenal. A simple expedient therefore, was to arrange a supply of emergency reservoirs at strategic points around any built up area. These originally took the form of steel dams which were kept filled and maintained by the local fire services and which could then be used in the event of a failure to the mains supply. They would be refilled by relays of hoses from the nearest source of water or by tanker lorries. Once the Blitz started in earnest, many bombed out buildings were cleared and their basements sealed with concrete or bitumen to create a watertight dam and these were then filled with water. Some of these conversions were official but some were done using local initiative, which sometimes incurred the wrath of the 'dead hand of the uninvolved', no doubt for not filling in the correct paperwork, or some such trifling matter. Bureaucrats and 'jobsworths' thrived even in wartime!

The plaque at the site of the Surrey Music Hall (author's photo)

 

One of these Emergency Water Supplies in London was the scene of one of the tragedies of the Blitz, when on the night of 10th/11th May 1941, the basement of the old Surrey Music Hall at St George's Circus, near the Elephant & Castle, received a direct hit from a High Explosive bomb, killing seventeen London firefighters who were engaged in keeping the water supplies to the already hard pressed firefighters tackling the huge fires burning in the area. Apart from the appalling loss of life, this one bomb cut off the water supply and until fresh water relays could be brought on line, in some cases from the Thames itself, the fires began to burn out of control. Eventually, after some heroic efforts, the water supply was restored using some nine miles of hoses from the Thames and the Surrey Canal and the vast fires began to be brought under control.

Today, a plaque erected by the Firemen Remembered charity marks the spot where these firefighters laid down their lives. 

As mentioned previously, some of these EWS signs survive in London and elsewhere to give a faded footprint into London's wartime past.

Next time, we shall look at the letter 'F' which could stand for Firefighters, First Aid Posts and Firestorms amongst other things.

Published Sources:

The Battle of The Atlantic - John Costello & Terry Hughes, Harper Collins 1977

The Doodlebugs - Norman Longmate, Arrow Books 1986

The London Blitz: A Fireman's Tale - Cyril Demarne OBE, After The Battle 1991

London Transport at War - Charles Graves, Almark Publishing 1974

Return from Dunkirk: Railways to the Rescue, Operation Dynamo 1940 - Peter Tatlow, The Oakwood Press 2010

War on The Line - Bernard Darwin, The Southern Railway Company 1946

Escape to Victory (2)

Lancastria sinking in St Nazaire Harbour (IWM image)

In our previous blog article, we began to examine the evacuations of the British Expeditionary Force and perhaps more belatedly, their French allies from the French Channel ports. Because of the sheer magnitude and the huge number of troops returned to these shores, the main evacuation at Dunkirk, known at the time as Operation Dynamo, has rightly secured it's place in British history as one of the turning points of the war, which enabled the British to secure the nucleus of it's Army, around which a new and much larger force would be formed and which would return to France as part of the great army of liberation some four years later.

Operation Dynamo was completed on June 4th, when the final French elements were brought across to Dover. However, approximately 20,000 British soldiers remained in the Abbeville-Rouen-Le Havre triangle, facing the Germans across the River Somme. This included the bulk of the 51st Highland Division, which had been undertaking a tour of duty on the Maginot Line. The Germans were advancing at such a rapid pace, there was no option but to order an evacuation from Le Havre and the operation, code named 'Cycle' was put into effect on June 9th. On this night, no British troops were evacuated but the French were able to complete their own evacuation. One of the ships involved was HMS Wellington, which today is moored on the Victoria Embankment in London as the headquarters ship and livery hall of the Honourable Company of Master Mariners. The following day - June 10th, destroyers were sent to investigate the possibility of evacuating troops from the coast between Le Havre and Dieppe but at 1530 these vessels came under fire from shore batteries, which revealed that the Germans had broken through to the coast, thus cutting off the escape route of 51st Highland Division to Le Havre.

It was therefore decided to concentrate the shipping required on the small fishing port of St Valery en Caux and began to arrive accordingly in the early hours of June 11th. Unfortunately, the bulk of the Highlanders had been delayed in their withdrawal and the only troops evacuated that night were some forty stretcher cases, some walking wounded and a handful of able bodied British and French troops. It was reported to the Royal Navy beach party that the majority of the Division would be ready for evacuation on the night of 12th June but shortly afterwards, the port came within range of German artillery and due to this, combined with patchy fog descending on the beaches, meant that the evacuation was far from smooth and many ships were hit by German artillery fire. By 0830 on the 13th, it became clear that further evacuation was impossible; the beaches were under intense fire from east and west and an hour later, the evacuation fleet was withdrawn to sea. No further troops had reached the beach and some 8,000 men of the 51st Highland Division under the command of Major General Victor Fortune surrendered. Unlike Dunkirk, this evacuation had fallen foul of the weather and the speed of the German advance. However, Operation Cycle had not been a complete failure and including the evacuations from Le Havre, some 14,500 British and 900 French troops were evacuated to Britain.

Despite these evacuations, British forces elsewhere in France were still being reinforced and a Second British Expeditionary Force was formed, under the command of General Alan Brooke, himself only recently returned to Britain from Dunkirk. This force was designed to show solidarity with Britain's French allies but as Brooke himself reported to Churchill, it was impossible to make a corpse have feelings and it was quickly concluded following a three way telephone conversation between the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Sir John Dill, Brooke and Churchill, that Franch collapse was imminent and that all remaining British personnel should be withdrawn as soon as possible.

Therefore on June 15th, preparations were made for the evacuation of some 140,000 troops from Cherbourg, Granville, St Malo, Brest, St Nazaire, Nantes and La Pallice. Unlike at Dunkirk, it was possible on this occasion to salvage a certain amount of equipment in the shape of equipment, stores and vehicles. The operation started on the same day with the withdrawal of British troops from Nantes and continued over the coming days at the ports mentioned above. It was whilst British personnel were being evacuated from St Nazaire a couple of days later that disaster struck.

By 2200 on June 16th, some 17,000 men had already safely embarked in four large liners, the Georgic, Duchess of York and the Polish Batory and Sobieski. These vessels were immediately replaced in the port by the Orient Line's Oronsay and the Cunarder Lancastria. Troops were being ferried out by French tugs, smaller British merchant ships and the destroyers HMS Havelock and Beagle. The Lancastria was not one of the glamorous Cunarders like the Queen Mary but was one of the workhorses of the fleet, having been built in 1922 for use on the North Atlantic run and also for Mediterranean cruises, which suited her rather plodding 17 knots rather well.

The Lancastria was at anchor and had been loaded with British soldiers, airmen and civilian evacuees since early in the morning but because of the sheer numbers of people being loaded on board, the crew's discipline had lapsed somewhat in as far as the exact numbers boarding were not being recorded in the latter stages of the embarkation. Some witnesses recalled hearing the Chief Officer Harry Grattidge reporting to the Master, Capt Rudolph Sharp that over 6,700 passengers were on board, which combined with the ship's crew of 330 would have put the total number on board at around the 7,000 mark. However, with the lack of an accurate count, the number of passengers on board could possibly have been much higher - indeed many people were witnessed boarding without anyone to count them on board the vessel and as a result, some sources stated that as many as 11,000 people were on board, although there would have to have been a major discrepancy in the counting process for this latter figure to be correct.

At around 1200, the first air raid of the day started but the Lancastria had almost completed loading by this time. Despite repeated advice from the Senior Naval Officer, Captain Barry Stevens, in HMS Havelock to get underway, Captain Sharp was reluctant to sail without an escort, preferring to wait for the Oronsay to complete loading and to sail as an escorted convoy in case of U-Boat attack. The Oronsay was hit and damaged during this raid at 1350 but despite this warning, Captain Sharp still refused to sail or even to weigh anchor and manoeuvre slowly thus making a more difficult target for the bombers.

A second raid started at 1545 and Lancastria (pictured above in her death throes) was soon struck by four bombs which ripped through the ship's side and caused her to sink inside 30 minutes. Many of those lost were trapped in horrendous conditions inside the vessel's holds, whilst many others perished in the oil polluted waters, either choked by the oil itself or strafed by attacking aircraft. Over 2,400 oil soaked survivors were picked up by other vessels in the port, but because of the uncertainty as to exactly how many were aboard in the first place, the precise death toll is unknown. The number of known fatalities was put at 1,738 but assuming there were 7,000 on board and given the known number of survivors picked up, the death toll could possibly have been as high as 4,600. Whatever the exact figure, this remains the worst disaster in British maritime history but one which is strangely overlooked. Perhaps this was because the tragedy occurred relatively early in the war and was soon to be overtaken by many other tragic events over the next five years. Captain Sharp himself survived this incident, only to perish when a subsequent command, the Laconia was torpedoed in the Atlantic in 1942, with major loss of life and not without more than a tinge of tragedy.

In spite of this disaster, Operation Aerial, as this part of the evacuation had been codenamed, saw the return of a further 139,812 British troops as well as 46,515 Allied servicemen, which as well the French included 24,000 Poles and nearly 5,000 Czechs. These forces would face four long years before returning to France but in the meantime, the French airfields which had fallen into German hands would soon bring the British people into the range of the Luftwaffe.

Published Sources:

BEF Ships before, at and after Dunkirk - John de S Winser, World Ship Society 1999
Dunkirk, Fight to the Last Man - Hugh Sebag Montefiore, Viking 2006
Epitaph for Forgotten Thousands - Nicholas Monsarrat, Daily Telegraph 1970

Escape to Victory (1)

The title of this week's blog doesn't refer to the cheesy 1981 movie starring Michael Caine, Sylvester Stallone, Pele and sundry Ipswich Town footballers of the day, which quite possibly ranks as one of the worst war films of all time. Neither does it relate to those brave men who escaped Nazi Prisoner of War camps to return to Great Britain, but covers the great evacuations of May and June 1940, which enabled the British Army to escape home from France and thus become the nucleus of those forces which would return in 1944 to liberate Europe from Nazi tyranny.

Even those with only a passing interest in the history of the Second World War are probably aware of Dunkirk, the French Channel port through which nearly 200,000 British and 110,000 French troops were evacuated between May 27th and June 4th 1940 but what is not so well known is that although Dunkirk saw by far the largest number of Allied troops evacuated from the clutches of the advancing Germans, it was by no means the only evacuation from the French coast and was just one of a series that saw over half a million mainly British and French servicemen evacuated to Britain, as well as significant numbers of Poles and Czechs who had made their way to France in order to continue the war.

The first of these remarkable mass withdrawals came at the channel port of Boulogne. This port did not originally contain a British garrison but was one of the primary ports used to maintain supplies to the British Expeditionary Force or BEF as it was known, which had been sent to France on the outbreak of war in 1939 to stand alongside the French Army, in what was widely seen as being a repeat of the static warfare seen during 1914-18. By the spring of 1940, this force was some 300,000 strong but although numerically strong, many of the units were still woefully undertrained and poorly equipped despite the best efforts of rising stars of the British Army such as Generals Alan Brooke, Bernard Montgomery and Harold Alexander.

On May 10th, the long awaited German offensive against the Low Countries and France began and despite the early success of the BEF in holding the Germans in their sector, it soon became apparent that the French Army was a shadow of it's former self during the Great War and the British were soon hard pressed to stem the relentless German advance. The French Army was in disarray and coupled with the imminent collapse of the Belgians, the BEF was dangerously exposed and a withdrawal to the coast soon became the only option open to the British if they were going to stand any chance of not losing their Army.

To return to Boulogne, by May 21st the Germans had reached the French coast near Abbeville and became clear that the British were in a race against time to reach and hold their section of the Channel coast before the Germans could complete an encircling operation and cut off the BEF from any chance of escape. It was originally intended to evacuate the BEF from all of the northern Channel ports of Boulogne, Calais and Dunkirk but the speed of events would ensure that Dunkirk and it's adjacent beaches would be the centre of the withdrawal.

Although Boulogne did not contain a British garrison, it did contain a 1,500 strong contingent of No. 5 Group Auxiliary Pioneer Corps, who had been engaged on dock labour work unloading the various cargo ships supplying the BEF. These men were largely unarmed and not trained in combat but were commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Donald Dean VC, who had won this highest award for bravery with the Royal West Kent Regiment in the Great War. Dean was a determined commander and although many of the Pioneers in Boulogne were later reported to have been ill-disciplined and disorderly, the men under Dean's command were made of different stuff. Despite having no anti-tank guns, they improvised road blocks with abandoned lorries and petrol bombs and thus managed to hold off the German tanks long enough to enable them to withdraw to the inner harbour to join up with the Brigade of Guards who had been sent across the Channel to stiffen the port's defences whilst the port was evacuated. The 20th Guards Brigade, comprising the 2nd Irish Guards and 2nd Welsh Guards had originally been sent in the hope of not only holding the town but also of linking up with the British garrison at the neighbouring port of Calais

This idea very quickly proved to be wishful thinking in the extreme and shortly after first light on the 23rd May, the Germans completed their encirclement of the port when they captured the Fort de la Creche. The Germans then mounted an attack on the main defences of Boulogne but although heavily pressed, the Irish and Welsh Guards held firm, supported by makeshift platoons of the Pioneers who had been armed with rifles taken from the wounded and from those who had already managed to embark for England.

The evacuation was now in full swing and as always, it was the Royal Navy that came to the rescue with a succession of destroyers entering the port whilst under heavy fire from the German armour, which was now well within firing range of the harbour. During the late afternoon, whilst HM Ships Keith and Vimy were alongside the Gare Maritime embarking a mass of troops and evacuees, they also came under air attack from Stuka dive bombers. By a miracle and also the intervention of the RAF, no hits were registered on the British destroyers but another hazard was about to manifest itself. Due to the state of the tide, the bridges of the British vessels were exposed above the level of the quayside and as the air raid was clearing, Captain David Simson of the Keith fell dead, hit by a German sniper located in an adjacent hotel that overlooked the harbour. The enemy was moving ever closer and shortly afterwards, Lieutenant Commander Donald, commanding officer of the Vimy was also hit, as were several others - both officers and men of the destroyers and also their passengers. The destroyers then left port under the command of their First Lieutenants and on their passage back to Dover performed the melancholy task of burying their dead at sea.

The Navy was undeterred and as these destroyers left, their place was taken by HMS Whitshed (pictured) and HMS Vimiera which began the task of embarking the Irish Guards and Brigade HQ whilst at the same time disembarking a demolition party from the Royal Engineers tasked with the destruction of the port's facilities so as to deny their use to the Germans. Following the embarkation of these men, it was the turn of the Welsh Guards to leave and two further destroyers, Venomous and Wild Swan moved into the port to fulfil this task. A third destroyer, the Venetia was also ordered in but as she entered the harbour was struck hard by German artillery. It was clear that the Germans wanted to sink her in the harbour entrance, thus blocking the port and bottling up the remaining destroyers inside. By skilled ship handling though, she was able to manouvre full astern out of the harbour and on fire aft, managed to escape back to England.

The Germans were now getting ever closer and as enemy columns were seen moving through the town, the destroyers deployed their 4.7 inch (120mm) main armament against the Panzers with absolutely devastating effect. It was probably the first effective anti-tank fire that the Germans had encountered; at least one tank was seen to somersault through the air following a near miss from a 4.7 inch shell and two tanks were obliterated by direct hits from HMS Whitshed. According to one eye witness who saw the destruction of the tanks:

"The shout of triumph that went up from the embarked troops was more suitable for the football ground than the field of battle and order had to be restored by megaphone, also at point blank range!"

Soon after 2100, Venomous and Wild Swan slipped their moorings and left the harbour. Even so, British troops still remained within Boulogne - many Welsh Guardsmen including almost three companies who had become separated from the main body of the Guards Brigade during the fighting and about 800 Pioneers remained along with the Sappers of the Demolition Parties as well as some wounded men being cared for by the Padre and Medical Officer of the Pioneers. So, at about 2230 the destroyer HMS Windsor entered the harbour and took off 600 men including most of the Pioneers and Demolition Parties and at 0140 the following morning, HMS Vimiera, making her second trip entered the port and embarked an incredible 1,400 men in just over an hour - the last to embark was the redoubtable Lieutenant Colonel Dean, who only just made it; he had been knocked out by a nearby explosion but had recovered just in time to make it onboard. He had wanted to return to the port to bring more men who were taking cover underneath railway wagons but had been dissuaded from doing so by Lieutenant Commander Roger Hicks in command of Vimiera, whose ship was jammed full and who understandably wanted to sail before daybreak.

Vimiera then returned to England in a dangerously overloaded condition. Sadly, the three companies of Welsh Guards - just over 300 men - began to arrive just after Vimiera sailed but even then could still have been saved had a further destroyer, HMS Wessex not been diverted to Calais at the last moment. No further vessels were sent to Boulogne and these fine soldiers mostly all became prisoners of war for five long years. Despite this, some 4,300 men had been evacuated from Boulogne, although the garrison along the coast at Calais was to be largely sacrificed to the Prisoner of War camps in an attempt to buy time for the main evacuation at Dunkirk.

As mentioned earlier, Operation 'Dynamo' as the embarkation at Dunkirk was officially titled, is well known but in the next part of this article, we shall take a look at the post-Dunkirk evacuations which brought a further 140,000 British and 46,500 Allied servicemen back to these shores but which also brought Britain's worst disaster at sea.

Published Sources:

B.E.F. Ships before, at and after Dunkirk - John de S Winser, World Ship Society 1999 Dunkirk: Fight to the Last Man - Hugh Sebag-Montefiore, Viking 2006
Dunkirk: Retreat to Victory - Major General Julian Thompson, Sidgwick & Jackson 2008
V and W Class Destroyers 1917-45 - Anthony Preston, Macdonald & Son 1971
With Ensigns Flying - David A Thomas - William Kimber 1958