Part 5 (1/2)

Dr Peters, the German administrator, quite wisely left the treatment of the wounded to the Allied doctors and medics. However, by leaving one particular German in charge at the college, Dr Peters ensured that the treatment given was not as good as it could have been. Feldwebel Walter Scharping was a middle-aged man from Stettin on the Baltic whose behaviour made life a misery for some of the patients. He stopped some of the wounded from receiving any treatment at all, leaving them in a fly-infested room. The list of his offences did not stop at refusing treatment. He was even seen to punch one patient, and the wife of the local mayor, who was attempting to make arrangements for the Red Cross to a.s.sist the wounded, reported: 'I myself saw him kick one of the prisoners with his feet in the belly and drag him into a cellar . . . On another occasion I saw Scharping beating the interpreter . . . Scharping hit the prisoner with a book on the head.'15 When one prisoner escaped from the hospital and was later returned, Scharping also beat that man, leaving him with severe bruising. The German told civilians he wished he had a machine-gun to make his prisoners march faster. At another hospital this behaviour was matched by a German guard who fired a machine-gun at any prisoner who dared to approach the hospital windows.

In one particularly vicious display, Scharping was seen to beat up a patient and then force French prisoners to join in and complete the beating. Such was his control of the hospital, the Frenchmen were unable to refuse his orders. The German's att.i.tude towards the patients was also shown when the local population attempted to bring in food for the wounded prisoners to supplement their meagre rations. As a result he simply stopped giving the men their rations. Such was the vindictive nature of Scharping that he left bread to rot rather than issue it to his hungry patients.

However, one thing that was clear was that he did not discriminate he treated British, French and Belgian prisoners with the same severity. Others made deliberate efforts to discriminate in their treatment, seeming to attempt to cause resentment and factional disquiet among even the sick and wounded. In one case two wounded Britons were forced to clear out latrines by hand, while French prisoners looked on. If it was disgraceful that the Germans discriminated between wounded soldiers on the grounds of their nationality, it was even worse when French medical staff behaved in the same way towards their allies. One man reported how he and his fellow wounded had their wounds dressed by a French medic. He attempted to get all the British men discharged from hospital while offering impeccable care to his fellow Frenchmen.

One of those who suffered discrimination was Ernest Lister, a member of a supply company of the 51st Division. He was wounded while driving an officer from his company. Lister was unconscious for three days and then awoke in a hospital at Bruyeres, near Epinal. He discovered he had been wounded in both the leg and head and that while unconscious he had undergone trepanation. He was then transferred to St Die. When he arrived at the hospital it was discovered that he was British. Lister later reported the treatment he received from the German officer who received incoming patients: 'His att.i.tude seemed sympathetic. At that time I was wearing the jacket of an old French uniform. The officer asked my nationality in French which I understood sufficiently. When I replied that I was English he threw the charts and photographs away and went on to the next case.'16 While in the hospital Lister received a daily ration of a bowl of barley but since he was too weak to eat he had to be spoon-fed by a fellow patient. With no treatment forthcoming from the Germans, Lister also had to rely on the French prisoners to change the bandages covering his wounds. United Nations reports into war crimes described his treatment as 'remarkable for callousness and discrimination against him'.17 This discrimination was noted by Leslie Shorrock, who at first found himself in a hospital full of French patients. Here he received coffee for breakfast, then mashed potatoes, meat, sausage, carrots, bread and wine during the course of the day. Only after being transferred to the British hospital at Camiers did he notice the paucity of rations.

A report into the behaviour of the Germans at the British military hospital in Boulogne emphasized the 'systematic discrimination against and inhumane treatment of British prisoners of war . . . It cannot be too strongly insisted that the actions of the Germans at the time reflected complete disregard of obligation towards prisoners of war for which, it is submitted, they should be made accountable.'18 As the days and weeks pa.s.sed, military hospitals across France and Belgium began to disgorge the wounded men the Germans considered fit to be transferred to Germany. Though still wrapped in bandages, weak from hunger, and often clad in little more than the ragged remnants of their uniforms, large numbers were forced out on to the roads to begin the march east. One officer captured at Calais spent three months in hospital at Le Touquet prior to being forced to march to Germany. Upon reaching Wesel, he and his fellow marchers were put on a barge that was then pulled down the Rhine by a pleasure steamer.

Not all were allowed so long in hospital to recover. Many of the less seriously wounded men had received little more than cursory treatment before beginning the march. Many of the wounded joined up with the columns of healthy men being led away from the battlefield. Despite his wounded back, Leslie Shorrock spent just ten days in hospital before being sent on the march, joining up with the columns of men captured at St Valery and eventually travelling into Germany by barge. At the end of each day's marching he had to get someone to dress his wounds. Eventually he found a kindly German guard who allowed him to travel the final miles of the journey in a lorry.

As the months pa.s.sed, reports reached Britain, via the neutral countries, of British servicemen in hospitals throughout France. There was a group of sixty Glasgow Highlanders in a hospital at Laval, while at Rennes there were thirty-six wounded men who had lost their uniforms and equipment as a result of the bombing of the town. At Tournai 157 wounded Britons were found in a former Belgian army barracks, while a further 420 were found to be receiving treatment in Lille. The reports also began to record the eventual movement of the wounded soldiers. In November 1940 nearly a thousand were moved from Belgium to Thuringia and Hessen in Germany, leaving just thirty-two men in Belgium who were still too sick to be moved.

Such moves often also took the British medical staff away from the most needy of wounded prisoners. The medics knew they were needed by the men being moved to POW camps but they also knew the sick men being left behind were in desperate need of care. At Camiers, Bill Simpson had to say goodbye to a middle-aged sergeant who had been under his treatment. The man's face was an awful colour, a sure sign that he would not live much longer. As Simpson went to leave the man pleaded with him: 'Don't leave us to die, sergeant. Please stay.'19 But Simpson like so many of his fellow medics had no choice but to leave.

With so many patients departing, life began to change for those doctors who were left behind. By December 1940 doctors in the Rouen area had the pa.s.ses which had given them freedom to leave the hospital confiscated by their guards. It seemed they were no longer being treated as protected personnel, more as prisoners. Protected personnel status ent.i.tled them to repatriation under the Geneva Convention when their duties were over, so it was essential their identification papers were in order.

When Ox and Bucks stretcher-bearer Les Allan had been pulled from the ruins of Hazebrouck his armband and medic's haversack had been taken away, removing any way he had of proving he was a protected person rather than a fighting man. It was to cost him dear. Unable to prove himself a member of the medical staff, he was condemned to five years in the farms and factories of the Reich, working like a slave for the n.a.z.i regime.

While those serving with the Royal Army Medical Corps RAMC were able to prove their status, many others were not so fortunate. Most stretcher-bearers and infantry medical personnel had nothing to show their duties, their paybooks simply indicating their belonging to infantry battalions. Many ambulance drivers could only prove members.h.i.+p of the Royal Army Service Corps and were unable to show evidence they had spent weeks ferrying the b.l.o.o.d.y wrecks of wounded men between the front line, aid posts and hospitals. To avoid any confusion some hospitals made efforts to identify the men. At the 17th General Hospital in Camiers a stamp was made and put into each man's paybook identifying him as 'protected personnel'. At the same hospital efforts were also made to create new paybooks for some of the wounded. The new books gave them a revised religious ident.i.ty, no longer showing them to be Jewish and thus preventing the possibility of discrimination by their captors.

The haphazard nature of the reports reaching the UK regarding those men in hospital placed a great strain upon the families of the wounded. Although the Red Cross did their best to record the names of all the men entering Germany's system of POW camps, pa.s.sing the names on to the British authorities, finding out details of the sick was not so simple. With the men spread across France and Belgium, many had not been officially recorded as prisoners. The family of one man received their first indication of his fate when they received a photograph of him via Spain. It was a relief to see he was alive, but a shock to discover his leg had been amputated. In September 1940 Geoff Griffin's family received notification that he was 'missing, presumed killed'. The army were even preparing to pay out a pension to his family until a letter came via a Red Cross nurse. Relieved by the news, his father ran all the way to the home of Griffin's fiancee to show her the letter. Eventually, the War Office accepted that he was still alive, cancelled the pension and restarted his pay. With the war in France finished, and the majority of wounded prisoners transferred to Germany, the protected personnel had done their duty and now looked forward to going home, ready to continue their healing work. They would soon have a rude awakening. There would be many long years of work ahead of them before they would be heading home.

CHAPTER SIX.

The First Men Home Now, without fully comprehending why, we were on our way back to Blighty.

Joe Sweeney, waiting to board a s.h.i.+p at St Nazaire1

The good, the bad and the indifferent.

British infantryman describing the stragglers heading west across France2 As the last valiant defenders of St Valery were rounded up and marched off into captivity, scattered groups some in pairs, some alone, some in organized groups continued to make good their escape from France. Just as the story of the BEF had not come to a close as the last of the small s.h.i.+ps set sail from the beaches of Dunkirk, neither had the story reached its climax with the defeat of the Highlanders at St-Valery-en-Caux. In the two weeks following 'the miracle of Dunkirk' and a week following the surrender at St Valery, the evacuation of the BEF continued, with over 160,000 Allied soldiers including British, French, Belgians, Poles, Czechs and Canadians escaping via the ports of Le Havre, Cherbourg, La Pallice, Brest and St Nazaire. Some were even ferried along the Loire from Nantes to reach open seas. The confusion of the continued retreat across France, the mayhem of the conflicting political and military orders pa.s.sing between England and France, the chaotic scenes at the evacuation ports, the carnage experienced as German bombers pounded the final boats bound for the UK all combined to create a series of ignominious events that were initially covered up, then eventually ignored, since they failed to fit into the glorious story of the Dunkirk evacuation.

The BEF had two main bases, the northern one at Rennes and the southern one at St Nazaire and Nantes. St Nazaire was the main storage area for ammunition and frozen meat, while the base at Nantes was the centre for motor transport and drivers. In addition there was the medical base at Dieppe. From these base camps and hundreds of smaller centres, thousands of soldiers were rapidly heading away from the battlefields, either in hope of evacuation back to England or simply in the hope that someone, somewhere, might give them orders. Everywhere the front lines were fluid, with one French commander later admitting that every report seemed to be out of date by the time it could be acted upon. It was little wonder that, on the same day that General Fortune reluctantly surrendered his division at St Valery, the French commander General Weygand told his government they should begin negotiations for an armistice. For the soldiers of the BEF, such political machinations were far from their minds. Instead they were occupied with nothing more than personal survival.

For those men of the BEF left behind in France, just as for those who had escaped via Dunkirk, survival meant one thing evacuation. The first of the next wave of evacuations was already under way as the Highlanders were being sacrificed in and around St Valery. As the final pockets of resistance were being mopped up by Rommel's forces, one small group of survivors made their way along the coast to the nearby village of Veules-les-Roses, where they could see a s.h.i.+p offsh.o.r.e. Not knowing if the village was held by enemy, they made their journey by night. When they arrived at Veules they found five groynes three for the French and two for the British from which the evacuation was continuing. From there they were able to embark.

Like a mini-Dunkirk, small boats from the larger boat offsh.o.r.e ferried men to safety. As they waited they were bombed by the Luftwaffe and sh.e.l.led from the direction of St Valery. A few French soldiers comforted themselves by firing rifles at the enemy aircraft. There was little hope of doing any damage but it made them feel safer to know that at least someone was fighting back. When the evacuation was completed, and the small British group had returned to their regiment, they were counted. A total of three officers and seventeen other ranks were all that remained of the entire regiment. The rest had either perished in the battles around Abbeville and St Valery or were already making their way into captivity. In total, more than 2,000 British and 1,000 French soldiers made their escape from Veules-les-Roses.

As some men attempted to escape across the Channel, others tried to escape southwards through France. Most were soon captured but others were successful, reaching the south coast after weeks or months of travelling. Taking to heart his officer's order of 'every man for himself', Gordon Barber and his mate Paddy headed off on their motorcycle.

We'd gone about twenty miles and I told Paddy I was thirsty. So we stopped in the next farm. As we pulled up he said, 'Jesus n.o.bby it's full of Germans!' These b.a.s.t.a.r.ds were all 6ft 4 tall stormtroopers, covered in guns, with grenades stuffed down their boots! They had b.l.o.o.d.y great motorbikes with machine-guns mounted on them. Paddy said, 'Let's get out of here, quick!' As we turned around I said to him, 'Stay where you are!' They had guns pointed at us and I was going to get shot in the back at any moment. I said, 'Let's give up.' These Germans said, 'For you the war is ended' and they meant it.

While Barber and his mate began the march into captivity, others fared better. When the Germans had struck at Abbeville, cutting off men like Eric Reeves and Ken Willats, the rest of the 2/5th Queen's Regiment had escaped across the River Somme. Those who could swim stripped off and swam across, pulling their rifles behind them. The non-swimmers were forced to make the crossing as best they could, using an improvised guide rope made from rifle slings many perished during the crossing. Eventually the survivors reached Cherbourg and returned to England on the SS Vienna on 7 June.

The rail network was soon crowded with slow-moving trains, filled to capacity with soldiers, that snaked their way across northern France. So busy were the railway lines, that most trains moved at little more than walking pace. Soldiers who wanted to urinate were able to jump down, relieve themselves, then run alongside to rejoin their mates.

The problem for the trains was the inevitable attention of the Luftwaffe who roamed, often unchallenged, through the skies above France. Every so often, the men within the trains would hear the roar of engines and the rattle of machine-gun fire as those men stationed on the train roofs to provide anti-aircraft fire opened up. Each time the fighters swooped down, the soldiers would jump from the trains and scatter across the fields in search of cover. The biggest targets for the roaming fighters and bombers were the railway yards where trains carrying both men and supplies inevitably halted. Gunners seldom had time to get their weapons into position to offer covering fire, leaving the trains open to attack, and the soldiers running for cover.

Inevitably, such attacks led to men getting separated from their mates and losing their units. Some would not find them again until they returned home. Men recalled being given orders to do no more than head for Channel ports or to head west until they met someone else who could give them instructions as to where their unit would be re-forming. One man recalled being told to drive by the position of the sun and that if he reached a river crossing that was blown he should simply abandon his truck and swim the river. The same man later found himself directed into Dieppe, riding into the port on the running board of a civilian car. Instead of finding an active military garrison, with a fully functioning port, he discovered a dead town.

Included among the units retreating across France were some that had only recently arrived there. The 2nd Royal Tank Regiment had only sailed to France on 23 May days after men like Eric Reeves and Ken Willats had already been captured. By the time they arrived in Cherbourg it already seemed to many that the battle for France was lost. Boulogne and Calais were under siege, the army was reeling back towards Dunkirk and the alliance with France was faltering. Yet for Fred G.o.ddard, his crewmates 'Dusty' Millar and Bill Meadows, and their commander Lieutenant York or 'Yorkie' as they called him there was no indication of the chaotic situation they were heading into.

G.o.ddard was a regular soldier, who had been born and raised in Haywards Heath. His home life had been miserable, with his family seemingly unconcerned for his welfare. Although his father no longer beat him regularly, by the time G.o.ddard left school he continued to interfere with his life by preventing him getting the apprentices.h.i.+p he wanted and instead sending him to work in a shop. In late 1938 he had been forced to sell his beloved motorcycle to pay for the dental work that had seen seventeen of his teeth extracted. Then, to make matters worse, he was told to attend his old school to be issued with a gas mask. G.o.ddard's memories of his schooldays had been less than positive and it was to be a pivotal moment for the twenty-one-year-old: 'I got up there and looked at the gate. I thought ”I'm not going in there” and I just decided to walk on down to the recruiting office. It was a Sat.u.r.day morning and I never went home again. I enlisted in the Royal Tank Regiment.'

The decision to elect for service in the tanks was a simple one. He was told his lack of education would keep him out of the RAF but that he would have plenty of opportunity for technical training in tanks. Furthermore, the recruiting sergeant whom G.o.ddard knew from the local pub thought that at just five feet four inches tall he was the ideal size to fit inside a tank. In many ways he was representative of so many of the army's recruits during peacetime. He just wanted to get away from home and make something of himself. For the first time Fred G.o.ddard felt his life was beginning to settle down. Discipline was strict but it was preferable to the life he had left: 'The training was hard going, you had to parade at 5 a.m. for breakfast. You had to wash and shave. I joined in November and you had to break the ice on the water tubs.' It toughened him up but quickly he got to like it, even the discipline, although he wasn't the 'King and Country' type: 'It wasn't patriotism that drove me into the army. It was my home life that made me join. It was somewhere to go to get away from home.'

By May 1940 G.o.ddard felt he was ready for war. The regiment was well trained and had expected to go to France months earlier. Although they had missed the start of the battle they were determined to play their part in whatever came. For Fred G.o.ddard it would not be his first time fighting Fascism back in the mid-1930s he had taken part in street fights to prevent Oswald Moseley and his Black-s.h.i.+rts from holding rallies in Haywards Heath. Then he and his mates had been successful, forcing Moseley to drive away as local gangs attacked his car. This time the enemy was somewhat more formidable and, as the 2nd Royal Tank Regiment (RTR) approached the front lines, G.o.ddard could only hope for such a success.

The tanks moved north towards the front, first by train and latterly by road. On 25 May they got their first glimpse of the destructive power of modern warfare, pa.s.sing through the already bombed town of Neufchtel. As they detrained they were relieved to see the operation was being covered by RAF fighters, circling in the skies above them. Later the same day orders had come for them to move north towards the River Bresle to support the French 5th Army. In an ominous warning of what was to come, they moved forward with severe thunderstorms breaking above them, soaking the roads and rendering their wireless sets virtually useless. Two days later the regiment saw its first action, losing nine men and five tanks, with a further four tanks lost to mechanical failure.

With the Germans still pressing, Fred G.o.ddard and his fellow 'tankies' soon found themselves falling back from the front. On 2 June they were moved by rail to Louviers, then put into harbour under the cover of woods near Rouen. Having witnessed German air raids on Rouen, the 2nd RTR were given the order to move, advancing to Beauvais before falling back again in face of the advancing Germans. On 8 June Lieutenant York's tank, with Fred G.o.ddard driving, was accompanied by one other tank and a scout car to guard a bridge over the Seine at Gaillon. The next day they rejoined the battalion, having knocked out four enemy tanks, two mortar teams and an artillery battery. It had been a heroic stand but there was no point in remaining to hold the position both the tanks had used up all their ammunition.

The Germans were pressing hard, and the regiment was forced to retreat in hope of escaping. Fred G.o.ddard recalled the scenes as they withdrew: 'n.o.body knew what was happening. We didn't know where we were going, but we got held up by the French cavalry, they were retreating. And they were shooting their horses. We were held up,we couldn't get through. We were given a bearing by our commanding officer and we just went off on our own.' Their tank call sign 'Bolton' became separated from the rest of the regiment and Yorkie decided they should pull over into the cover of a wooded area. The crew were absolutely exhausted and he knew they needed to get some rest and have something to eat. Each man would do a one-hour s.h.i.+ft of guard duty, manning the radio to listen for any further orders. G.o.ddard took the second s.h.i.+ft, sitting on top of the turret listening to the chattering of other tank commanders over the wireless. They knew that the others were not far away, since they remained in contact by radio: 'The louder they were, the closer they were.' However, in the darkness there was no way of finding their comrades, even if they could hear them engaging the enemy about a mile away. It was while listening that he heard the news of the death of one of his closest friends as he talked to the man's tank commander. As G.o.ddard sat there he could hear the enemy guns getting closer and closer.

With one of his colleagues taking over the wireless, G.o.ddard was able to rest. It was not long before he was awoken and told to climb silently into the tank: 'By this time the Germans had come into the wood. I was lying in this ditch it was raining hard, soaking me and I could hear the Germans talking. One of the crew woke me up and I could hear them. It was pitch dark, you could just hear their voices, you couldn't see them and they couldn't see us.'

Safely inside the tank, Lieutenant York gave him the order to contact the commander and inform him of their position. The reply that came through was a shock to the waiting crew: 'They told us to destroy the tank and make our way to the coast on foot.' It was the first indication of the dire situation they had found themselves in. With orders that they should escape any way possible, the four men packed their personal belongings. The job of blowing up the tank was left to Lieutenant York: 'The cruiser tanks had been designed so you could flood them with petrol. We had 200 gallons in the back, so Bill opened the taps and filled it with petrol. Then Yorkie fired a flare down into the tank. That set it on fire. All h.e.l.l was let loose the ammo started blowing up. But we were on our way out of the woods. We were actually pa.s.sing Germans but it was pouring with rain and it was so dark they didn't know who we were. So we walked from there, all the way to the coast.'*

Le Havre, the evacuation point of choice after Dunkirk, was chaotic and fraught with danger. Arriving at the port on 11 June, the drivers of the 7th Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders rammed their trucks into each other to disable them. They were given specific orders that the trucks should not be destroyed by fire so as not to alert the enemy. Frustrated by the seemingly pointless destruction of so many serviceable vehicles, some officers drove trucks westwards in the mistaken belief that they might be able to save the vehicles by embarking them elsewhere.

On 12 June the orders came for those waiting at Le Havre to be evacuated. Orders were clear, the troops were to keep good order there was to be no talking and no smoking. With the seemingly incongruous codename of 'Whoopee', the evacuation commenced. At the Quai d'Escalles the 4th Black Watch boarded SS Amsterdam, while at 2 a.m. the 7th Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders were loaded on to SS Viking and SS Tynewald. As the Black Watch waited at the quayside, they watched RAF Hurricane fighters engage a group of Heinkel bombers. To their relief the fighters shot down three of the menacing bombers. By the morning of the 13th more than 2,000 soldiers had been transported to England. At the same time over 41,000 tons of stores had been transported out of the town by rail, destined for St Nazaire.

Although the relieved remnants of the 51st Highland Division's Ark Force boarded s.h.i.+ps at Le Havre, they were not sent directly home. To their dismay, a decision had been taken that a new BEF was to be formed further west. As a result, 8,000 soldiers were s.h.i.+pped to Cherbourg. With France still fighting, the British government had reached the conclusion that the BEF should be reconst.i.tuted at Cherbourg and continue the fight alongside their French allies. To form the core of this new force the 52nd Lowland Division and the 1st Canadian Division were hastily s.h.i.+pped to Cherbourg. A commander for the re-formed BEF was appointed, Sir Alan Brooke, who had shown himself to be a capable corps commander during the retreat to Dunkirk and was one of the rising stars of the British Army. Arriving at Cherbourg on the evening of the 12th, Brooke soon found himself having to come to terms with the reality of his position. Though he was not convinced of the wisdom of the re-formation of the BEF and of further French plans, the hope was for the British to stall the n.a.z.i advance and retain a foothold in France. Initially expecting to concentrate his forces around Cherbourg, Brooke soon discovered the French planned to form a redoubt in Brittany, using the Atlantic ports to resupply the force. In their minds this would ensure the Allies retained a foothold in continental Europe.