I always like first hand accounts of history, the less polished the better, honed by the audience’s reaction, you tend to find the details get less raw with repetition. I was working at the D-Day Museum in Portsmouth after D-Day 50 and we had lots of people in who’d not talked about their role for years, It was a real privilege to meet men and women, then in their seventies, newly revisit their past, witnessing world changing events through teenage eyes.
Some of you might remember Ena, a Thames Barge and the Fire Boat, Massey Shaw, from C4’s Salvage Squad, two very different boats but both caught up in the Dunkirk Evacuation. Here’s a fantastic first hand account, straight from a friend’s attic, it was typed up with carbon paper along with the original discharge certificate.
It’s full of chaos, bravery and administrative detail. Enjoy.
Dunkirk.
On Thursday, May 30th 1940, a class of yachtsmen was assembled in Albemarle Street waiting for Captain Watts to begin his lecture on Navigation. He came in and told us that he had just received an appeal from the Admiral at London for volunteers, men who could handle small boats and that it was for a dangerous job. We were not told what the job was, but we all knew.
Captain Watts told us that he had to telephone the Admiral at 3.30 saying how many me would be going. I do not think that many of us enjoyed that half hour. Some decided that as they had been accepted for the Navy and were shortly to go to Hove, they were not called upon to volunteer for this job. Several of the older men like myself with wives and businesses talked it over. We did not want to go, but we could find no answer to two points.
- Nothing but small boats would get the B.E.F. off.
- We knew how to handle small boats and there were not enough people in the country who did when it was a matter of getting off up to half a million men in a few days.
At 3.30 most of us got into taxis and set off for the P.L.A. offices. London looked very lovely that afternoon.
At the P.L.A. offices we were asked to give the names of our next of kin and the Admiral came in and told us we were wanted for and that it was a job for stout hearts as we should be under shell fire. We did n’t like the prospect.
We were told to re-assemble at 6.p.m. I went back to my office in Berners Street, telephoned my wife in Birmingham, sent my Manager to buy a woollen shirt, a small bottle of brandy and some chocolate whilst I had a good meal.
Back at the P.L.A offices we were put into Motor Coaches and sent off to Tilbury. There seemed a certain unreality about the bustle of Whitechapel Road considering what was going on not so far away. I had never been through Dockland before and was appalled at the closely packed houses wedged in between the Docks. Magnificent ships towered over the squalid streets in which hundreds of children were playing . What would happen when to docks were bombed? One put the thought out of one’s mind.
At Tilbury we had to “sign on” as Merchant Seaman. We were told that we had to sign on for a month. We protested; we had been asked to volunteer for two days and we explained that we had businesses and jobs and could not be away for up to a month. No shorter engagement existed and we were faced with crying off or signing on for a month. We signed, but a couple of lawyers walked through the barrier on to the key pretending that they had signed.
On the quay we were given tin hats and put into the ships’ lifeboats taken from the ships which happened to be in the Port of London. We were put four men to a boat, it having been decided by brief questioning who was the “charge hand” who was “engine room” hand and who was “deck hand”. The only practical difference was whether we eventually received a Money Order for £3. £2.10.0. or £2. I found myself in a boat with an adventurous ship’s officer in civilian dress who had absented himself from his ship in London docks, a stock-broker whose message to his wife had been to cancel a bridge party and an ex-submarine rating retired eight years previously. We were all in poor physical condition, the ship’s officer because he had been enjoying his time in Port in the conventional way, the stock-broker and I because we were “office soft” and the ex-submarine rating because of age, bad teeth and tinned food.
The ship’s boats were marshalled in lines of about eight or ten and two such lines were made fast to a Tug. By this time it was dark and we set off down the river. The boats sheared about wildly and about 2 am there was some excitement when “Johnny the Greek” let out piercing yells “Help, help, we’re sinking”. Johnny the Greek was a curious person. We had noticed him first at the P.L.A. offices. He had a goatee beard, an eye glass and an exquisite levantine manner which did n’t quite go with his broad Canadian accent. Who or what he was I do not know, except that he was on the Stock Exchange. When he appeared at the Motor Coach he had a yachting cap, a beautifully cut yachting coat lined with scarlet serge, sea boots, field glasses and two enormous suitcases. The rest of us were in office clothes.
At 2.30 am we anchored and the boat crews tried to get a little sleep but it was bitterly cold and I don’t think anyone succeeded. At dawn we started off again and at 7.30 reached Southend. Johnny the Greek, quite unconscious of the fool he had made of himself the night before, annoyed us all with transatlantic witticisms and loud demands for “corfee”. He had never been told that on such expeditions there is no conversation before breakfast. At Southend, orange boxes full of bread, tinned beef, tinned milk and sardines were handed down to the boats from the pier. Everyone was complaining of the cold. Thin summer suits were feeling very thin. Johnny the Greek opened his enormous suitcases; they were full of pair after pair of thick woollen vests and long woollen pants which he handed out to anyone who asked for them. We forgave him everything.
We reached Ramsgate at about 2 pm. There we were split up into smaller units. Instead of 16 to 20 boats to a tug we were put in two rows of three to a tug or drifter. A Naval Office on a tug handed out life belts: there were not enough to go round. I Happened to be face to face with Johnny the Greek when he pushed forward and grabbed: the expression on his face was not pleasant. The N.O. finding that we had not enough belts, took his own and handed it to the nearest man. No one said any more about not having a life belt.
We set off for Dunkirk at about 3pm. There was a fair southerly breeze which set up a short sea against the ebb. We had to bail our ship’s boat about every half hour or so. Now we had to bail more or less continuously. That combined with the short motion of the boat, was very tiring. The two ropes kept on parting and getting picked up after one such break, the drifter hit us and carried away our tiller. We got very wet.
Our group of boats was under the command of a Naval sub-lieutenant and a midshipman. The sub-lieutenant was a foolish and aggressive lad. the midshipman, aged, I suppose, about 14 or 15, jumped from boat to boat whilst we were being towed rather too fast through that short sea, a feat requiring uncommon skill and nerve. He arrived in our boat and found we were bailing all the time. He took off his belt and got down in the bilge to give us a hand. Then he told us the plan of action, said he was off the Hood and thought this expedition was for him the experience of a lifetime, but that for us, volunteers, well we just took the biscuit. The effect on us was remarkable. We, grown men, feeling wet and cold and miserable, had new heart and energy put into us by the praise and encouragement of this child wearing the King’s uniform. I do not know the child’s name: I wish I did for I should like to recognise it in the Honour’s list 20 years hence.
The Channel was like Oxford Street, one incessant stream of traffic. Destroyer after Destroyer, British and French, Cross Channel Boats, Pleasure Steamers, Motor Launches, Fishing Boats, all with their decks crammed with curiously lethargic soldiers. We wanted to cheer: they did not. Then there were the Hospital Ships, brilliantly white with large red crosses on their sides and not a soul on deck, though one saw the occasional nurse through a gangway. There was a curious calm and beauty about these ships but one did not like to think of what was below deck. One could see them from miles away. So apparently could the German bombers, they got two.
The first thing we saw of the French Coast was enormous columns of black smoke – miles of them up and down the channel as far as one could see. As we drew nearer, we could see the whole coast blazing.
We had got there too early: we were not supposed to arrive till 10 pm when it would have been dark. Actually our flotilla of about a dozen tugs or drifters each with it’s strings of ship’s boats in tow arrived at 8 pm in a good light. Then we saw curious black puffs in the sky high over Dunkirk. Every Londoner now knows what they are: then we did not know it was an A.A. barrage till high over the top of it we saw a swarm of German bombers. they were coming for us. We put on our tin hats and crouched in the bilge wondering what would happen. There must have been about 40 or 50 of them. Then suddenly we saw about a dozen Spitfires coming up from behind at an amazing pace. Thanking God and the RAF we peeped up and saw what has since come to be known as a “dog fight”. One would not have described it as that. It looked more like wolves after sheep. The Spitfires broke up the German formation and chased them round and round the skies. If they missed, they made a tight turn and came round and had another shot. A few of the Germans got through and bombed our flotilla. At times we could n’t see the ships for huge columns of water. I thought half our lot must be sunk and a few seconds later was surprised to realise that a broken steam pipe on one of the drifters was the only damage. We got a bomb, we said, within 100 yards of us, but I think it was more like 500. A huge column of water towered up beside us and the shock transmitted through the water seemed as if it would knock the bottom out of our boat. The ex-submarine rating starting wiping the seats with a rag saying that we must have the boat ship-shape for the boys to come aboard. The rest of us did some bailing and soon we felt better. We had the satisfaction of seeing a Spitfire go after the German who had bombed us, and shoot him down. He fell, at first like a playing card, and then like a stone.
As we got near the harbour, it was interesting to check the accuracy of the News Bulletins. We did not know if we were being lied to or not. We had been told that a cruiser, three destroyers and two transports had been lost. There they were either alongside the jetty or sticking up out of the water. There were dozens of smaller wrecks but these were the only larger ships. The water is so shallow that a 12,000 ton liner which the Germans said they had sunk, could not have floated, let alone sunk.
We went past the harbour entrance to the beaches further up Channel. Our drifter cast us off, remaining herself in relatively deeper water about half a mile from the shore, whilst we were to be towed into the beach by a motor boat in charge of the aggressive sub-lieutenant. He made a complete mess of things, doing a lot of shouting and getting a tow rope foul of his propeller. We left him and rowed towards the beach. Our plan had been to have two men on the oars, one to pull in the troops and one to look after the tow rope when the motor boat came to tow us back. We soon found that two dead beat men could not keep head on to the surf a ship’s boat designed to carry 54 persons, and all four of us took an oar. Some of the other crews did not find out in time and several boats breached to and capsized on to beach.
We could not find any troops and found that we were going around several hundred yards from the shore. We rowed back to the Drifter for fresh orders. A Glasgow slum boy dressed as a naval rating appeared from nowhere and came with us to another point higher up the beach. The four of us kept the boat head-on, getting in as close as we could , whilst he yelled at the troops on the beach in unceasing and violent Clydesbank. Nine of them waded out , up to their necks in water, and he hauled them aboard. Then we found their weight was getting us aground too far out for men to wade. We rowed back to the drifter, having some trouble with the tide, and put them on board. It was still very dark but the drifter had orders to be out before dawn and the skipper was anxious to be off. Half our boats had not returned but we picked up a number of boats which did not belong to us. We cruised up and down for an hour. The Naval Officer in charge not giving the order to sail till he was satisfied he could get no further boats in. Overhead was a German plane. Whenever we moved he machine gunned us as our wake showed up in the intensely phosphorescent water. His bullets rattled on the deck house and our gunner, and a nearby destroyer blazed at him when his gun flashed. If the Germans had had any number of men trained in night flying and had had the chance to learn about flares from the RAF no ship should have been able to live. The only flares dropped were those by the RAF outside the town where they were co-operating with the Allied rear-guard. At that time, most of us had not even been through an air raid and the roar of that blazing sea-side front, the scream of the German shells and the planes overhead, were very shaking.
“And gentlemen in England now a-bed, shall think themselves accursed they were not here”.
Those are after dinner sentiments of ten years late.
At about 3 am we started nosing our way down the channel. At about 3.30 there was a terrific crush and the drifter heeled over on her starboard beam. She did not sink, but stayed at about 60 degrees having run on to a submerged wreck. Luckily we had two large boats in tow. Some of us got off in one on to a passing coaster and the others on to a destroyer whose Commander ran the stem of his ship almost alongside the drifter chancing whatever obstruction it was on which she was impaled.
I got on to the coaster. Her hold was full of silent sodden troops. Her Commander was RNVR a yachtsman I should think, who had probably never before navigated anything bigger than a motorboat. Her crew were all sorts but they had got 300/400 of the BEF aboard.
At dawn we saw a tug and two Thames barges anchored just clear of the channel. Suddenly there was a flash and flame, seeming to rise from the middle of one of the barges, spread from stem to stern in a second. In 30 seconds the whole group was a mass of flame. We looked for a plane but there was none. It must have been a magnetic mine which our plane of the night before had been laying. In the distance we saw another larger ship blazing.
As it got lighter, we came to a bend in the channel and I saw we were not following it but were holding our course straight onto the banks. I watched for about a minute and then started up the ladder to the bridge. I told the skipper he was going onto the Banks, that I knew this channel having come up it in daylight the night before. He fumbled with his charts and gazed at me not taking in what I was saying. I repeated it and got him to put the wheel over. A few seconds later we touched, but her head was back in the channel and we scraped clear into it. The ship’s officer from my boat was then on the bridge too, having seen what I had seen. He took the wheel for the next half hour much to the consternation of one of the sailors who kept saying to every officer, “There’s a civilian at the wheel, Sir”. I took him aside and told him it was a ship’s officer and unblushingly added that Dunkirk was one of his regular ports and he knew it like his own street. We then made ourselves scarce, but not before the RNVR Captain had told me that he had not been in his bunk for four days and nights and did not know what he was doing . The Admiralty had told him to go over a bank, but it was miles further down the channel. Far from resenting our interference, we was extraordinarily generous about it.
All the way back to Ramsgate there were German planes about but the RAF plus the Destroyers, simply spitting fire, gave them so much to think about that they left us alone. I have never believed in invasion after seeing British Destroyers plus the RAF in action.
The troops on board were dead with fatigue. They were not defeated men, but they were resentful; resentful that they had been sent to face the Germans armed only with their rifles and a Bren or Lewis gun here and there. The Germans, they said, had every conceivable weapon which they used with great skill. They had tommy guns, mortars of all sorts and sizes and the same in field guns. The Germans would arrive and have a systematic barrage going almost at once. The BEF had been bombed from dawn to dusk day after day, but they had never been bombed out of position though they had been shelled out. They never saw a British plane till they got to Dunkirk.
It was then that I realised that this war would be won or lost in the factories. Everywhere seemed stiff with brave, under-armed men.
Theoretically one was supposed to sign off at the same port at which one had signed on. I had no intention of wasting a day going to Tilbury, so half fearing that I might be arrested as a deserter, I wrote from Birmingham where I had returned from my job. By return I got a letter saying that I could sign off at my local Post Office. It happened to be a suburban Newsagents, I hardily know where, but I went round at once. They had just received a Money Order for me and a form to sign. That the Admiralty improvises with such brilliant attention to detail, possibly explains how they performed the miracle of getting 325,000 men from one jetty and a beach under the nose of the German
Claire Barratt 