The message was interesting for another reason, too. The British obviously regarded holding Calais as more important than the Germans did. Army Group A had warned Guderian not to get involved in costly house-to-house fighting there. Guderian himself regarded the port as a distinctly secondary objective—of “less military than prestige importance.” He had taken it from the 1st Panzer Division, leading his advance, and reassigned it to the 10th Panzers trailing behind because it had “only local importance and no influence upon general operations.”
And now this curious intercept. For some reason London was calling on Calais to fight to the end. Around noon on May 26 Colonel Blumentritt, Operations Officer at Army Group A, phoned 10th Panzer Division headquarters, where Guderian was conferring with the Division commander, General Lieutenant Ferdinand Schaal. Blumentritt reminded them that the Division must not be wasted on Calais. If the going got tough, Calais should be left to the Luftwaffe.
Schaal felt that wouldn’t be necessary. He said his attack was “promising” and asked to be kept in the fight. He expected to have Calais by nightfall.
He had good reason for optimism. The day had begun with a devastating Stuka raid. Most of the British had never been through this ordeal before, and the screech of the planes was predictably terrifying. Private T. W. Sandford of the King’s Royal Rifle Corps ran for a cellar, scooping up an equally frightened small dog. Sandford and his mates crouched in the dark, while the dog lay cowering in a corner. They patted it and fussed over it, until it finally wagged its tail, which somehow made them feel better.
After the raid, they emerged into a street littered with bricks and broken glass. The bombing broke up many of the defending units, and Sandford never did find his own company again. At 10:50 a.m. the Germans broke into Calais-Nord and began systematically splitting up the defenders into pockets of resistance.
Communications collapsed, and Brigadier Nicholson was soon isolated in the Citadel with his staff and a handful of French defenders. By 3:00 p.m. it was completely surrounded, and around 3:30 a detachment of Schaal’s infantry broke through the south gate. That did it. With the enemy inside the walls, resistance vanished. Hands up, Brigadier Nicholson emerged from his command post to meet his captors.
Down by the harbor a few isolated units fought on. Colour Sergeant Fred Walter of the Queen Victoria’s Rifles found himself in a tunnel that ran through Bastion 1, a strong-point near the docks. Troops from other units were packed in here too, milling around, totally disorganized. An ever-growing number of wounded were also crowding into the place, part of which had been set aside as a first aid post.
A cool-headed officer finally appeared and sorted the men out. Some he sent to a nearby fort; others, including Walter, he stationed on top of the tunnel with a French machine gun. They kept it firing as the Germans drew steadily closer, mopping up resistance. The Gare Maritime went; then the nearby fort. At last a British staff officer appeared and told Walter’s group to cease fire: arrangements were being made to surrender.
They refused to obey. Lieutenant-Colonel L. A. Ellison-McCartney, commanding the QVR, now appeared, and the men appealed to him. Did he know of any cease-fire order? Ellison-McCartney said no; in fact he understood that if they could hold out another half-hour, the Navy would come in and get them. He asked if the group wanted to give in, and received a rousing “NO!”
Ellison-McCartney then left to find out who had given the cease-fire order … and why. He soon returned, and his news was all bad: they were the last group holding out; the Germans had them completely surrounded. Enemy guns enfiladed both ends of the tunnel, which was now choked with wounded, and these guns would immediately open fire if there was any further resistance. In addition, the Germans had all their artillery and tanks in position, and the Stukas stood ready to pay a return visit.
The surrender terms had already been concluded by another officer, the Colonel added, and the only thing he could do was follow along. The men must lay down their arms.
The group began breaking up their weapons, until a German officer suddenly appeared brandishing a pistol. He angrily told them to stop, and to march out of the bastion, hands up. In this way the surviving troops filed out, stumbling between two lines of German infantry, every other enemy soldier holding a machine pistol.
To Fred Walter, it was the most humiliating experience he could imagine. He didn’t even dare glance at his comrades, for fear he would see in their faces the same utter hopelessness he felt in all his heart and body.
Yet there were British soldiers still free in Calais. Signalman Leslie W. Wright had arrived from Dover on May 21 for communications duty. By the 26th his wireless set was destroyed and he was fighting as an infantryman with the QVR. Midafternoon, he found himself on the eastern breakwater of the harbor. A Red Cross launch had tied up there, and Wright was helping load it with wounded.
He and his mates saw the launch safely off, then started back along the breakwater toward the docks. But before they reached the jetty that led to the shore, the Germans captured that part of the harbor, marooning Wright’s group on the breakwater. They settled down among the piles and supporting beams, where they hoped they would be less conspicuous.
They forgot about the tide. It was rising, and soon the men would be forced into the open. Discouraged, the rest of the group headed for shore to surrender—but not Wright. He had heard the Germans didn’t take prisoners; so he decided to hang on a little longer. If discovered, at least he would die a free man.
Half an hour, and he changed his mind. He grew so lonely he decided he’d rather die with his friends. He too might as well give up. He worked his way among the piles toward the shore, where a large swastika flag now flew from the jetty. He had almost reached the first German outpost when a couple of British destroyers standing offshore began shelling the jetty.
This put new hope into him. In a flash he again changed his mind. Turning around, he now clambered seaward, scrambling from pile to pile at irregular intervals in order to confuse the enemy. At one point, where mortar fire had cut a gap in the breakwater, he tumbled into the sea. Swimming across the gap, he climbed back among the piles and continued on.
At the seaward end of the breakwater he was overjoyed to find a cluster of 46 British servicemen, hiding like himself among the piles and beams. Over their heads stood a small structure, normally used by port authorities, which served as an observation post. This had been taken over by a Royal Marines captain who was the senior rank present.
The sun was going down now, and it turned bitterly cold. Wright, still wet from his tumble into the harbor, suffered dreadfully. His new companions pulled off his clothing and crowded around him, trying to keep him warm. One young subaltern literally hugged him, and their helmets came together with a fearsome clang that seemed certain to attract the attention of every German in Calais.
But they were still undetected at nightfall, when Wright and most of the others climbed an iron ladder and joined the Royal Marines captain in the port authorities room. Clearly an enterprising man, he somehow made hot coffee for them all. Outside, a signalman with a lamp kept flashing an SOS, hoping some British ship would see it. Wright, warm at last but now hobbled by a badly bruised foot, dozed under a table.
“They are coming!” was the cry that woke him up. It was around 2:00 a.m., and a small British vessel was entering the harbor. It failed to spot the men on the breakwater and tied up down by the jetty. A landing party went ashore but wasn’t gone long. German machine guns opened up, and the shore party raced back to the boat. It slipped its lines and headed back to sea.
As the vessel again drew near, the men on the breakwater whooped and yelled and frantically waved their light. Never mind if the Germans saw them; this was their last chance. The boat again passed them by … then at the last possible moment turned and eased alongside the breakwater. Wright and the others scrambled aboard. Next instant they were off, pounding into the open sea, as every gun in the harbor erupted behind them.
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Their craft was the naval yacht Gulzar, commanded by Lieutenant C. V. Brammall. Not knowing that Calais had fallen, he had taken his boat into the port, hoping to pick up some wounded. He was too late for that, but not for the little group on the breakwater. As the Gulzar chugged toward Dover, someone handed Wright a snack and some coffee. Safe at last, he decided it was the best meal he had ever had in his life.
Lieutenant Brammall wasn’t the only man that night who failed to realize Calais was gone. The top command in London were as much in the dark as ever. At 4:30 a.m. Winston Churchill telegraphed Gort suggesting—as he had so often done before—that “a column directed upon Calais while it is still holding out might have a good chance.”
Finally, at first light on the 27th, a force of 38 Lysanders flew over Calais on a drop mission. They lost three planes but managed to drop 224 gallons of water, 22,000 rounds of ammunition, and 864 grenades. Waiting below, the Germans were appropriately grateful.
The British people were deeply moved by the stand at Calais. For 400 years they had felt a special tie to the place. Every schoolchild knew how Queen Mary—“Bloody Mary”—had lost the port in 1558 through monumental carelessness, and how she died “with the word Calais written on my heart.” Now the city had been lost again, but this time in the noblest way for the noblest cause—to buy time for Gort’s army.
Yet that certainly wasn’t the original goal. At various times Nicholson’s force was to be used for raids on the enemy flanks … for relieving Boulogne … for defending Saint-Omer … for escorting rations to Dunkirk … for demonstrating “Allied solidarity.” It was only in the last 36 hours that buying time became the guiding purpose.
And how much time did it really buy? The best evidence suggests very little. The Germans used only one division at Calais, the 10th Panzer, and it could not have reached the Aa Canal Line before the “halt order” was issued. The advance did not resume until after Calais had been taken. The other panzer troops were idle throughout the siege.
One panzer division, the 1st, did take a passing swipe at Calais, as it led the dash eastward on the 23rd. It hoped to take the port by surprise without a fight. Finding this was impossible it was told not to waste any more time, but to continue the advance east. Calais, never considered very important, could be cleaned up by the 10th Panzers, still trailing behind everyone else.
Even after Calais had been taken, the 10th was not rushed forward to join the troops attacking Dunkirk. It was, in fact, sent the other way for the almost nominal task of guarding the coast from Calais to Audresselles. Another 24 hours would pass before Guderian decided that maybe he could use the Division’s tanks at Dunkirk after all.
Actually, OKH felt they already had enough troops to take the port. And this was certainly true at the time the “halt order” was issued. Six crack panzer divisions were poised on the Aa Canal Line, with the 1st and the 6th Divisions less than twelve miles from Dunkirk. This was easily enough to overwhelm the sprinkling of Allied defenders.
All these panzer divisions were still in place when the halt order was lifted on May 26. In the interim the French 68th Division had moved into the Gravelines area, and Gort had set up his system of “stops” and strong-points. But most of the BEF were still deep in France and Belgium, reeling back toward the coast.
To save them it was still necessary to buy time, but it would not be bought by the heroic defenders of Calais. That was all over. The job would have to be done by the troops holding the strong-points along the escape corridor. None of these towns and villages had the emotional pull of Calais; some were little more than dots on the map. …
At Hazebrouck on the morning of May 27 a discomforting report reached the 229th Field Battery: the panzers had turned the British flank, and there was nothing between the battery and the German Army. High time to get out, but one gun was detached and wheeled into position at a road junction just south of town. A forlorn hope, it might briefly cover the exposed flank. Captain John Dodd, second in command of the battery, climbed to the top of a nearby farmhouse to scan the horizon for any sign of the enemy.
A German tank stood half-hidden behind a hedge 200 yards away. Dodd rushed down the stairs to lay the gun, but Sergeant Jack Baker already had his crew of four giving a drill-hall performance. They got off two rounds before the German tank even replied. Then came an answering hale of machine-gun bullets. Two more tanks rumbled up, and all three blazed away at Baker’s gun.
Another British field piece joined in. It was under repair some yards off, but the battery sergeant major found several volunteers, including a cook and a motor mechanic. They swung the gun around and hammered away until they ran out of ammunition.
Baker’s gun carried on alone, giving as good as it got. Two of the crew fell; now there were only Baker and his layer left. Then the layer was hit, and there was only Baker. He continued firing, getting off six more shots on his own. Then he too ran out of ammunition.
But the issue was already decided. The three tanks turned and lumbered away. Baker had won. Captain Dodd rushed up, to be greeted by the wounded layer. Excitedly shaking the Captain’s hand, he cried, “We got the bugger, sir!” At Epinette, another Gort strong-point eight miles farther south, the determination was the same, but the weapon was different. Captain Jack Churchill had gone to war with three “toys”—his bagpipes, a sword, and a bow and arrow. On the 27th the bagpipes and sword were packed with his gear somewhere, but he had the bow and a few arrows with him as he and about 80 others, mostly 2nd Manchesters, prepared to defend the village.
When the German advance came in sight, Churchill climbed into the loft of a granary and peered through a vertical opening normally used for hauling up sacks of grain. There, only 30 yards away, he saw five enemy soldiers sheltering behind the corner of a house. He quickly fetched up two British infantrymen and ordered them to open rapid fire, but not until he had loosed an arrow at the center man. He lifted his bow, took aim, and let fly. Hearing the twang, the riflemen blasted away.
Churchill had a brief, satisfying glimpse of his arrow hitting home—right in the left side of the center man’s chest. The rifles brought down three of the other Germans, but the fifth escaped by dodging around the corner of the house. For perhaps the last time in history, the English bow—the weapon that turned the tide at Crécy and Poitiers six hundred years earlier—had again been used in battle.
Tradition was also in evidence at La Bassée, the southern anchor of Gort’s Canal Line defense system. The 1st Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders, holding the town, were the last Scottish regiment to wear kilts in action. It was against regulations, but the Camerons wore them anyway, and in one case, at least, they served a practical purpose. The battalion adjutant, Major Peter Hunt, was hit in the leg, but the bullet’s effect was diminished by a fold in his kilt.
For two days the Camerons had been holding out, hurling back every German attempt to cross the canal. But it was a costly business. After one counterattack A Company had only six men left—nowhere near enough to hold the ground so dearly bought.
Now, on the morning of May 27, the enemy again stormed across the canal, and La Bassée was soon engulfed in flames and smoke. “Next door” at Festubert the 2nd Dorsets heard a last faint radio signal: the Camerons were completely surrounded and wanted permission to destroy their wireless.
The Dorsets sensed their turn was next. As the panzers approached, a strange cheerfulness—almost bravado—swept C Company headquarters. Someone wound up an ancient gramophone, and it ground out “Ramona” over and over again. For most people the tune might conjure up visions of moonlight and waterfalls, but 2nd Lieutenant Ivor Ramsay would always connect it with Festubert and those beetlelike tanks.
Making clever use of the village buildings, the Dorsets managed to hold out till dark, when orders were to fight their way back to Estaires. They were now deep in enemy-held territory; using the roads was impossible. They would have to go cross-country—at night, without maps. All that the battali
on commander Lieutenant-Colonel E. L. Stephenson had was a compass.
At 10:30 p.m. they started out. Stephenson took the lead, followed by about 250 Dorsets and miscellaneous “odds and sods” who had lost their own units. It was a black, cloudy night, and the men soon had their first contact with the enemy when Stephenson ran head-on into a German infantry sergeant inspecting his own outposts. The Colonel pulled his revolver and killed the man with a single shot. Hearing the commotion, a nearby enemy sentry called, “Heinrich?”—but did nothing else. Relieved, the Dorsets stumbled on through the dark.
Next, they came to a road running directly across their line of retreat, packed with enemy tanks and motor transport. A whole armored division was driving past. Stephenson’s little troop lay down in the stubble and watched the show for over an hour—the German vehicles didn’t even bother to turn off their lights. Finally, there was a break in the flow, and the Dorsets scooted across the road, plunging back into the underbrush just as the next echelon rolled into view.
Guided by Colonel Stephenson’s compass, the men struggled on across ploughed fields, over barbed-wire fences, through ditches waist-deep and stinking of sewage. At dawn they came to a canal too deep to wade. The swimmers formed a human chain to help the nonswimmers across. Somehow they managed it, then had to do it all over again when the canal looped back a quarter-mile further on.
But Stephenson’s compass never failed them. Just as he had calculated, at 5:00 a.m. on the 28th the Dorsets stumbled into Estaires, completing an eight-mile odyssey. French troops were defending the town and cheerfully shared their flasks of vin rouge with the exhausted newcomers.