Dunkirk: The Men They Left Behind Part 2

This dreadful sense of hopelessness was shared by all the men who survived to make the long journey into captivity that summer, whatever the circ.u.mstances of their capture.

As the British Army fought to hold the line of the Escaut Ca.n.a.l, there were large numbers of soldiers who were trapped within the jaws of the German advance. Peter Wagstaff was one of those captured by the advancing Germans. As the Germans broke through the battalions on either side of his positions, Wagstaff and his men continued to fight hard. He tried to explain the feelings of an officer, barely out of his teens, as he received his introduction to the confusion of war: We were not aware of the attack coming in. There was too much noise, so we didn't have the faintest idea. I could hear firing to the right and firing to the left. I could also hear firing to the rear and I remember thinking 'I hope that's being mopped up by somebody else.' It's ominous to hear firing behind you but you have enough to do just holding the front. You are bemused, you are not conscious of anything apart from what is immediately in front of you. You haven't got time to think and you haven't got time to a.n.a.lyse. And you haven't got time to be afraid of anything. You are just swept along on the tide of war.

The pressures faced by Wagstaff and his men were immense as they came under increasing enemy fire: The gunner on the Boyes anti-tank rifle had his arm shot off next to me. But you got on with the job. Your 'automatic pilot' takes over. I do remember our cook went off his head completely he was absolutely hysterical. I remember he said, 'I can't face it, sir. I can't face it at all.' He almost fell in the fire. I thought to myself 'What do you do in a case like this?' In the First World War it would be a case of. 'The hero dragged out his revolver and shot him'. I remember that crossing my mind for a fleeting, idiotic second. But what do you do? I left him, but G.o.d knows what happened to him after that.

Eventually, orders came through that Wagstaff should pull his men back. In the chaos every second counted. Unfortunately for Wagstaff, vital moments were lost as he waited for his forward section to pull back from the ca.n.a.l. He could not withdraw without his men, but their delay was to prove costly: 'By the time they joined us I had about twelve wounded with me. We ran up this roadway with a high bank on our left and a wall on the right. We ran right into them. There were twelve of us facing three German machine-guns. There was nothing we could do. I couldn't go to the right or the left. The twelve wounded men had about two rifles between them.'

As it became clear they were prisoners of war, Second-Lieutenant Wagstaff reacted in an unexpected manner: I let out a short burst of laughter. I remember vividly thinking, 'Of all the things that could happen to me it wasn't this!' It was fear, the build up it is just hysterics really. I think I was laughing at my own misfortune. Your mind is so muddled that the obvious answer is ridicule. My Corporal Corporal Thomas said to me, 'Take off your badges of rank, sir!' He later told me I said, 'I will not. I am a British officer and I will die a British officer.' But I don't remember saying it.

Though the battle was over, the suffering was not at an end, as he soon discovered: 'The German took me to the other side of the road. There was this poor little b.u.g.g.e.r there. He'd had a hole blown out of his back. He was breathing heavily, except that the air was coming through the torn remnants of his battledress and the back of his lung. Myself and Corporal Thomas stayed with him until he died.'

Despite the last-ditch battles fought through France and Belgium, there were some whose capture seemed to be just the result of bad luck. Typical of those whose capture was almost farcical was Lance-Corporal Eric Reeves of the 2/5th Battalion, Queen's Regiment. Just nineteen years old, he was typical of the young volunteers that swelled the ranks of the British Army in the late 1930s. Enthused by the notion of being a soldier, he had joined the Territorial Army at sixteen, taking the rank of 'boy'. He had only been accepted for service after a wily old recruiting sergeant, a veteran of the retreat from Mons, gave him a pair of oversized, double-thick soled boots to put on at his medical. Without the boots, he would never have reached the necessary height. As the sergeant told him, 'Look at that my lad, five foot, two and a half inches, just the minimum height for an infantryman.'

Undeterred, he had trained hard and thought himself ready for war when his unit was mobilized on 1 September 1939. Despite his enthusiasm, he had little idea of what he would soon be facing: I was a plumber's mate. I was at work when I heard we were being mobilized. I was delighted excited I couldn't wait. My thought was 'Let's get at 'em'. All the volunteers were like me. We'd have been very disappointed if war hadn't come. Well, ignorance is bliss! We'd read books at the library about the First World War. We looked at the pictures, we thought it was great. Of course, it didn't show the horrors of it. Even the guys down at the British Legion never talked about it. We looked at it like 'Cowboys and Indians' all we knew was what we'd learnt down at the pictures. We thought we were invincible, we were the young lions. They couldn't beat us.

Fired up by such unrealistic notions, Reeves was still filled with enthusiasm for war when his battalion arrived in France in April 1940. He had his mates by his side and felt no fear as they moved towards Abbeville to meet the enemy as their forces advanced up the Somme valley. When he finally faced the enemy he discovered war held little of the glamour he had expected. On 20 May they watched as Abbeville was bombed by Junkers bombers that circled the skies above the town. Next, it was to be their turn to face the forces of the blitzkrieg: 'At about half four we could hear the war coming towards us small-arms fire and the bang, bang, bang of tanks. Their tanks were firing at us from the flanks. We couldn't move our section to face them. There was tracer going over our heads. I could hear the noise of bullets above my head like whipcracks we were lucky but a section behind us copped it.' As darkness fell they were ordered to withdraw along a sunken lane to a hilltop wood. So ended an ignominious first day of war for Eric Reeves: 'I'd never even opened fire. We hadn't seen anything to fire at apart from tanks. One or two blokes had "p.o.o.ped off" at tanks, but all they did was draw their fire. The rounds from the Boyes anti-tank rifle were just bouncing off them. So we'd just lain there and taken it.'

Along with two men from his section, Reeves was sent to a listening post where he spent the hours of darkness watching German flares float down through the air, illuminating the fields around with a sickly red and green light. Even more ominous was the noise of the tanks whose engines could be heard rumbling through the night air. What happened next was a fitting reflection of the chaos faced across the Allied front. As dawn broke, a sergeant appeared and asked Reeves what he was doing. Reeves replied that they were D Company's standing patrol. What he heard next shocked him: 'The sergeant said, "They left three hours ago! They went in small parties, they're making for the Somme river. But I got lost in the dark, like these blokes." He pointed to the men he had with him. So we teamed up and headed off together.'

The lost soldiers began to make their way across country, hoping to catch up with the rest of the battalion. With the Germans seemingly having departed, the fields seemed curiously quiet. In the dull morning light they could just make out the corpses of cows that had been caught up in the previous day's battles. When they finally met a French civilian he rea.s.sured them the Germans had moved on. Emboldened, the soldiers moved on to the road and continued their march, hoping to make better time. Once again, Reeves and his new comrades were in for a surprise: After about half an hour we reached a roadblock it was a hay cart and all sorts of other stuff. There was a bank on one side of the road and a field of clover on the other. Then we heard a voice. In perfect English it called out 'Gentlemen of the Queen's, where have you been? We have been expecting you.' And the sergeant said, 'That's a bit of luck, it's our blokes!' Then the owner of the voice showed himself. He had a long green coat on, a 'coalscuttle' helmet with a skull and crossbones badge and was holding a machine-gun.

For a brief moment there was a stand-off between the lone German and the dozen or so British soldiers. Unconcerned, the British sergeant called out: 'Hang on a minute, mate, there are more of us than there are of you.' Remaining calm, the SS officer told the men not to be foolish. At that moment the carts of the roadblock were pulled apart and the British soldiers marched through, to be met by the sight of two Mark II Panzer tanks with their guns trained on them. The German then explained how he had been able to confuse them with his accent: 'Mummy is English and Daddy is in the German army. And I owe it to my father to support him. I came down from Oxford and joined the German army. So here I am.'

Showing concern for his prisoners, the English-speaking officer told them his men would bring them food and quickly arranged treatment for the wounded. Despite this, Eric Reeves was. .h.i.t by the realization of his situation: You didn't expect to be taken prisoner. It went through your mind that you might be killed or you might be wounded. But being captured never came into the equation. The first thing that went through your mind was fear we'd all heard about the SS. All the time you're thinking 'What's going to happen next?' Then next I felt humiliated, I thought 'What a waste of time!' I'd not even fired a shot. I was ashamed. I felt indignation somebody had let me down or I'd let someone down. You don't know what's what. What made it worse was we'd gone out there thinking we were invincible.

For so many of the troops their deflation was compounded by the realization of how well equipped the Germans were. The British had discarded their First World War vintage rifles and surrendered to an enemy carrying modern automatic weapons. Some among the prisoners approached German tanks and banged on their hulls. After all, the propagandists had a.s.sured them many of the German tanks were made of wood or cardboard. Furthermore, the Germans seemed to have vast amounts of transport for their infantry with motorcycle combinations and armoured half-tracks appearing everywhere on the battlefield while the British had been transported in requisitioned and hastily repainted civilian delivery lorries. Sharing the field with Reeves were others of his battalion who had also been captured in the fighting around Abbeville. Not all among them had been as enthusiastic as Reeves. There were plenty of young conscripts and militiamen who had been less than eager to play their part in the war. Indeed, the 2/5th Battalion of the Queen's Regiment had been formed the previous year when the army underwent ma.s.sive expansion. When the l/5th Battalion, the best of the regiment or 'the creamy boys', as Eric Reeves referred to them, travelled to France, Reeves himself had been left behind since he was still too young to serve abroad. In the weeks that followed, the new battalion had absorbed men who seemed far less enthusiastic than his prewar colleagues. Among them were recruits from Somerset, including Jim Lee, a Romany Gypsy who had rapidly become one of Reeves' mates and who happily admitted his pre-war employment had been as a poacher. This was typical of the experiences of regiments throughout the army. When war came the regular soldiers and Territorials were eager to 'have a crack at the Hun'. They were followed into uniform by a wave of patriotic recruits, equally eager to do their bit. By late 1940 the army began to absorb conscripts who were less than enthused about the idea of war.

Typical of this breed was twenty-one-year-old Ken Willats. A former chef from south London, Willats had no aspirations to military glory. He had not been caught up in the wave of patriotism that had sent so many others his age to the recruiting offices. He was blunt in his appraisal of his military apt.i.tude: 'I had no ambition to be a soldier. I didn't volunteer, I wasn't the military type. Like thousands of others I went because I was told to go.' Despite this, he accepted his fate and reported to Crawley, where he was sent to join his battalion. He was not over concerned. As Willats remembered: 'I didn't realize the importance of the declaration of war. I thought it would be over by Christmas. Then we ended up saying the same thing every year. Eventually we were right but it took six years.'

Once he found himself in Guildford, training to be an infantryman, Willats soon realized the army was less than ready for him and his new comrades. They had uniforms but no barrack rooms and were forced to sleep on the floors of private billets. Parading each morning at a Territorial Army drill hall, they were marched to receive their meals in the town's cattle market. It was an inauspicious start to what would be a brief war for Willats.

In keeping with the desperate need to get infantry battalions to France, the Queen's received just ten weeks' training before they were sent to France in April 1940, as Ken Willats remembered: Things were going berserk at that time. It was frantic. You can't learn much about being a soldier in ten weeks. We drilled, did route marches, went on the rifle range, had kit inspections lots of squarebas.h.i.+ng. It was just getting us into the ways of the army. I wasn't particularly enthusiastic. I just went along with things. Basic training couldn't have been more basic. No one had great patriotism or enthusiasm. We were mostly twenty-one-year-old working-cla.s.s boys. None of us had a military bias. All the enthusiasts had already volunteered. They were really sc.r.a.ping the bottom of the barrel and we were the sc.r.a.pings!

What made matters worse was that, just before the Germans launched their attack on France, Willats had been told he was going to be sent back to England to be posted to the School of Army Cookery as an instructor a better use of his talents than being a cook in a front-line battalion. But his orders had never come through and as the Germans reached Abbeville he had found himself in a farmhouse holding a rifle rather than a wooden spoon. For all the good his rifle did in the next few hours, the wooden spoon might have been just as effective.

Although Willats knew the Germans were advancing towards Abbeville, the realization of how close they were was a tremendous shock: We looked out of the back of the farmhouse and saw tracer bullets being fired towards us. There were about twenty or thirty of the crack tank regiments of Hitler's Panzers in front of us on the heath. We had a rifle and five rounds of ammunition each. We fired not knowing who or what we were firing at, I think we probably never killed any Germans, we just fired blindly in the direction of the tanks. When you'd used those five rounds, you went back to Colour Sergeant Davey and asked, 'Can I have five more rounds please?' It was ridiculous. But I don't remember being frightened. I just did what I was told.

What Willats didn't know was that these tanks were from the German 2nd Armoured Division, the spearhead of von Rundstedt's Army Group A. This was the force that had punched through the Ardennes, crossed the River Meuse, then headed north to endanger the BEF from the rear. Such strategic considerations, and the implications for the BEF, were far from Willats' mind as the battle for Abbeville continued: 'The Sergeant Major sent me to help a chap manning a Boyes anti-tank rifle. I went out to fetch him because he'd been wounded. It was strange. The road was as quiet as a tomb. I found him. He was wandering about, very badly wounded. His eye was out hanging out on his cheek. So I led him back to the farm.' Safely back, Willats continued to fire at the tanks but soon realized the situation was hopeless when they heard the sound of German vehicles entering the farmyard: About thirty Germans appeared, led by an SS man. We knew there was no hope so we came out. That was the end of my military career, it was all over in a flash.'

Uncertain of their fate, Willats and his four comrades were marched away to a barbed-wire enclosure that had been hastily erected in a nearby field. What happened next was the natural reaction for men who had been on the move for days: 'The first thing I did was to fall asleep. I'd been awake for two nights and sleep was the biggest enemy of the soldier. The body can only go so far without rest. I was completely exhausted. It was uncontrollable. I just went to sleep.'

For the men within this enclosure, surrounded for the first time with barbed wire, there was a terrible feeling of emptiness. It was the same for all the men taken prisoner in the battles across France and Belgium. They were physically, and often mentally, exhausted. Many had not eaten for days, or washed and shaved but it was not a time for NCOs to start berating men for being unshaven. Some had mates around them, others had seen their mates die and were left alone among unfamiliar faces. Each of them began to learn the skills that would help them survive through all the trials that lay ahead. Some tried desperately to find someone they knew. Others retreated into a state where the mind focused entirely on self-preservation. Fighting for a comfortable place to sleep became as much a part of their lives as showing discipline or defiance of the enemy. It was the beginning of the dog-eat-dog existence that would follow them through their lives within Germany's prisoner of war camps.

Those taken prisoner around Abbeville were marched from their makes.h.i.+ft enclosure. Their journey took them northwards, spending the first night in the grounds of a local gendarmerie. Once again they dropped to the cold, bare earth and slept where they lay. Those still with blankets blessed their good fortune. Those without were too exhausted to care, since there was hardly a man among them who would not have swapped a blanket for a hot meal.

In the final days of May and the early days of June, groups of prisoners were collected all over the battlefields. The battered and bloodied survivors of the defeat and the rearguard actions were slowly herded together, ready to begin the long march into Germany. In twos and threes, men stumbled out with their arms raised and were marched to large pens with hundreds of others. Then the crowds joined up with other crowds until thousands were bundled together into vast khaki-clad hordes. It was not long before the men captured at Abbeville were joined by similarly dazed and desperate survivors from one of the most vicious encounters of the entire campaign.

Of all the battles leading up to the Dunkirk evacuation none was more significant than the siege of Calais. What made it so important was that the soldiers sent to the port only arrived in France on 23 May. With the BEF already retreating, the 1st Battalion, the Rifle Brigade, the 60th Rifles (officially known as the 2nd Battalion, the King's Royal Rifle Corps), the Queen Victoria Rifles and the 3rd Royal Tank Regiment were sent to Calais to help secure the route back to Dunkirk. However, when they arrived it was soon clear there was little they could do to help the BEF. Instead it would be a miracle for them to survive.

One of those who did survive was Bob Davies, a former Harrods clerk and pre-war Territorial. He was so typical of many young Territorials who had joined, not out of a sense of patriotism but because it was like a club. In his case, he loved motorcycles and had joined the TA's only motorcycle battalion, the Queen Victoria Rifles. The irony was they arrived in France without their transport, which, had been left languis.h.i.+ng in Kent: 'When we unloaded all we had was our rifles and the ammunition we carried b.u.g.g.e.r all else. We just had Bren guns and no heavy machine-guns. That's all we needed. What can you do with a rifle against a tank?' When he first reached the front line Davies found himself firing at every opportunity: 'Every time I saw a bird fly I thought it was a German and fired at it.' He was soon able to calm himself, finding that his training had worked and military discipline meant he was able to follow orders without question.

For four days the battle raged through the town. Stukas rained down their screaming high explosives. Artillery fire poured down into the British and French positions. German Panzers advanced and blew apart the buildings held by the desperate defenders. Like its northerly neighbour Dunkirk, Calais was pounded to prevent its use. However, unlike Dunkirk, no s.h.i.+ps came to rescue the soldiers. Instead they were to fight on, holding up the advance on Dunkirk.

Valiant British tank crews attempted to advance from the town, only to be destroyed by the far superior enemy armour. All manner of makes.h.i.+ft units, including anti-aircraft units and searchlight crews, found themselves, rifle in hand, manning strongpoints and trenches. The lightly armed infantrymen did their utmost to hold off the enemy advances, slowly pulling back towards the port. Every hour brought fresh casualties who made their way back to the safety of the sixteenth-century citadel, where they sheltered in deep, vaulted cellars, listening to the rumbling of gunfire above them. The citadel, with its formidably thick walls, along with later bastions added to protect the port from attack from the sea, were Calais' main defences. Fortunately, there was also a series of ca.n.a.ls and basins protecting the port area. As the defenders were forced back, these played an increasingly important role in holding off the German advance.

The pounding of Calais took its toll on the defenders. From his position on the eastern edge of town with little enemy activity in front of them Bob Davies counted his blessings. He could see the flames rising above the town and could hear the constant roar of explosions, knowing that plenty of his mates were fighting and dying. As the Germans took control of large parts of Calais, they occupied the imposing Htel de Ville, from where their snipers were able to cover vast swathes of the port area. As the battle raged above them, desperate doctors did their best to treat the wounded, despite a shortage of equipment. In order to amputate limbs, the doctors attempted to use knives until a rusty hacksaw was found in the corridors of the citadel cellars. This was soon sterilized and put to work.

For four days the defenders hung on. Short of food, water and, above all, ammunition, their position became desperate. By 26 May there was no longer a cohesive defence of the town, rather pockets of men were still fighting. Determined young officers and the remnants of their men fought on, some even attempting to counterattack the enemy, until their ammunition was exhausted. Extraordinary acts of heroism were performed by men whose actions were never rewarded since there were no witnesses to report their deeds. Stretcher-bearers defied machine-gun fire to run out into the open to rescue the wounded. In desperate hand-to-hand encounters, the defenders used fixed bayonets to prevent the enemy overrunning their positions. Throughout the shrinking perimeter, machine-guns were fired to the very last round, mortars fired until they were out of ammunition and then it was hopeless. With the bastion surrounded there was no point in fighting on. Any further resistance would only endanger the wounded men sheltering underground. And so with a heavy heart, the British commander, Brigadier Nicholson, finally surrendered Calais.

At the end of the four-day battle, Bob Davies found himself walking about in a dream: About six of us went down to a boat and rowed across to this flat, marshy area that went out to the sea. We just headed for the sea. I don't know why, I suppose we thought that was the direction of home. We found an old cargo boat washed up on the beach. We thought there might be food on it, so we climbed up on to the deck. There were the dead bodies of the crew everywhere. We searched everywhere through the cabins and the wheelhouse looking for food. It was a real mess. Then all of a sudden we heard a yell, turned and saw a Jerry at the top of the ladder.

Then Davies heard the words dreaded by soldiers: 'For you the war is over.' Looking over the side of the boat, they could see a tank with its gun pointed towards them. Worried they might be shot, Davies and his comrades descended to the beach. They were immediately marched to a field where they gathered with other survivors of the battle. There was little chance to think about what was happening, as Davies admitted: 'I don't know what my feelings were. Everything had happened so quick. One day we were tucked away in a hop farm in Kent, then we were in Calais with no hope of getting home again. But it didn't sink in. Maybe if we'd been older and more worldly wise we would have understood it better. It was like a dream gone wrong.'

The sense of utter mental confusion suffered by Davies was also ill.u.s.trated 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 a.s.sumed to be a Belgian soldier if he had any food. The man nodded and pa.s.sed him a tin of blood sausage. Then Mathias spotted a group of his comrades and approached them. One called to him: 'h.e.l.lo 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 a.s.sistance.

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.'2 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.'3 That valiant band of Calais' defenders who marched into captivity had fought hard, known fear, endured hards.h.i.+p and then finally surrendered. Yet they had one thing that helped them through the days of hards.h.i.+p 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 Buckinghams.h.i.+re Battalion of the Oxfords.h.i.+re and Buckinghams.h.i.+re 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, nave 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.'4 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 pa.s.sed 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.'5 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 a.s.sistance. 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 a.s.sault. Every available man was ready to fight and all the cooks and drivers were upstairs manning rifles and machine-guns. As the enemy a.s.sault 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.'6 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.'7 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.'8 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. b.l.o.o.d.y 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 sh.e.l.ling. 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 Buckinghams.h.i.+re 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.

How long Les Allan lay in the ruins, he would never know. Eventually he came to, as two German medics grabbed his inert body and dragged him upstairs into the street. Nursing a head wound, he sat in the street wondering what had happened. All he knew was that somehow he had survived. As the ceiling had collapsed he had just been leaving the cellar. The arched stone entranceway had taken the brunt of the collapse and remained standing with him beneath it.

As he slowly regained consciousness, none of his comrades were to be seen. It seemed no one else had been pulled from the rubble that had buried the wounded men he had been caring for earlier. Nor were there any of his fellow bearers, or any of the infantrymen to be seen. He was alone. Dumped on to a lorry, he was driven to a French field hospital. As he struggled to make sense of what had happened, he realized someone had bandaged his head when or who, he couldn't remember. At the field hospital an English-speaking German officer took away the haversack, armband and papers that identified him as a medic. As soon as it became clear Allan was walking wounded he was separated from the French prisoners. Still alone, he was placed on to a truck and driven to a reception area for British prisoners. In the weeks, months, then years, that followed he never met another survivor of the defence of Hazebrouck, a battle that the German Army described as having been carried out 'in a manner truly worthy of the highest tradition of the British Army'.9 However, if some Germans rushed to praise the efforts of the British Army, there were plenty who did not hold the defeated men in such high esteem. Some believed their own propaganda that they were superior to all others. In their minds the prisoners were worthless specimens who deserved nothing more than to be beaten and humiliated. Initially, many prisoners found it was common for the German front-line infantrymen to treat the defeated British with respect, as Peter Wagstaff discovered: There is no doubt there is a vast difference between the treatment by the fighting soldier at the front and the administrative b.a.s.t.a.r.d at the back. I remember I found myself at a German gunnery colonel's HQ. He looked at me and stood to attention and then gave me a bottle of beer. I also remember sitting on the pavement of a railway station, as we waited to be put into cattle trucks. A whole lot of German troops pa.s.sed us, they were young lads I don't suppose they were more than eighteen or twenty. And somebody lobbed a cigarette into my lap. He did it quite secretly.

Similarly, Eric Reeves discovered the fighting men who took him into captivity treated him fairly. Some men from his regiment were even offered lifts by German motorcyclists who dropped them off at the enclosures for prisoners, rather than leaving them to walk. Indeed, Eric Reeves was initially shocked at being so well cared for by his sworn enemy. He soon discovered not all Germans were so concerned about prisoners: 'The next day the B-Echelon troops turned up. They kicked us all the way up the road.'

For some, such mistreatment became a regular feature of the round up. At Hesdin five British officers were singled out and forced to stand in the gutter. Three were wounded and one was suffering from a fever. The French and Belgian medics who pa.s.sed through the streets were refused permission to help the wounded officers; instead the German soldiers stood and jeered. After four hours of humiliation, two of the officers were finally taken away by ambulance. An hour later the remaining officers were eventually allowed to rest.

Elsewhere five British officers and forty other ranks were forced to spend a night in a cowshed that was deep in liquid manure. The policy of deliberate humiliation, particularly of British officers, was widespread. Soldiers found themselves laughed at by their captors, many of whom seemed so much taller, physically fitter and better equipped than the exhausted POWs. Senior officers found themselves forced to stand to attention when speaking to junior German officers. Captain G.S. Lowden, captured at Rouen in June, was told by his captors that all officers would have their rank badges removed and then be sent to salt mines. Once the British had been defeated, his captors informed him, the prisoners would be held as slave labourers for thirty years. The threats were compounded by the promise that if any officer attempted to escape, five other officers would be shot as a reprisal. Such claims. .h.i.t the already battered morale of the prisoners, although the next threat was even more worrying for Captain Lowden: 'our women folk at home would be equally treated and those found to be of suitably Nordic stock would be reserved for breeding purposes . . . my own wife, being partly of Scandinavian stock, was practically certain to be amongst the favoured ones!'10 If it was not enough for the defeated British to see the modern tanks, guns, half-track carriers and automatic weapons of the enemy, they also had to endure Germans armed with cameras. Like tourists taking holiday snaps, their captors seemed obsessed with taking photographs of the battleground and the men who had lost the battle. One group of prisoners found camera-wielding Germans lining up to photograph their bare backsides as they used the open latrines. It was just the beginning of the degradation they would suffer in the months and years that followed.

To some of the survivors such behaviour seemed little more than gesturing compared to what they had already witnessed. After all, what were kicks, punches or humiliation compared to the fury of ma.s.s murders? In May 1940 there were two incidents that have, in the post-war years, come to sum up the brutality shown by the SS towards defeated British soldiers. The ma.s.sacres at Le Paradis on the 27th, and at Wormhoudt the following day cost the lives of scores of soldiers who had given their all in battle and then surrendered.

When the survivors of the 2nd Battalion Royal Norfolk Regiment surrendered they were filled with the same sense of trepidation shared by all prisoners. They were marched away, their helmets and equipment taken from them, then sent to a nearby farm, Le Paradis. Their treatment at the hands of the 1st Battalion, 2nd Infantry Regiment, of the SS Totenkopf Division was rough, but initially no rougher than that experienced by many prisoners. Wounded men were kicked to their feet, others were hit with rifle-b.u.t.ts and threatened with bayonets. But it was what followed that was so different to the majority of POW experiences. Around ninety of the Norfolks were marched to a brick farm building with a pit running along the outside. When they saw the two machine-guns pointing towards them it was clear they were to be executed. There was nowhere to run or hide as the machine-guns poured fire at the helpless men. Eventually the bullets stopped and the survivors could hear bayonets being clipped to rifles. The survivors then heard the ringing of pistol shots and the sound of bayonets being thrust into screaming men. Others had their skulls smashed in with rifle-b.u.t.ts, a sight that appalled some of the Germans who discovered the ma.s.sacre site. Some of the badly wounded men pleaded to be finished off desperate to be released from their agony. Slowly the cries of the wounded and the noise of gunfire died down as the SS finished their deadly labours. When the attack was finally over just two men were alive. Privates Bert Pooley and Bill O'Callaghan had somehow survived, despite both being shot and having been checked over by the SS men. When night fell the two men were finally able to escape the scene.

In the aftermath of the defence of Wormhoudt a group of survivors from the 2nd Battalion Royal Warwicks.h.i.+re Regiment were herded towards a barn. Those unable to walk were simply shot where they lay. In common with so many of the defeated troops, the fifty or more who were hustled inside the barn were exhausted and apprehensive. All knew the terrible reputation of their SS captors. At the entrance to the barn stood a German soldier who spoke with an American accent. The actions of this man, taking out a hand grenade and preparing it to be thrown, convinced the prisoners of their intentions. Believing they were to be executed, Captain Lyn-Allen asked for permission for the men to have a last cigarette. The request was granted, then the Germans began firing machine-pistols and throwing grenades into the barn. Two of the grenades had little effect on the a.s.sembled men since Sergeant Moore and CSM Jennings threw themselves on to the grenades, absorbing the blast but sacrificing their lives.

The SS then called for the survivors to leave the barn in groups of five. As they left they walked six or seven paces, then were shot in the back by the Germans. Realizing their fate, the following groups refused to move, causing the Germans to continue throwing grenades into the barn. When they believed their work was done the Germans departed. Yet they had not been thorough enough. Some of the men had survived despite their injuries. Some had feigned death, others had suffered sufficient injury to lose consciousness and appear dead. One, Private Albert Evans, had escaped from the barn when the Germans threw the first grenades. Along with Captain Lyn-Allen, Evans his arm shattered by the first grenade made for the safety of a copse, where they sheltered in a pond. Soon a German appeared and fired at the two men. The captain received a fatal wound and slumped into the water. Two bullets then struck Evans in the neck and he too collapsed into the dirty pond. Believing his quarry dead, the German departed. Some minutes later, Evans regained consciousness. Amazed he had survived, he crawled away, being hit again by a stray bullet fired during the execution of others at the barn.

Albert Evans was incredibly fortunate, he was found by a German ambulance unit who treated his wounds and saved his life. Others who survived included one from the groups taken outside; he had been hit then feigned death. Some of the survivors within the barn were eventually saved by a German anti-aircraft unit who turned up and treated their wounds. Another man was actually blown from the barn by a grenade and shot in the face, but he too somehow escaped death.

The first reports of the Wormhoudt ma.s.sacre reached London via letters from an officer who met survivors of the incident while in hospital in Ghent. At first Lieutenant Kenneth Keens did not believe the man's story, the shocked survivor of the ma.s.sacre being unable to remember any of the names of his comrades. However, as the days pa.s.sed, three survivors, Edward Daly, Albert Evans and Private Johnson, recounted the same version of events.

Although the incidents at Wormhoudt and Le Paradis became widely publicized in the post-war years, they were not isolated incidents. There were plenty of other murders and acts of violence towards prisoners right across France and Belgium. When Lieutenant Keens reported the Wormhoudt ma.s.sacre he also pointed out stories he had heard of similar incidents on a smaller scale. One wounded officer from the Worcesters.h.i.+re Regiment told Keens he had watched as his men were lined up against a wall and executed by SS troops. He was then also shot but somehow survived. French sources later also revealed that twenty-one Scottish soldiers had been discovered in a ma.s.s grave. Each corpse displayed neck wounds suggesting they had not fallen in battle but been executed by their captors.

Some of the many murders and ma.s.sacres were later reported to London by prisoners via the Red Cross, others remained only in the memories of the men who had been fortunate to survive. Fred Gilbert, serving in the 8th Battalion of the Warwicks.h.i.+re Regiment whose 2nd Battalion became victims of the Wormhoudt ma.s.sacre watched as his captain, whose last minutes of battle had been spent trying to clear his jammed revolver, attempted to surrender: 'He'd got his hands up and the German officer just shot him. His hand was up and the bullet went straight through the palm and blew his hand off. It was bewildering, I didn't know what was going to happen next.'

The officer was fortunate; the German officer then waved his pistol and signalled to him to walk away to join the other prisoners. Others were not so lucky. In the aftermath of the defeat of the 4th Battalion of the Royal West Kent Regiment in the Fret de Nieppe, a number of soldiers were murdered by their captors. Corporal Bertie Bell, a reservist who had spent five years in India during the 1930s, Corporal Theroux and Privates s.h.i.+lling, Mills, Daniels, Carter and Lancaster, were rounded up by soldiers from the SS Totenkopf Division after they were found sleeping in a farmhouse. Paraded from the farm in single file, the men were taken into the forest. Uncertain what might happen next, Bertie Bell kept a careful eye on their captors, who all seemed to have their rifles at the ready. Suddenly one of the SS men jumped up and hit Daniels and s.h.i.+lling with the b.u.t.t of his rifle then spat at them. Bell tried to intervene, hitting out at the German, but the intervention of a German officer prevented any further action. At that moment Bell heard the officer bark out an order. Though unable to understand the words, he was certain of their meaning and threw himself to the ground as shots rang out around him: 'I lay perfectly still and held my breath. A few seconds later there were three revolver shots. I then heard the Germans walk away. Remaining in my position for some five minutes more, I got up and looked at my comrades.' What he saw shocked him: 'I saw that one revolver shot had hit Private s.h.i.+lling and blown half his head off. The other two shots appeared to have been aimed at Private Daniels who was shot in both eyes.'11 For the whole of the day he remained hidden in the forest, only returning to look for the bodies the next day. He discovered all evidence of the execution had been removed. For five more days he hid in the forest, attempting to find food and water. Eventually he was hidden by French farmers and joined up with two other survivors of the battle. Six months later Corporal Bell and Second-Lieutenant Parkinson of the Royal Suss.e.x Regiment reached Ma.r.s.eilles and were interned by the Vichy authorities. They escaped and reached Gibraltar in April 1941.

Another who survived the vicious attentions of victorious n.a.z.is was Private John Cain of the 2nd Battalion, the Manchester Regiment. He was part of a Vickers heavy machine-gun crew fighting in the rearguard. At 5 a.m. on 26 May their position was overrun by advancing tanks and infantry. Cain and his fellow machine-gunners Johnson, Phillips and Hodgkins, along with the platoon runner Private Maish, soon found themselves prisoners. Although wounded in the left shoulder, Cain helped Johnson, who had been wounded in the foot, to the supposed safety of a house, while Privates Maish and Hodgkins carried Phillips, who had been wounded in the hip and groin. Confronted by Unteroffizier Karl Mohr, Cain refused to reveal his regiment, defying the German by revealing just his name, rank and number. Ominously Mohr told him: 'We have means in the German army.12 When Private Johnson heard the German's words he turned towards him, only to be shot in the stomach by Mohr, who fired his rifle from the hip. The unwounded Hodgkins jumped at Mohr in a futile attempt to stop his murderous intentions but was cut down by a burst of fire from another German armed with a machine-pistol. His right breast was shot away and he had a bullet hole in the centre of his forehead. Accepting his fate, Cain looked towards one of the Germans and then flinched as he heard the bang of the rifle. The bullet tore into his cheek, throwing him unconscious to the floor. When he regained consciousness he was surrounded by the corpses of his friends and was being a.s.sisted by a German medic who revealed to Cain the ident.i.ty of the man who had murdered his friends and then left him for dead. Unteroffizier Mohr was captured by the Americans at Landau in the last weeks of the war. Efforts were then made to bring him to the UK to face trial for the murder of Privates Johnson and Maish.

Although the shooting of prisoners was witnessed across the battlefields of France that summer, few incidents were as b.l.o.o.d.y as the reported killings of British soldiers at Colpaert Farm. The incident was reported by Madame Ghoris, a refugee from Lille. She watched as a unit, led by an officer known to her as Oberleutnant von Pingsaft, found four British soldiers hiding in a barn: One of them was wounded and had to walk with two sticks. The Germans forced him, as well as the three others, to raise their hands and made them march, hitting them with batons. The Germans, in order that we should not witness this, made us enter the houses. A few moments later three Germans came to the house and asked for water to wash their hands and forearms which were covered in blood. The Germans said they had just cut the heads off the four British soldiers.

Denise Besegher was also present when the Germans entered the kitchen, noting how one was carrying a bayonet in his bloodstained hands: 'He asked for soap, water and a towel to dry himself, and said that the four "Tommies" had had their necks cut, making a gesture with his hand, just as if he had himself done it.'

The horrors did not end there. A local miller, forty-one-year-old Achille Boudry, was forced to bury the corpses of British soldiers who had fallen in the battle around the farm. As he worked he noticed that one of the men was still alive. He reported this to the German supervising the burial. Instead of rescuing the wounded soldier the German simply told Boudry to collect the man's wrist.w.a.tch and to continue with the burial.

Whatever treatment they faced, most of the prisoners shared similar experiences. First there were the searches carried out by their captors. Some prisoners frantically sc.r.a.ped hollows in the earth to bury grenades or bullets they had in their pouches and pockets, fearful of the reaction of their guards if they were discovered. Guards walked among the prisoners, knocking off their helmets. One soldier recalled a guard knocking his helmet to the ground, then kicking it. The guard looked down at the dented helmet and declared: 'That's how good your English steel is.' During the searches many prisoners were forced to discard all of their equipment. Small packs, ammunition pouches, belts, greatcoats, gas masks and groundsheets littered the areas in which the prisoners gathered. Many lost their waterbottles and mess tins, meaning they would have nothing in which to collect food and water in the days ahead. So too they lost their army sewing kits housewives, as they were known that would be desperately needed in the months that followed.

There was little they could do to prevent the losses. It was a brave man who dared complain to his captors. Most among them were too exhausted, or simply too relieved to have survived, to worry about what they were losing. For most, it was not the concern over equipment that was lost. Instead, all that mattered were their personal possessions. What they did not want to lose were their wallets, watches, rings, letters from home and, above all, the treasured photographs of their loved ones. For those able to save their personal possessions, these would bring immense comfort in the long years ahead. Despite his guards searching for anything that could be a potential weapon, Bill Holmes was able to save a small pair of scissors. These he kept for five years, using them to cut the hair of his fellow prisoners.

For a few, the losses during these initial searches had an effect upon their destiny. Under the Geneva Convention no medical personnel could be treated as prisoners. They were officially 'protected personnel', whose duties should only be the treatment of the sick and wounded. Indeed, many medics fully expected to be sent home to the UK after all the wounded had been cared for. For Les Allan there was no hope of such treatment. As the German officer explained to him that he was a prisoner, he tore away the armband and haversack marked with a Red Cross. Likewise, he took away Allan's army paybook, which identified him as a stretcher-bearer and 'protected person'. It was an action that would condemn him to years of working in farms and factories, rather than using his skills to care for the sick.

While thousands of newly captured men huddled in barns or sprawled out exhausted on the bare earth of fields comforted only by the relief they had survived both the battle and the round up by their captors other prisoners were already facing up to the reality of existence as a prisoner of the victorious n.a.z.i armies. Even before the battle for France was over some unfortunate POWs found themselves forced to start work for their captors. Although such behaviour was expressly forbidden by the Geneva Convention, groups of freshly captured men were sometimes made to a.s.sist the Germans with their continuing efforts to defeat the Allies. On 26 May, one group of Royal Army Service Corps soldiers were forced at gunpoint to operate a ferry across a ca.n.a.l that was standing in the way of the advancing Germans. They were made to haul rubber dinghies back and forth by way of a rope, allowing enemy troops to cross the ca.n.a.l and continue their pursuit of the retreating British forces. Appalled by the notion of aiding the enemy, some men attempted to resist. All they received for their efforts were bayonet wounds to their legs.

At the end of their labours, the soldiers were finally searched by their captors. When the turn came for Lance-Corporal Stanley Green to be searched he reached out to try to prevent the guard from taking away his family photographs: 'Thereupon another soldier who was carrying a German hand grenade of the type carried at the end of a short stick, popularly known as a "potato masher" struck me across the face with the grenade. I was knocked out and when I came to some time later I found I was bleeding freely from the nose and mouth, that my underlip had been cut right through and that two teeth had been knocked out.'13 Dragging himself to his feet and checking his pockets, he soon realized the teeth were not all he had lost. Also gone were a pound note, a gold ring, a silver cigarette case and the gold watch he had just received from his parents for his twenty-first birthday.

Following the search, Green and his fellow prisoners were made to carry German corpses to a graveyard, while other German soldiers laughed and jeered at them, with scant respect for their own dead. Then, at pistol point, the prisoners were forced to dig graves and bury the German dead.

Whether they found themselves working for the enemy, nursing their own wounds, blessing their fortune to have survived or cursing their fate at being left behind in France, around 40,000 soldiers of the BEF found themselves in captivity by the time the last boats had sailed from Dunkirk for home. In fields, farms and village squares, as the prisoners were a.s.sembled ready to begin the long journey into captivity, few really knew what lay ahead. Would they be treated fairly or be tormented as slave labourers? For Bill Holmes, who had 'missed the boat' at Dunkirk, the answer would soon become apparent: 'And then we got five years of h.e.l.l.'

CHAPTER THREE.

The Fight Goes On 'Where's the officer?' . . . 'Dead.' . . . 'Where's the sergeant?' . . . 'Killed.' 'Where's the corporal?' . . . 'Killed.' . . . 'Who's in charge?' They pointed to Lance-Corporal Rose, who was in command of the whole platoon.

David Mowatt, Seaforth Highlanders Along with the last boats, all hope of rescue had slipped away for those men who remained around Dunkirk. Though the heroic men of the rearguard, left behind in France, had marched wearily into captivity, the battle was not yet over. Despite the post-war presentation of the events that summer, the British role in the battle of France did not end as the last of the little s.h.i.+ps sailed for home or when the rearguard ran out of ammunition and raised their arms in surrender. Instead, right across northern France remained a mult.i.tude of BEF units who had yet to play an active part in the campaign. Many wer