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FOR

a fortnight there had been a

disarming quiet along the banksof the Somme and theAisne.

Here had brushed the left flank ofthe armoured wedge driven acrossnorthern France by the panzers asthey thrust to the sea.

In their wake had come German

infantry, bolstering the flank, inplaces crossing the two great rivers.And there the Hun had stayed,resolutely, for two weeks now.

There had been efforts to dislodgethe foe - one General Charlesde Gaulle had bludgeoned thebridgehead at Abbeville - but allhad failed.And so the uneasy stand-off

NAVY NEWS, EVACUATION FROM FRANCE 70th ANNIVERSARY SUPPLEMENT JULY 2010 1

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" British and French troops file up the steep cliffs at St Valéry-en-Caux after a forlorn mission by the Royal Navy- Operation Cycle

- to "We've gone to war with a 1918rescue them army against a German Army of

1939."

persisted. It persisted until the first carbines and hand-grenades tearof the British Expeditionary Force, They were on the Continent lessWeygand was exaggerating. Butstreaks of light glimmered on the holes in the enemy's lines."evacuation at Dunkirk did notto thwart the renewed German attackthe first three weeks of battle had costeastern horizon on Wednesday JuneThus began the last act of the bring the curtain down on Britain'swhen it came - and it would comethe Allies the flower of their armies -

5 1940. Thousands of muzzle flashes Battle of France. Within two weeks,involvement on the continent. - than to bolster the resolve of their61 divisions had been destroyed,glowed briefly in the half-light along the French would be suing for peace.There were more than 100,000 faltering ally.among them half France's armour.a 100-mile stretch of front from theWithin three, the guns would beBritons still in France after Dunkirk:And the resolve of Britain's ally "Three-quarters, if not four-fifths,mouth of the Somme to Laon on the silent. Like the first act, it wouldrear area and supply units, RAFwas faltering. France had alreadyof our most modern equipment wasAisne.demand the sacrifice of friendformations, liaison officers anddismissedhermilitary leader, 68-year- captured," he wrote. "Our units in

"It's a relief for the men," wrote and foe. It would herald anotherstaffs, and not least the fighting menold General Maurice Gamelin, andthe north were the best armed. Theya soldier in Germany's 57 Infanterie evacuation from the continent - aofthe 51st Highland Division.replaced him with one five yearswere our spearhead. The best of theDivision. "After long days in'forgotten Dunkirk' - and the worst In fact, fresh troops were still his senior, Maxime Weygand. TheFrenchArmy was captured."foxholes, after heavy artillery and maritime tragedy in British history.arriving in France: 52nd Division and new commander hardly exuded What was left would be shown nolosses, now we're advancing. We the 1st Canadian. In all, there were in confidence,mercyby the Germans.don't need tanks, our artillery, anti- However much the newspapers ofexcess of 150,000 Commonwealth "This war is sheer madness," he 000

tank guns, field guns, machine-guns, the day trumpeted the homecomingpersonnel on the Continent,tolda conference of Allied leaders. Continued on page ii

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ii NAVY NEWS,EVACUATION FROM FRANCE 70th ANNIVERSARY SUPPLEMENT JULY 2010

A

fter the uninspiringly-titledFall Gelb - Plan Yellow -which had entrapped the

Allied armies at Dunkirk, the Germanmilitary machine devised Fall Rat -

Plan Red - to finish off France. Redwould deliver two blows. One thrustalong the Channel coast, the other afew days later into the heart of the

republic.At dawn an June 5, Hitler's

Army struck. On the very extremityof the German front, St Valdry-sur-Samme, a motorised brigade andinfantry division ran headlong intoMajor General Victor Fortune's 51stHighland Division.The fate of one battalion, 7th

Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders,speaks far the heroism and sacrificeof British troops this day. By nightfallthis Wednesday, they had last nearlytwo dozen officers and 500 men,killed, wounded or missing. June 51940 was, the unit's war diarist notedthat evening, "the blackest day in thehistory ofthe battalion".

Such sacrifice did not impressthe irascible Maxime Weygand.As the 51st fell back in the face ofoverwhelming German pressure, theFrench generalissima railed at thefailure ofthe British troops and aboveall their leader far retreating. "Yourgeneral should be called Misfortune,"he sneered at a British liaison officer.

Maxime Weygand had ordered hismen to "bald fast to the sail of Francewithout thought of retreat". Many did.But same did not.

After several days' rest, the assaulttroops of 7 Panzer Division slippedacross the Somme at first light anthe fifth. Within four hours engineershad thrown a bridge across the river.By dusk, the armour had punched itsway through ten miles of French-heldterritory. As he had done throughoutthe campaign in France, the division'sdashing commander, one ErwinRammel, never allowed the advanceto slacken.

His armour avoided the roadswherever possible, ploughing throughfields of tall earn or the meadows ofthe lower Somme valley. The panzerspassed blazing petrol tankers, riderlesshorses, columns of prisoners - sameof them drunk. In the June heat, thevehicles of 7 Panzer trailed hugeclouds of dust. "The enemy," Rammelreported to his masters as night fell,"has been tam apart."

His panzers were bound far theSeine at Rouen. So too the armour ofhis neighbouring division, S Panzer.In doing so, they would cut off Britishand French troops in the Pays deCaux, the chalk plateau between themouths of the Somme and the Seine.The encirclement of Allied farces atDunkirk would be repeated - albeit ana smaller scale.

Instead of ordering a withdrawalbehindthe greatest of France's arteries,the only orders from an increasinglyhysterical General Weygand were:bald an. "It's the decisive battle ofthewar," the French commander insisted."Every man must stand and fight.

Each tank must became a fortress!Every man must attack!"

Cooler British beads realised the51st Highlanders faced encirclement.Once again, the gaze of Britishgenerals in France turned to the RoyalNavy.

up an the streets or on the ground."As Rouen burned, so too the port

ofLe Havre at the mouth ofthe Seine."The atmosphere was desolate,"recalled F JGHewitt, First Lieutenantof HMS Bulldag which had arrivedin the Seine Bay ready to carry outOperation Cycle.

"Oil tanks were burning an sharewith huge black clouds of smokerising further inland."Nobody from share seemed to take

much notice of our arrival - the onlyinformation we gleaned was that theArmy had last touch with its forwardunits." Such chaos and indecisionwould characterise the evacuation.

Monday

June 10 dawnedwith William James pacinghis operations room in

Portsmouth. His flotilla had reachedFrench shares, butwas still waiting farinstructions to evacuate - commandan the other side ofthe Channel restedwith a French admiral... andthe Frenchadmiral was flapping. Bubbles seizedthe initiative. He commandeered amotor torpedo boat - commanded byhis son, although the admiral onlyrealised it as the craft left harbour -and sped far France.As the boat approached Le Havre,

James could see the part's ail tanksstill burning from a heavy air raidthree days earlier. The air was shakenconstantly by the sound of explosions- engineers were at work destroyingthe port installations.

LeHavrewashorn etaaheadquartersstaffafmare than 1,000 Britishtroops.James struggled against a torrent ofrefugees to reach the HQ. On the wall,a huge chart revealed the plight oftheHighlanders, now cut off. There wasa constant stream of despatch ridersearning and going. None brought goodtidings. It was clear to the admiral thatthe 51st Division would never reachLe Havre. There was only one hopeof extricating the Highlanders: thepart of St ValCry-en-Caux, 40 milesup the coast.

St Valery is no Dunkirk. It is no LeHavre. It is not even a Dieppe. It is asmall fishing part offewer than 5,000souls, nestling between toweringchalk cliffs. The harbour is small,its entrance, flanked by two piers,narrow. The beaches either side aresmall and strewn with pebbles. Onlyat law tide does the sand materialise.The only way to embark troops atSt Valery was using small craft; theharbour was too small for destroyersand transparters.

It was late afternoon by the timethe first ships of Admiral James'flotilla, led by HMS Bulldag, arrivedoff St Valery. A small rowing boatwith half a dozen men dressed inkhaki approached the destroyer. Theyclambered aboard Bulldag. In thickScottish brogue, they told the ship'sFirst Lieutenant they were men ofthe 51st Highland Division. They had'borrowed' the boat... and intended toraw to England.

As HMS Bulldag picked up a handfulof Highlanders, Erwin Rammel'svanguard reached the coast at LesPetits Dalles, ten miles along thecoast from St Valery. "The enginesand the raffle oftank tracks fall silenton the coast," one of Rommel'ssignallers wrote. "The marvellouscoastal terrain and the sublime viewof the Atlantic are, to us, the mostwonderful reward." Panzer regimentcommander Oberst (Colonel) KarlRathenburg drove his Panzer Mk IIIthrough the sea wall and an to thebeach, while his commander flasheda terse message to the rest of thedivision: Am at sea. A few monthslater, he described the moment:The sight of the sea with thecliffs on both sides thrilledevery man.We climbed out of our

vehicles and walked down theshingle beach to the water'sedge until the water lappedat our boots. Several dispatch

In

Semaphore Tower, the imposingnaval base headquarters whichdominated the Portsmouth

waterfront, the offices of AdmiralWilliam James were buzzing.

To the Vice Admiral Dover hadfallen the grave responsibility ofevacuating the British ExpeditionaryFarce at Dunkirk.Along the south coast, orders had

now been passed to the Commander-in-Chief Portsmouth for a newrescue mission, Operation Cycle: theevacuation ofAllied troops on the LeHavre peninsula.

'Bubbles' James was not cut fromthe same cloth as his counterpartin Dover. Bertram Ramsay was anorganiser. Admiral Sir William Jameswas a leader of men in the moretraditional sense. Far more than aquarter of a century he had heldcommands, served as a flag officeror executive officer. When his careerallowed, he delved into naval history,publishing numerous tames.Asfar thenickname, that came from a paintingby his grandfather of the five-year-old William entranced by a bubblehe had just blown. The image wassubsequently used to advertise Pearssoap... hence the sobriquet, which theadmiral detested.Now, however was not the time

to be entranced. James hurriedlygathered a staff of junior officersand merchant sailors to round up "anarmada of vessels of all sorts andsizes". South coast ports were raidedand an assortment of crass-Channelferries, Dutch barges, yachts andpleasure cruisers, tugs and cutters,200 in all were ready to sail far Franceby June 8, shepherded by a handful ofdestroyers. They set sail far Le Havre"in high heart".

By the time the Cycle force sailed,German troops already stood on theSeine. Erwin Rammel again. First atElbeuf, a dozen miles upstream ofRouen, then at the great cathedral city.Every crossing of the Seine was gone-destroyed either by the French or

by the Luftwaffe, which had poundedRouen. The 12th-Century cathedralstill stood, undamaged, as did many ofthe mediaeval buildings surroundingit. But elsewhere the city burned andthe German soldiers looted abandonedFrench Army trucks. "Everythingis free - like in a large departmentstore," German staff officer HansMeier-Welcker wrote. "Everything issearched by the troops and they takewhat they fancy - as long as theycan carry it. They drag full bags ofcoffee from heavy goods vehicles,shirts, stockings, blankets, boats andcountless other goads. What you haveto save up far and pay a high priceeverywhere else, here you can pick it

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from British troops broadcast en clair:To our left artillery, to our right tanks.This is the end!

After dark an June 11, thousands ofBritish soldiers made for the beachand harbour at St Valery, awaitingdeliverance. Fag and mist turned attimes to drizzle. The buildings aroundthe harbour burned in the wake ofRommel's bombardment. Tracer fromGerman machine-guns occasionallyflashed across the harbour, striking thequays and pier.

Into this hell sailed the tug Fairplaytowing several drifters. In the glowof the fires, the flotilla quickly cameunder attack from German mortarsand machine-guns. Two drifters weresunk. The rest abandoned the rescuemission and turned for home waters.Not so the destroyers Codringtan

and Saladin, observing proceedingsin the small port. Their captains hadwatched the flotilla of drifters movein. They had seen the hail of steelpoured down on the small craft anddrawn the obvious conclusion: StValery was a death trap. The forcemoved four miles along the coast toVeules-les-Roses where things weremuch quieter.

Half a dozen craft reached Veules.Over the next six hours they embarked1,200 Britons waiting an the shore,plus some 900 Frenchmen. When theguns of S Panzer Division found therange ofthe ships, they set sail.

It wasn't just the Germans who hadseen the armada mustered off Veules.Themenofthe 51st, who had waitedon the beach and in the harbour ofSt Valery, also observed the activity.Some decided to ignore orders andseek salvation. Capt Derek Lang oftheCameron Highlanders, accompaniedby "a number of Jacks" struggledalong the shoreline. The foot of thecliffs was littered with corpses -

desperate soldiers had triedto climbor abseil down the sheer faces toreach the waiting ships. WhenLang reachedVeules he founda solitary "large trawler-type fishing boat" runaground on the sand. "Aseething mass ofhumanbeings" had forced theirway aboard the Hebe2, a Dutch coaster,Shoping that the tidewould carry her out.The Germans provedfaster than Nature.They soon appearedan the cliff top andbegan shootingat the stranded ,vessel.

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"We climbed out of our vehicles and walked down the shingle beach to the water's ¬The sight-of the sea thrilled every ix

- Generalmajor Er1

riders,wearinglongwaterproofcoats, walked straight out untilthe water was over their knees- I had to call them back.The frolicking in the Channel was

brief. The sight of a flotilla of 200small and large shipsoffthe Normandycoast quickly caught the eye of theGermans. Their guns engaged -and damaged - HMS Ambuscade.She fared better than two B-classdestroyers ordered to close the Frenchcoast - Boadicea and Bulldog.The farmer also came under enemy

fire as she pickedup four dozen Britishand French troops from the beach atVeulettes, five miles from St Valery.As Bulldog moved in to support hersister, the two warships were bouncedby nine Stukas.

The dive bombers split into twogroups: three circled Boadicea,the rest focused their attention onBulldog. Three bombs struck Bulldog,wrecking her steering gearand causingcarnage in the bailer and engine rooms- even though one of the bombs didnot explode. Boadicea suffered evengraver damage.Two direct hits causedthe lass of power and inflicted heavycasualties below decks. She wouldprobably have sunk but far a blanketoffag which shrouded Norman shares.It prevented any further attacks by theLuftwaffe - and allowed Ambuscadeto tow Boadicea back to Portsmouth.

Bulldog's engineers were able torestore power. She limped back toPortsmouth, where a bomb disposalexpert from HMS Vernon waswaiting far the ship. He made safethe unexploded bomb in the bailerroam. The dive-bombers had releasedtheir 'eggs' too late; the timer an thefuses had not run out. It was a mistakeArgentinian bombers would repeatfour decades later...

By

first light an June 11, thebulk of the Cycle farce wasmustering off St Valery.

Co-ordinating this disparate farce wasfar from easy. Few ofthe vessels werefitted with radio. The persistent mist -which had saved the three destroyersthe previous afternoon - renderedsignalling by flags or even Aldislamps useless. Megaphones were thelast resort. Some skippers heard theinstructions and closed to within sightofthe part. Many did not.

To the travails caused by theelements were added the travailscaused by man. William James wasordering his ships to evacuate the 51st.The Highlanders were demandingaerial support after constant houndingby German bombers. Whitehallrefused to send it. It also refused toauthorise an evacuation, determinedto send the French government asignal that London would not desertits Allies. Themen an the ground inSt Valery pressed ahead with plans forembarkation after dark on the 11th.

Just as in Dunkirk a fortnight earlier,morale and discipline in St Valery werebeginning to break down."Thousandsof drunken French soldiers werelooting cafes, shops and houses,blazing away at anything with theirrifles," one sergeant with the SeafarthHighlanders recalled.

As the poilus drank themselves intoa stupor, 7 Panzer spent the morningregrouping. Came mid-day, thearmour rolled once more, bound forSt Valery.

They found their way blacked atLe Tat, 272 miles outside St Valery,by ferocious British resistance. WhileRommel's infantry grappled with thehastily-constructed strongpoints, thepanzers simply bypassed them andmade for the cliffs overlooking thesmall port. From their lofty vantagepaint, the Germans could observelively activity in St Valery. "TheFrench and British," wrote Hans vonLuck, in command ofa reconnaissancebattalion, "seemed to be preparing forembarkation."

After several hours in discussion withthe Highlanders' commander VictorFortune, Cdr Robert Elkins returnedto the seafront to see how preparationsfar the evacuation with progressing.Elkins had been hurriedly dispatchedto France to serve as the 51 st's navalliaison officer. If there was indecisionelsewhere, it did not extend to thenaval commander who busied himself- and his small team -with plans farevacuation both from the harbour andfrom the small beaches. Word of theimpending rescue had spread aroundSt Valery. There were now hundredsof French soldiers milling around anthe small west beach, waiting eitherfar salvation - or to surrender.

Onthe clifflap a soldierwaswavingfrantically, urging the soldiers to dawnweapons and join him. Robert Elkinswas suspicious. His suspicions wereconfirmed when he spied a Germanhelmet and the barrel of a panzerpeeking over the cliff. He grabbed aFrench rifle and ran down the pier,urging British troops an it to destroyall their secret equipment. Machine-guns raked the male "but I wasrunning very fast and they missed,"Elkins recalled. However fast heran, however, he could never reachthe end of the pier alive. He threwhimselfbehind granite boulders an thebeach and contemplated his fate. "Forhalf an hour he lay behind a pile ofstones, pretending to be dead," ErwinRommel wrote.

Pinned down an all sides, Elkinsfinally surrendered. He was takento 7 Panzer's staff, where one ofRommel's officers berated him for notgiving up sooner, sparing the lives ofmany ofthe men on themole. "Wouldyou have acted any differently in myposition?" he snapped back.

Erwin Rommel was rather moregracious than his staff. He sent fora battle of wine and shared it withRobert Elkins before the latter joinedmore than one thousand French andBritish soldiers captured by 7 PanzerDivision this day.

Despite this large-scale surrender,St Valery was far from captured. TheGermans held only part of the smallpart on the western side of harbour.There were still thousands of Alliedtroops in the heart oftown and in thepart - and they planned to escape.

Under a white flag, Rammel sentnegotiators into St Valery: surrenderor face an all-out assault at 9pm.The calls fell on deaf ears. "It wasmainly the British who turned downall suggestions to surrender," Rammelwrote. "They had their men heavilyengaged building barricades andmoving large numbers of guns andmachine-guns into position aroundSt Valery."

Back in Semaphore Tower, a flurry ofdesperate signals from the 51st washanded to William James: Situationcritical. When can we expect boats?Running short of ammunition. Andfinally, at dusk an the 11th, a terseplea: Consider tonight last possiblechance of evacuation of5! Division.Twenty-four thousand men - half ofthem British, half of them French -

needed rescuing.Admiral James responded with a

pledge to extricate the Highlanders:Evacuation from St Valery is tocommence this evening. All availabletransports are being sent.

At 9pm, as promised, 7 Panzer beganits bombardment of St Valery, directingits onslaught first at the pier, then atthe town itself. "The effect," wroteRommel,"was especially devastating."To the east of St Valery, S Panzer wascompoundingthemisery ofthetrappedAllied troops, squeezing the ever-shrinking pocket. The besieged farcesdefended doggedly. "Each house hasto be taken individually," a Germanwar correspondent wrote. "Each wallis a nest of enemy resistance." Butit was an ill-matched struggle.The headquarters of S Panzerintercepted a radio message

a

"My last moments before capturewere spent firing a Lewis gun

- whichwas fixed to the side of this boat - atthese tanks," Lang recalled. "Quite aforlorn hope."

The white flag was now flying overSt Valery. French troops had hoistedit. They had orders to cease fighting

-

although they hadn't had the courtesyto tell the British.

Victor Fortune was already in afoulmood. His men had spent "all night on

[the] beach" waiting for ships whichnever came. Now a note was handedto him by the senior French officerin the town, GénCral Marcel Ihler:Lefeo cessera a hoit heores - Cease

firing at 8am. Fortune intended to fighton; he still had hopes that the RoyalNavy might rescue the remnants ofhis division. The matter was beyondhis control. The white flag on thesteeple was followed by white flagsthroughout the port as the poilos laiddown their arms and Rommel's tankshad entered the edge of town. Therewas no hope of defending St Valery-en-Caux any longer.

Frenchmen and Britons, officersand other ranks, all converged on themarket square where a formal, if not

orderly, surrender was conducted. OneBritish general

- Victor Fortune - andfour French commanders surrenderedto Erwin Rommel. One French generalbuttonholed the German commander.Which division had captured them?Rommel told him it was the 7Panzer.

"Damn it!" snapped the Frenchman."The ghost division!" He explainedthat his unit had been chased acrossFrance and Belgium by Rommel'smen. "We've repeatedly run into thisdivision, wandering all over Francelike a ghost." The nickname stuck.

At least 12,000 men, 4,000 of themBritish, fell into Rommel's hands at

at'

on steamers and ferries. More than11,000 men were rescued - the lastovernight on June 12-13. The nextday, German troops marched into theport. They found the oil tanks aroundthe harbour in flames, the cranes and

quayside installations smashed, and thestreets filled with abandoned Britishtrucks and cars, most undamaged,ready to be loaded on ships whichnever came. Civilians looted cratesof raincoats, stole cushions from cars,drained petrol from vehicles. In short,anything not nailed down ended up ina Frenchman's home.

For the soldiers who'd escapedLe Havre, salvation was short-lived.Within hours, 9,000 ofthem were backon French soil, dropped in Cherbourgacross the Seine Bay to continue thestruggle.

But for how much longer? Frenchresistance had collapsed. Rommel's

panzers- on the move again towards

Calvados and the Cotentin peninsula- was scything through Normandy."I can't believe there'll be any moreserious fighting," the general wroteto his wife. "People are glad that forthem, the war is over. We've even beenpresented with flowers bythe roadsidein some places." The Battle of France,7 Panzer's commander observed,had turned into "a lightning tour ofFrance". The lanes of Calvados were"strewn with destroyed guns, withammunition and steel helmets, withforeign clothes and tellers," Germansoldier Bemd Hardeweg wrote. Hecontinued:

Bottles lay there, halfconsumed.Household goods. Dogs shot.Horses with bloated stomachs,

stinking. Curtains hung ontelephone poles. Like fog, thesmell of fuel hung over theroad. A dead person lay withher face turned down, doll-like in death. The tiny hand

'SI -S

at.

St Valery. "What was particularlysurprising was the sang froid withwhich the British officers acceptedtheir fate," the German general wrote.Despite their predicament Fortune, andespecially his staff, joked and laughed-

although they did not appreciate theintrusions of a propaganda film crew

accompanying Rommel's division.Thesenior captives were invited to dinewith their captors at an open-air lunch.They declined. Rather less civilitywas shown the ordinary soldiers. AtVeules-les-Roses, Gerhard Starcke of31 Panzer Regiment

- Roten Teufel(Red Devils) - watched thousands ofBritish and French prisoners beingmarched away. "They havenot merelythrown away their weapons, their alsodisarmed inwardly as well," he wrote.

"Many are wounded, their uniformstorn."Acorporal whohad tried in vainto swim to one of the waiting Cycleships filed past Starcke dejected. "TheRed Devils are hell," he muttered.

And so ends the story of the 51st

Highland Division in France. "It wasa terrible disappointment," WilliamJames wrote a decade later. Dynamohad been distinguished by supremeorganisation, courage, determinationand luck. Cycle was remarkableonly for smatterings of courage anddetermination. You could blame themist. You could blame the Germans.You could blame Whitehall. AdmiralJames chose to blame the Frenchfor this "wretched affair"; they haddithered and consistently refused toallow any evacuation. By the time

permission came, St Valery wassurrounded.

The

end of the Highlanders wasnot the end of the evacuationsfrom France. As the 51st

marched into captivity, 40 miles awayin Le I-Iavre, thousands of British

troops were being embarked, largely

NAVY NEWS, EVACUATION FROM FRANCE 70thANNIVERSARY SUPPLEMENT JULY 2010 iii

was stretched out pointlessly yelled with delight: Volltreffer- bull's troops, many ofthem RAF personnel,

into the flowery grass. She was eye. Peter Stahl turned his aircraft had been picked up by several largeyellow like wax and reached for home, away from the setting sun, troopships, including the former linersfor something. overjoyed that his first operational Arandora Star and Otranto. Convinced

There was a mass grave next sortie had been a success. the great Brittany port was about toto a bomb crater, Frenchmen Despite Peter Stahl's elation, the fall to the panzers, the evacuation wascovered with earth in a hurry. Luftwaffe's attacks on Cherbourg halted. Brest did not fall for anotherArmoured cars, motorcycles, achieved little. William James two days.guns, machine-guns, shell succeeded in arranging the rescue of And still French soil was notcases, cartridges, ammunition. 30,630 men from the port at the tip of devoid of Tommies. There wereRuined, done in, abandoned - the Cotentin peninsula "without the anywhere between 40,000 and 60,000a picture of appalling collapse. loss of a single life or damage to a Commonwealth troops strung out

Indeed France's war was nearly single ship" the official historian noted along the Loire, making their way

over. On June 14, German troops proudly. The evacuation of St Malo for the estuary. When they reached

marched into Paris. The followingwas no less successful or bloodless. St Nazaire, they waited in an orderly

day, they launched an all-out assault A further 21,474 troops were lifted fashion in the port's basin for smaller

on the Maginot Line. That same day off, thanks in part to the umbrella craft - warships, tugs, drifters, small

the Admiralty took a momentous the RAF provided, keeping German ferries to carry them out to the half

decision. It would bring the rest of bombers at bay. a dozen or so liners and troopships

the British Expeditionary Force home, waiting three or four miles offshore in

Operation Aerial, as it was codenamed,demandedplanning - and evacuation-

A far more onerous task fell toWilliam James' counterpart in

Quiberon Bay.The evacuation began promisingly.

on ascale comparable with Dunkirk. It Plymouth, Martin Dunbar-Nasmith. More than 12,000 troops embarked

succeeded. And it is largely forgotten, The Commander-in-Chief of the on a quartet of liners and steamers in

save for one tragedy.Western Approaches was a legendaryfigure who owed his popular fame not

the hay.In the midst of this bustle arrived

fter the exertions of Operation to a soap advert but deeds in battle. In two former Cunard liners the 'in' at

ACycle, which had been such command of submarine HMS E11, he the end of their names immediately

a disappointment, William had been the scourge of the Marmara, revealed their owner's identity. The

James found his burden lessened negotiating the hazardous Dardanelles 20,000-ton Franconia and the slightly

somewhat when it came to executing to target Turkish shipping. Which older and smaller Lancastria hadboth been converted into troopships,Aerial. He only had to rescue troops he did, seemingly with impunity. Itand had both brought troops safelyfrom Cherbourg and St Malo. James earned him the VC.A generation later,home from Norway in the wake

emptied the ports of soldiers quickly the poacher turned gamekeeper. Itof the German advance throughand none too soon. Late on the was now his task to keep submarinesScandinavia.

afternoon of June 15, seven Ju88s at bay and safeguard shipping in theAs a French trawler guided the

appeared over the taller harbour withorders to wreak havoc. Pilot Peter

Western Approaches.For now, all thoughts of prosecuting transporters past the island of Belle-

Stahl watched his comrades attack, the U-boat war were put on hold. Ile-en-Mer, a single Junkers 88 - byfar the best German bomber of the

before beginning his own dive against Dunbar-Nasmith was to muster whatday - made for the liners. Its bombs

the warehouses on the quayside. shipping he could and evacuate troops fell astern of the Franconia. TheyHe ignored the anti-aircraft shells from Brest, St Nazaire and La Pallice.landed close enough to lift her out

exploding all around his dive-bomber Dunbar-Nasmith rounded up linersof the water, knocking out one of- the smell ofburnt cordite filled the and troopships and sent them acrossher engines. After temporary repairs,and carried out a textbookcockpit the Channel, protected by destroyers she returned to Liverpool. Not so the

attack against his target.As the bombs and minesweepers. Lancastria. She dropped anchor in thewere released and the Ju88 pulled out The evacuation of Brest was a

roadstead.of its dive - exerting four to five Gs rather hurried if successful affair. Byon the crew Stahl's dorsal gunner nightfall on June 17, more than 32,000

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iv NAVY NEWS, EVACUATION FROM FRANCE 70thANNIVERSARYSUPPLEMENT JULY 2010

! Continued from page viiPeter Stall was over the Loire thisSunday afternoon, but a good 150miles from activities in QuiberonBay. He had orders to smash thecrossings over the river in the cityof Tours. He needed two passes ofthe bridge -on the first dive Stall'spayload failed to release. Not so onthe second. Volitreffer. He returnedto his base convinced the bridgewas useless. The fliers celebratedtheir success with a"serious drinkingsession" in a Belgian inn.

RAF armourer Ted Mansfieldarrived in a truck on the edge of StNazaire. For a month, the 19-year-old had lived a transitory existencesupporting Fairey Baffle bombers ofthe British Air Forces in France -the RAF counterpart of the BritishExpeditionary Force. The BAFF, likethe BEE, was pulling out ofFrance.Mansfieldand his colleagues renderedtheir trucks and their weaponsuseless, then moved towards thedocks. They spent the night sleepingunder the eaves of the quaysidewarehouses. "All night long ack-ackguns were firing and shrapnel was'raining down' on the warehouseroof, making a terrible noise," theground crewman recalled. "It did notbother us -we were so tired we sleptthrough it all."

Sunday June 16 had turned toMonday 17 by the time the voice ofMaréchal Philippe Pdtain crackledout of French radio sets. Just hoursbefore the 84-year-old marshal,saviour of Verdun a generationearlier, had been asked to form anew government in Bordeaux, towhere the nation's politicians hadfled when Paris was threatened. Forhis age, Pétain's voice was far frominfirm, but his words were hurried.He spoke for barely 90 seconds -

reading the 203 words of a preparedstatement. The poilo had fought"ovec uo hérofsnie digne de seslongues traditions mtlitaires contreon enneini supdrieor en nombre eten armes" -with heroism worthy ofhis long military traditions against afoe superior in number and arms. Butthe patio could fight no longer. "Myheart trembles when I tell you todaythat we must end the struggle."

First

light this Monday foundupwards ofthree dozen vesselseither at anchor or under way

in the Loire estuary. Her Majesty'sTroopship Lancastria was at anchor,a dozen miles from St Nazaire. ARoyal Naval officer moved amongthe flotilla in a launch, outlining theplan ofevacuation for the day. In herheyday, the liner had been built tocarry 2,200 passengers. Her captain,Rudolph Sharp, was prepared toraise that figure to 3,000. The navalofficer shook his head. "We weretold to take as many troops aboardas could be loaded, without regard tothe limits laid down by internationallaw," Sharp's first officer, HarryGrattidge, recalled. Grattidge wasperturbed - and not just by theofficer's seemingly cavalier attitudetomaritime safety. The sky, he noted,"throbbed with planes". The planeswere British - the RAF was flyingnear-constant patrols over the StNazaire roadstead.

The Loire throbbed with boats.Since dawn, a stream of smallervessels had either been headinginto or out of St Nazaire to collectwaiting troops. A round-trip to thelarger merchantmen and liners atanchor took upwards. By 630am,the first weary men filed aboard theLancastria. To them, the 16,000-tonship looked tired and old - but hersize suggested she was solid, secure,safe.

In the docks at St Nazaire, NAAFIcanteen employee Frank Clementswas looking to barter. The 30-year-old, serving in brand-new destroyer

HMS Highlander - requisitionedby the Admiralty from Braziljust two days into the war - wasa keen amateur photographer who'circumvented' regulations and tookhis camera wherever he went. Theevacuation was an event begging tobe photographed for posterity, butClements had no film left. In port,he bumped into a sailor willing toexchange film for a pair of socksfrom Highlander's NAAFI.

It was mid-day by the time mostGermans learned that France wassuing for peace. Peter Stahl and hiscomrades had barely recovered fromtheprevious evening's heavy drinkingsession when news reached them."This calls for another celebration,"the pilot decided.

According to the day's menu, lunchaboard the Lancastria was a grandaffair: hors d'ceuvre of consommé,crab salad or fried fillet of cod;a main course of steak or perhapsveal and bacon in a parsley sauce,accompanied by potatoes and beans,or perhaps a cold buffet; dessert ofapricot flan or ice cream, and finallycheese, biscuits and coffee.Few of the rescued troops

remember suchaspread being served.They do remember the Lancastriabeing crammed, her holds filled withcamp beds and straw mattresses. TedMansfield was given a blanket, sentbelow and told to find somewhere tosleep. He did.

"It was pretty grim down there,"recalled Cpl Donald Draycott, servingwith 98 Sqn RAP. "Having a strongsense of preservation, I thought ifwe got attacked, we wouldn't havea chance down there." He remainedon deck.

First Officer Harry Grattidgestruggled through the crowdedpassageways against a torrent ofsoldiers, stumbling over kit bagsand helmets. At the shell doorin the liner's side through whichthe rescued troops came aboard,Grattidge found Lancastria's purser.How many souls were aboard, heinquired. At least 5,000 men, thepurser responded. "I was horrified,"wrote Grattidge. "Five thousandmenalready embarked when our normalcapacity was three thousand." Heordered the doors closed and toldthe arriving vessels to make for theneighbouring troopship, the Oronsay.Lancastria would take no more men.

She could, however, accommodatea few civilians. Atug approached theliner with a handful of dishevelledrefugees, including a brother andsister, no older than ten, clingingon to a golden retriever "and adisreputable mongrel"."We can't have those dogs

aboard," the First Officer told thechildren. "You'll have to leave themon the tug." The youngsters lookedat him blankly. An Englishwomanintervened and translated on thesailor's behalf. The children's eyeswelled up. The children had walkedall the way from Brussels. Their petshad walked with them. They wereinseparable. HarryGraftidge buckled.He ignored quarantine regulationsand allowed the dogs aboard.

The reports of concentrationsof shipping in the Loire estuaryfiltered back to the headquarters ofFliegerkorps IV - IV Air Corps.From there they were passed toKampfgeschwader 30 - 30th BomberSquadron-and finally to itsIlGruppe- 2nd Wing. At 2pmon June 17, 14Ju88s carrying 250 and 500kg bombslifted off from Le Culot airfield inBelgium and made for Quiberon Bay.Among the fliers was Peter Stahl. Hiscelebrations of victory over Francehad been cut short.

The first German bombers appearedover the Loire estuary shortly before2pm. They aimed for a large ship

withtwo funnels, the Oronsay - from12,000 feet she looked the biggesttarget.

"Sometimes the afternoon suncaught their wings in a fine flash ofscintillating light," Harry Grattidgeobserved on Lancastria's bridge.He and Capt Sharp followed thebombers' progress as they swoopedon the Oronsay.

"Every so often came the sharp-edged snarl of a bomb, the rockingexplosion, the fountains ofspray thatspattered our decks like spring rain,"Grattidge recalled. After several ofthese near-misses, the Germans hitthe Oronsay's bridge, killing severalof her crew.On the bridge wing of destroyer

HMS Havelock an Aldis lampflashed furiously. The instructionswere simple: set sail for England.Rudolph Sharp signalled back. Hewanted a destroyer escort. Nonecould be given.

Lancastria's captain decided towait till Oronsay had effected repairs- safety in numbers. His first officeragreed and returned to his cabin"mortally tired". Try as he might,Grattidge could not sleep. "I had asixth sense of impending disaster,"he remembered.

A

fter an "endless" flight acrossnorthern and western France,the 14 Junkers 88s of 11/

KG3O found "an enormous fleet ofmerchant ships of all sizes spreadacross the wide river estuary". PeterStahl aimed his bomber towards "afat freighter", trying to ignore the"ferocious flak" and French Moranefighters buzzing over the mouth ofthe Loire. One jumped on Stahl'stail. "There's no time to think aboutthe finer details of dive-bombing,"the pilot wrote. "I throw the Ju88on its nose and dive down." TheFrench fighter followed. The bombergained speed. 370mph. 420mph.Bombs away. The Junkers bankedsharply, staying out of the reach ofanti-aircraft guns. The French fighterstruggled to follow.

The Lancastria rocked.Ted Mansfieldwoke up. A soldier told him notworry. "Nothing son, go back tosleep." Anear-miss evidently.

In his cabin, Harry Grattidge listened"to the longest, most fearful silence Ihad ever heard". Then the sound ofbombs falling again "so fast that itripped at your eardrums. Four timesthe Lancastria bucked and shudderedlike an animal in pain."

Ted Mansfield did not need to askhis comrades in khaki what hadhappened. Lancastria had been hit.The liner rolled first to port, then tostarboard. Alarm bells were ringing.The loudspeaker ordered abandonship. Men struggled to make theirway topside.

On the bridge Rudolph Sharpand Harry Grattidge struggled tocomprehend the carnage. One bombhad landed in No.2 hold, home toperhaps 800 RAF personnel. Anotherhad possibly gone down Lancastria'sfunnel. One had certainly explodedin No.3 hold, causing 500 tons offuel oil to gush out.Then the smoke drifted andparted andwesaw the mess ofblood and oil and splinteredwoodwork that littered thedeck and the furious whitecore of water that cameroaring from the bottom ofthe ship in No.4 hold.

There was confusion, but no panicon Lancastria's upper decks,RAP corporal Donald Draycottremembered. Indeed, he even passedan Army NCO still trying to fight thefires. "You've had it chum!" he toldhim. "You're wasting your time!"

By the time Ted Mansfield reached

Lancastria's upper deck, the linerwas listing heavily - much of herport side was already under water.There was little hope ofswinging outthe lifeboats. Mansfield sat down anddetermined to jump off the sinkingship when the right moment came.For the next few minutes he watchedthe German bombers continue theirattack, strafing men struggling tocling on to debris in the oily water.

Lancastria's bridge was also rakedby machine-gun fire. The bulletsbounced off the now-uselesstelegraphs. By now, just 20 minutesafter the first bomb struck, the waterwas almost lapping the bridge.

"It's time now, Harry," Capt Sharptold his first officer. The two menstepped offthe bridge into the oceanand swam for it.

Ted Mansfield had also decided itwas "time to get off'. He removedhis boots and walked down the sideof the foundering liner. "I couldsee men through the portholes, butwas unable to help them in anyway, knowing that they were soon toperish," he remembered.

HarryGraftidge felt hewas swimmingthrough "cold black syrup". Heheld on to a spar to keep his headabove water. Over the tumult ofmenand women thrashing in the water,muffled explosions, the rattle ofmachine-guns, he heard the beautifulvoice of a tenor. There'll always bean England... Other survivors heardmen singing Roll out the Barrel and,more fittingly, Abide With Me. "Fora while the side of the hull remainedabove water with hundreds of mensitting on it, singing lustily beforethey floated off," recalled Lt J PMasse in HMS Highlander.

Such stoicism was soon replacedby an indescribable sound of horrorrolling across the bay as the linerdisappeared beneath the waves andthe hundreds still trapped belowdecks screamed.

As the Lancastria died, HMSHighlander and anti-submarinetrawler HMS Cambridgeshiremoved in to pick up survivors. FrankClements seized his camera andbegan recording the rescue mission.

Ted Mansfield struggled into anabandoned launch. A sailor tookcharge of it, towing a lifeboat. Thetwo craft moved amongthe survivors,hauling them out of the water, untilthe launch was full and the lifeboatwas low in the water. The two craftmade for HMSHighlander.

Frank Clements had put down hiscamera to help rescue Lancastria'spassengers aboard his destroyer. Hesaw soldiers in the water strugglingin the oil, weighed down by theirkit and their rifles. The NAAFI mancalled on the troops to ditch theirequipment. Some did. Many did not.They drowned. Clements did succeedin rescuing a baby girl, who slippedout of her mother's arms and fellback into the sea.

Harry Grattidge was picked up by aFrench rowing boat and taken firstto a destroyer, then to the Oronsay,from where he helped direct therecue mission. For the rest of theday, boats brought survivors aboardthe troopship. Many were horriblyburned.

There were burned survivors aboardHMS Highlander too. And scoresof men who had swallowed oil.The living were transferred to theOronsay, the dead were sewn intobags or hammocks and committed tothe deep after dark.One of Highlander's crew rubbeddown an oil-covered Ted Mansfield.The RAF man was given a dufflecoat - he was feeling cold, despiteit being a fine summer's day - and a

hot mug of tea.Afterafewminutes, theoverloaded

destroyer manoeuvred alongside theOronsay, a plank bridged the gapbetween the two vessels, and thesurvivors ran across. Not all made it.Some men slipped off the gangway.They were never recovered.Aboard the troopship, Ted

Mansfield was offered another mugoftea and, best of all, a large cornedbeef sandwich - his first food inages.

Having been pursued by a Frenchfighter, Peter Stahl had no chance toobservethe impactofhis bombs on theevacuation fleet. Back at his airfieldin Belgium, he conferred with fellowpilots. They agreed they'd scored"numerous good hits" on the ships.The men resumed the celebrationsinterrupted by the day's mission,while their commander reported thesuccesses to the Luftwaffe HighCommand. KG3O's daily reportdescribes "two hits by 500kg bombson a fully-laden transporter enteringthe Loire estuary. Transporter similarto a battleship, around 30,000 tonnes.The stern flew into the air, the shipcapsized."

Ted Mansfield was one of 2,477people rescued from the Lancastria.At the time she was bombed, therewere at least 6,000 souls aboard.Some reports suggest the figure wasnearer to 7,000. Whatever thetoll thatMonday, the loss of the Lancastriaremainstheworstmaritime disaster inBritish history. The Belgian childrenHarry Grattridge had allowed onboard died. So too had their dogs.

The

survivors of the Lancastriaarrived in Plymouth thefollowing afternoon. Ten ships

arrived in Devon from the Loire thatday. They delivered 23,000 men,women and children.

French soil was now all but emptyofBritish troops and British citizens.OperationAerial, however, continued.There were Poles to rescue fromthe Continent. Czechs. Belgians.Frenchmen. There were civilians tosave from the Channel Islands - withthe surrounding coast occupied bythe Germans, the Admiralty decreedthere was no way of guaranteeing theislands' liberty.

Aerial continued until the very lastday of fighting - June 25, when theFranca-German armistice came intoeffect. By the time it concluded, theRoyal Navy had overseen the rescueof 191,870 Servicemen, 144,000 ofthem Britons. In all, the concertedefforts to evacuate the BritishExpeditionary Force - OperationsDynamo, Aerial and Cycle - saved558,000 fighting men, two in everythree of them British. Perhaps asmany as 40,000 civilians were alsorescued. Dynamo, the 'Dunkirkspirit', are shining beacons in Britishhistory. Aerial and Cycle were alsosuccessful, improvised operations.They have all but been forgotten.

The loss of the Lancastria wasdeliberately 'forgotten'. When newsof the tragedy reached Churchill'sear, the premier forbade publication."The newspapers have got quiteenough disaster for today," hedetermined. He would lift the banwhen affairs did not seem so bleak"but events crowded upon us soblack and so quickly that I forgot".

On June 25th, a strange figureappeared at Semaphore Tower inPortsmouth. Wearing the dress ofa French fisherman was one CdrRobert Elkins. He and a GordonHighlander had slipped away fromthe column of prisoners and madefor the coast on foot and bicycle."After many adventures" the pairof fugitives stole an 1 8ft boat fromthe village of Lion-sur-Mer, northof Caen, reaching Hayling Island 36hours later.

What Winston Churchill triedto hide,Nature was determined to reveal. Forweeks after the sinking, the Atlanticdeposited bodies on the shores ofthePays de la Loire. At least 120 corpseswere washed up on the beaches of LaBernerie-en-Retz, a good 15 milesfrom the spot where the Lancastriawent down. Frenchmen - or theirGerman overlords - ensured thedead were buried with full militaryhonours.

"These soldiers that you've takento their final resting place fought fortheir country with the same courageyou have fought for ours and ourFührer," one German officer tolda burial detail. "A nation whichhonours the dead is a great nation."

Newsofthe Lancastria tragedy finallyappeared in British newspapers onJuly 26 - one day after the NewYorkSun had published Frank Clements'images of the liner's final moments.On his return to English soil, theNAAFI employee either gave or soldprints of the photographs he hadtaken on June 17 to a man in apub; the images were subsequentlysold to the newspaper. They remainthe only photographic record of theLancastria's demise.

For the men of the 51st HighlandDivision, a towering slab of Scottishgranitedominates the eastern clifftopsabove St Valery, a monument to theirsacrifice.

The dead ofthe Lancastria - thosewho were not entombed in the ship- were buried in at least two dozencemeteries around the Loire estuary.It was nearly 50 years before theywere formally recognised with ahuge piece of granite, engraved ingold, mounted on a stone plinth onthe St Nazaire seafront overlookingthe liner's last resting place. "Wehave not forgotten," the inscriptiondeclares resolutely.

I,.

Written by Richard Hargreaves.With thanks to Pam Mansfield forher father-in-law's account of theLancastria disaster, the staff of theNational Archives, Kew, the ImperialWar Museum, London, and theBundesarchiv, Freiburg-im-Breisgau.

In addition, the following books,documents and internet sources havebeen used:

Barnett, Corelli, Engage the Enemy MoreClosely: The Royal Navy in theSecond World War

Churchill, Winstou S, The Second WorldWar

Crabb, Brian James, The ForgottenTragedy: The Story of the Sinking ofMMTLancastria

David, Saul, Churchill & Sacrifice oftheHighland Division

Ellis, L F, The War in France andFlanders

Fenby, Jonathan, The Sinking oftheLancastria

Gehriog, Egid (ed), Abbeville:Erinnerungsbsch der DivisionBlumm

Grattidge, Harry, Captain ofthe QueensHardeweg, Berod, Im WestenJames, William, The Sky WasAlways

BlueJames, William, The Portsmouth Letterswww.lancastria.org.uk (website of the

Lancastria Association of Scotland)www.lelancastria.comLevine, Joshua, Forgotten Voices of

DunkirkLuck, Hans van, Panzer CommanderManssuftet, Basso van, Die 7. Panzer-

Division im Zweiten Weltkrieg:Einsatz undKampfder "Gespenster-Division" 1939-1945

Meier-Weteker, Hans, Asfzeichnungeneines Generalstabsaffizier 1939-1942

Plato, Aasoa van, Geschichie der 5.Panzerdivisian

Rommel, Erwin, Krieg ahne NasaRoskill, Stephen, The War at Sea, Vol. 1Sebag-Mantefiare, Hugh, Dunkirk: Fight

to the Last ManSmith, Peter, Naval Warfare in the

English Channel 1939-1945Stahl, Peter, Kampfflieger zwischen

Eismeer sad SaharaStareke, Qerhard, Die Raten Tesfel sind

die Holle

" Soldiers sit on the upturned hull ofthe Lancastria as the liner sinks off StNazaire - as photographed by NAAFIemployee Frank Clements aboardHMSHighlander

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