Dunkirk: The Men They Left Behind Part 4

In the circ.u.mstances there was but one choice, as the captain soon explained: 'I can't give you any more information. We are now going to be taken prisoner of war. You can do as you like.' This was all the information he needed. It was 'every man for himself'. Not wanting to be taken prisoner, Barber and his mate Paddy mounted a motorcycle: 'It was all "pie in the sky". We hadn't got a clue where we were or where the Germans were or where we were going to go. It was all a big mess. We were all young kids eighteen or nineteen. We didn't know what we were doing.' Despite their ignorance, they made the conscious decision to escape and roared off into the unknown.

The situation was the same all around the town. Eventually the gunners of the 101st Anti-Aircraft Regiment also realized their guns could defend St Valery no longer. Their orders were to keep firing until they had just two sh.e.l.ls remaining. These two were then fired together, the detonation of the second sh.e.l.l destroying the gun. Unfortunately, one of the sergeants forgot to use an extended lanyard and managed to destroy the gun and seriously injure himself. With the Bofors guns out of action, the gunners were ordered to take their rifles and rejoin the battle as infantrymen: 'We were ordered to take up positions behind a low wall,' recalled Fred Coster. 'We were facing a wood waiting for the Germans to come through it. Some of the boys had even fixed bayonets. Suddenly a man beside me slumped down he'd been shot. The fire was coming from a ruined building behind us. It was a Fifth Columnist he shot another one. Then my mate Harry Champion turned and fired. Out of the window slumped a man dressed in a French uniform. Harry said, "You won't shoot any more you b.a.s.t.a.r.d!" '

On the morning of the 12th, there were few among the Highlanders who believed the fight could go on much longer. d.i.c.k Taylor had manned many defensive positions in the last few days but by that morning it was clear the fight was over. The previous day they had come under attack by enemy tanks and attempted to resist the attack with machine-gun fire. It was hopeless one moment they heard the order 'Open fire' then the next order they heard was 'Every man for himself!' With no hope of escape, Taylor and his mates made their way to the high ground above the town but soon came under fire. Taking shelter behind a monument, they stayed low and hoped no one could see them. When one French soldier raised himself above the ground he was immediately shot in the chest. After nightfall, they returned to the town in the hope that the Royal Navy might be able to get boats into the harbour under the cover of darkness. Wounded men were laid out on stretchers awaiting evacuation, but there were no s.h.i.+ps. That night Taylor slept in a local cinema before rising in the morning and making his way back up to the high ground and rejoining a detachment from his own regiment. There he and his comrades simply spent the last few hours waiting for the enemy to arrive to take them prisoner. His comrade Jim Charters recalled that, on the morning of the surrender, he soon realized any further resistance was futile since he had just half a belt of ammunition left for his 'drill purposes only' Vickers machine-gun.

The situation was much the same for the men Major-General Fortune had chosen to reclaim the ground around the town. Orders were given that the 23rd Field Regiment Royal Artillery should provide supporting fire. However, it was soon discovered many of the gunners had already stripped the breach blocks from the guns to prevent them falling into enemy hands. Despite the difficulties, some of the remaining gunners set to work to restore the guns to working order. Deprived of artillery cover, the infantry continued with the planned attack. As they advanced they found surrendering French troops crossing their path, preventing them from engaging the enemy. Under cover of the chaotic conditions, enemy tanks and infantry were soon able to outflank the Highlanders, surrounding the advancing infantry and forcing their surrender.

As dawn broke that next morning, the Germans watched as some troops attempted to continue the evacuation from the steep cliffs to the west of St Valery. Many became committed to one last desperate effort to reach safety. Surrounded by an ever-encroaching enemy they clung to the hope of rescue by Royal Navy vessels in the Channel. In desperation, some of the forlorn soldiers fell to their deaths while attempting to descend the cliff faces. Both British and French soldiers began to crowd around on the cliff tops, anxious to reach the beach below to board a boat back to England. In their haste to escape the enemy some tried to descend the cliffs on ropes that were too short for the job. They were left dangling in the air, lacking the strength to climb back up and unable to lower themselves any further. There they hung until their strength had gone, they lost their grip, and crashed on to the rocks below.

Not all of the men fell to their deaths accidentally. In some locations, as the troops attempted to lower themselves to safety, German soldiers arrived on the cliff tops. Although the men descending the cliffs were in a hopeless situation, some of the Germans showed them no mercy. David Mowatt remembered: 'They had tied their rifle slings together to make ropes and the Jerries came along and were cutting them. These were ordinary soldiers! SS, you could imagine doing that, but not ordinary soldiers. It was murderous.'

Seeing the dilemma, others raided the lorries that had brought them to the cliff tops for anything that could help them descend to the beach below. One group, waiting at a fissure in the rocks, took the ropes that held the canvas covers on their trucks and joined them together. Eventually the rope was long enough to lower men the whole distance; this was then secured at the cliff top. Private Watt, serving with the Royal Engineers, remembered the scenes: 'The method used was to pa.s.s a loop over a man's head, he then walked backwards down a very steep incline and lowered himself over the edge, the men at the top lowering him hand over hand.'1 The journey down the rock face was a perilous one for the already exhausted soldiers. The rocks were muddy, making it easy for them to lose their footing. Private Watt soon discovered how difficult the descent would be: 'Eventually my turn came to go down . . . I was fully dressed, overcoat, full equipment less my pack my clothes being sodden with rain, my rifle slung. I had grave doubts about the strength of the rope as I must have weighed a considerable amount, but there was no time to hesitate.' Slinging the rope over his shoulder, he walked back and gave the signal for the others to begin lowering: 'I risked one look then closed my eyes quickly. It was a very unnerving descent as I kept twisting one way, stop, then twirl the other way.'2 The survivors who gathered on the beaches prayed for salvation but none came. Around them they could see the bodies of those who had fallen to their deaths from ropes that had not been long enough for them to reach safety. With nowhere to take cover, they faced a.s.sault by German dive bombers and came under increasingly heavy fire from snipers who had taken up positions further along the cliff tops. As time pa.s.sed, machine-gunners joined in, raining fire down on to those who dared expose themselves on parts of the beach. Finding themselves trapped by the advancing enemy, one group even took shelter in a cave, intending to fight it out from behind a barricade of rocks. When the Germans eventually reached the cave the men within realized their situation was hopeless. A few hand grenades thrown into the cave would cause chaos. They made the only sensible decision and surrendered.

Despite the dangers, other waiting troops began to wade out to sea, attempting to get on to the rowing boots that were ferrying men out to a destroyer waiting offsh.o.r.e. This s.h.i.+p was their only hope of escape. It was also firing its heavy guns towards German batteries on the cliffs and drawing some fire away from the desperate soldiers. Yet it was not enough. With sh.e.l.ls continuing to land among the men on the beach, Private Watt and his mates decided to join the swimmers attempting to reach a French trawler waiting offsh.o.r.e. Discarding their equipment and rifles, stripping off all their uniform except their trousers, Watt and his mates swam out towards the boat.

Despite the strong currents they reached the trawler and climbed up a rope ladder on to the decks. In an attempt to stop the boat being swamped by desperate soldiers, sailors on board the trawler cut the rope ladder, sending men tumbling down on to the swimmers below. What happened next revealed that those on board were no safer than those struggling through the surf: A sh.e.l.l landed right amids.h.i.+ps, apparently in the engine room. There was a terrible noise of escaping steam. Two quick-firing guns on deck were still firing madly away . . . We could feel the shock as several sh.e.l.ls. .h.i.t the s.h.i.+p, mostly about the water line . . . Then they opened up with anti-tank guns . . . holes started to appear in the sides above our heads. Men all around were hit, very few escaping injury. Some were killed at once and many dying after only a few minutes.3 The men on board faced a terrible dilemma. Surely if they remained on board they would be killed. Yet looking into the water around them, they could see swimming men being hit by rifle fire from the cliffs. With the boat ablaze and slowly sinking the survivors began to help the wounded men on to the decks. All they could do was to pray that salvation might come, but neither Allied nor German vessels appeared to save them. Some men even tried to build a raft to help ferry the wounded ash.o.r.e, but it sank as soon as it was launched.

Realizing the wounded would not survive in the water if the boat went down, the troops raised a Red Cross flag to signal to the enemy that the men on board would resist no longer. Eventually, a German officer appeared on the beach and called out to the survivors. All the able-bodied men were to swim ash.o.r.e and leave the wounded on board. If they did not comply immediately they would be fired upon. Their situation was hopeless. There was nothing they could do but to swim into captivity.

As the bedraggled men dragged themselves from the water, a German officer stood on the beach offering them a swig from a bottle of spirits. One of those who pulled himself up from the water was Frank Norman, of the Royal Corps of Signallers, who was only seventeen years old. He had volunteered in June 1939 at just sixteen, falsifying his age to show he was eighteen. Like the rest of his comrades, he was to endure five long hard years of captivity in Frank Norman's case working in the mines of Silesia.

As the walking wounded were taken away from the beach for treatment, the other survivors were given blankets and overcoats and put into a straw-filled bivouac for the night. Exhausted, they slept through an artillery barrage that landed around them. Such were the extremes of hunger experienced by these men, they were forced to scavenge for grain amid the straw of their bedding.

As this drama was being played out another s.h.i.+p was also sacrificed in the desperate efforts to rescue the division. The Dutch motor barge Hebe II was sunk off the French coast with eighty soldiers on board. There were no records of any surviors.

Not all those on the beaches were quite so unfortunate. Others were able to reach boats, such as the three officers and seventeen other ranks of the Lothian and Borders Horse who escaped by boat from the port of Veules. Similarly, thirty-one pioneers from the 7th Norfolks were picked up by HMS Harvester. When he rescued them from the beaches the commander of the s.h.i.+p told the lucky men it was no longer safe to attempt to reach the harbour of St Valery.

The events of the morning of 12 June remain confused. Some reports quote the French capitulation as forcing General Fortune to surrender. But when one flag of surrender was seen fluttering from a steeple close to the divisional HQ, Fortune insisted it be torn down and the perpetrator arrested. When the French officer responsible was found he explained that he was simply following his own general's orders. Other sources quote incidents of French white flags being torn down by enraged British officers, then British officers crying when Fortune ordered them all to lay down their arms. Some British troops even recalled the vision of a British fighter flying above their positions displaying a white flag. What was clear was that the French had informed Fortune of their intention to surrender. It left the Scotsman in a hopeless situation. Without the French fighting side by side with his men there was no hope of holding out for another day. It was a stark choice surrender or die.

Despite Major-General Fortune's defiance and hope to keep fighting long enough to effect an escape, the situation was wretched. His infantry had not been able to push back the enemy from above the town and with the cliff tops occupied by the enemy any evacuation would most likely result in a slaughter, costing the lives of both his men and the sailors he had hoped might come to rescue them. At 11 a.m. Fortune received news from England that the previous night's evacuation had been called off due to fog. Yet by that time the news was irrelevant. Half an hour earlier Major-General Fortune had already notified the War Office of his intention to surrender.

Most of the divison went quietly into captivity, knowing further resistance was futile. One group of soldiers, exhausted after a day of close-quarter fighting, bedded down in a field, sleeping through the night without sentries to watch over them. They awoke to discover they were surrounded by German tank crews who quickly spotted them and took them prisoner. Elsewhere others continued to fight. Each man became embroiled in his own personal war. The notion of escape filled the minds of many, while others hardly seemed concerned about the slim chance of slipping across the Channel. For some the desperate battles around St Valery were simply them following orders they knew it was the duty of each man to fight on for the honour of his regiment and his country. For others it was a sign of personal defiance, a way of showing the enemy they were not beaten. For many more it was just a desperate fight for survival. Whatever happened, few seriously contemplated the possibility of being taken prisoner.

When the moment of surrender came, a deathly quiet fell over the troops. The gunners of the 23rd Field Regiment were still working to ready their guns for the attack on the Germans' cliff-top positions when they heard the news. Rather than load and fire their guns, they were told to line up in a field ready for the surrender. Within a minute of receiving the order the gunners noticed a German tank entering the field. One man then shot himself, preferring to take his own life rather than be taken prisoner.

As the Germans began to round up the survivors of the 51st Division, most of the prisoners began to follow the shouted orders of their captors without daring to question them. Northumberland Fusilier d.i.c.k Taylor recalled that the process of surrendering was like anything else in the army: 'You do as you are told you don't think about it. I threw the bolt away and destroyed my rifle. Elsewhere they were already dumping trucks into the sea so I realized everything was in chaos and our position was hopeless.' Each man was submerged beneath waves of his own emotions. Bewildered by the speed of the collapse, Jim Pearce marched into a barbed-wire enclosure still carrying his rifle over his shoulder. The German guard knocked it from his shoulder, without Pearce even breaking his step.

Such was the depth of feeling that some soldiers felt a rage they could not express, barely able to suppress their anger that the division had been defeated. A few openly wept at the disgrace of defeat, while others were disgusted to see the behaviour of some among their comrades. John Christie found himself looking on in awe at behaviour he felt out of place in a modern war. He watched as officers changed into their dress uniforms ready for the surrender. It seemed ridiculous, within a formation that had not eaten a hot meal for a week, to be so concerned about appearances: 'It could have been done in order to put on a "good show" for the Germans . . . I don't go much on "good shows", anyway I had more important things on my mind like how I was going to get out of this mess.'4 Others felt numb with disgust, fear, hunger, exhaustion or the simple relief they had survived. For days they had fought for the right to escape from France. Each step back towards the coast had been a step towards salvation, but it seemed they had been betrayed. The whirl of emotions experienced as the enemy approached to take them prisoner was shared by every able-bodied man in the division, leaving most barely able to express what that moment had meant to them. Fred Coster attempted to explain his feelings: 'We were ready to fight but then the French surrendered and that was it we gave up. There was no option. We would all have been ma.s.sacred if we had fought on. We were numb we were tired. We were wondering what was going to happen. What went through my mind was perhaps they would murder us. They lined my unit up in the field with a machine-gun facing us. We were just standing there.' The gunner that approached Coster expressed the thoughts silently shared by each of them: 'There was one little fellow, he came running up and said, "Bombardier, they're not going to shoot us are they?" I said, "Of course not. They wouldn't dare to!" He was happy and went off laughing. But I started to feel a bit timid. I thought they might shoot us, but I couldn't tell him.'

Cut off from the rest of the division, with no way of communicating with General Fortune or the other senior commanders within St Valery, the 2nd Seaforth Highlanders at the St Sylvain position continued to fight their own battles. On 11 June it had been estimated the remnants of the battalion were facing around a hundred enemy Panzers. It was an ominous situation for the exhausted and lightly armed infantrymen. Despite their desperate situation they continued to fight hard.

Realizing that the Seaforths would not surrender without a hard fight, the German commanders decided on an unorthodox tactic to convince them to lay down their arms. Central to the German plan was Colour Sergeant Edwin Fields, known as 'Gracie' to his fellow Seaforths. After more than a month in the front lines, Gracie was exhausted and had finally been captured, along with a wounded sergeant and a young private. As a senior sergeant, he was selected for an unpleasant task. A machine-pistol-wielding German NCO appeared and forced him on to the front of a tank. With the German behind him, and a gun pointed at his back, the sergeant was driven towards the Seaforths' positions. Some reports have the tank advancing under the protection of a white flag. Other reports suggest no white flag was shown. In any event, as they reached a crossroads close to the forward positions, the tank was. .h.i.t by a burst of gunfire. Still, the worried sergeant had no choice but to remain on his perch if he stayed his own men might shoot him, but if he ran the Germans would certainly shoot him.

Recognizing who it was seated on the front of the tank, the Seaforths held their fire, watching as their Gracie was driven ever closer. Eventually he was released and the tank withdrew towards the enemy lines. Reporting to the battalion HQ, the message he carried was simple. The Seaforths were in a hopeless situation. The rest of the division had surrendered and they were surrounded. If they did not stop resisting they would be bombed into oblivion.

But surrender was not an option for the proud Seaforths. Sergeant Fields refused to return with the message to the Germans. Instead he chose to remain with his regiment as the decision was taken to split up and attempt to reach safety. During the attempted escape, Colour Sergeant Fields managed to reach the coast but was taken prisoner. While in captivity he was able to report the incident to General Fortune.

One of those men who watched the arrival of 'Gracie' Fields was Jim Reed, the under-age soldier from Sheffield who had volunteered to fight as a Seaforth Highlander: It was a real shock to see 'Gracie' strapped on that tank. Then a sergeant came round and told us the division had surrendered, but that the Seaforths weren't going to surrender. It was our last battle. We were in close-quarters fighting, holding the upper floor of a farm, overlooking a sunken road. A German half-track came along and stopped opposite us. I had one magazine half-full for the Bren gun. My mate said he'd take out the machine-gunner and I'd get the driver. I could see him clearly he was just ten feet away. We fired down on to them. As soon as I hit the driver the half-track ran down and crashed into some woods. We didn't waste any more ammo on them anyway I only had a couple of rounds left. We could hear them calling to us to come and take them prisoner. We didn't bother. That was just hours before we were taken prisoner.

Eventually it became clear such resistance could continue no longer. Jim Reed had used some of his final magazine on the crew of the half-track and realized there was little else he could do: We had no choice. What settled it was the wounded. They were in a barn and that got bombed. We said we would hang on until 6p.m. to see what happened. It was not worth carrying on. There was nothing for the 2-inch mortars, we had no ammunition. We could do nothing and we needed to save the wounded. We had to surrender but we had no idea what was going to happen. We realized how exhausted we were. We'd had no food that day and hadn't slept for two or three days. But when we finally surrendered it was the worst moment of my life.

The 4th Seaforths found themselves in no less desperate a situation. In the trenches of his company HQ, David Mowatt's company commander made the decision to go to the beach to check out the rescue situation for one last time. Mowatt and another man accompanied the major. Making their way down the rough path they discovered there was no possibility of escape and, returning to their positions, it was obvious to all that they had no choice but to surrender or be wiped out. When the moment came it was strangely numbing for the last of the defenders: 'We just waited for them to walk in. Rommel came up he was on one of the first tanks to come through he spoke to us. He said, "I hope you will be treated fairly and that you will not be too long as a prisoner of war." He was right there at the front with his troops he probably knew we'd had it! He knew he was safe.'

Despite the German general's words of sympathy, as the remnants of the St Sylvain defenders were rounded up there was little mercy shown to those who had fought so long and hard. Some paid a harsh price for their defiance. One group, including two officers and five other ranks, were forced to sit on the bonnet of a car, despite there being room inside, as they were driven for twelve miles (twenty kilometres). It seemed they were being deliberately paraded as trophies of war. The senior officer in the group, Major James Murray Grant, the grandfather of the actor Hugh Grant, noticed the pistol pointed at him throughout the journey, reminding him of the treatment of 'Grade' Fields, whose ordeal he had witnessed. With the surrender of St Valery a strange calm settled over the town. Jim Charters and his comrades abandoned their hopeless positions, destroying their guns as they left, then a.s.sembled in the town square. They arrived just in time to watch as General Rommel came into town on the leading German tank.

In scattered groups, sharing their last cigarettes, the exhausted soldiers simply hung around the harbour awaiting orders. For most it would take days for the reality of what had happened to sink in. Instead, with numbed emotions, they watched as the German troops took control of the town they had hoped would be their escape route. Frustrated British officers watched as German soldiers strolled along the quayside and their commander Major-General Fortune was photographed beside the battle's victor, the soon to be legendary General Erwin Rommel.

So the entire 51st Highland Division went 'into the bag'. Leaving his Vickers machine-gun behind him, Jim Pearce joined the lines of prisoners: 'There were dead soldiers all around us. Some were people you didn't know but some were my friends. It was hard to see your mates were dead, but you had to just accept it. You can do that when you are young. Luckily my brother had survived, so I had someone to support me.' Thousands of men like Pearce and his brother were herded into barbed-wire enclosures hastily erected by the Germans to house the incoming prisoners. Some arrived in the pouring rain. Already exhausted by the week of fighting and dejected by defeat, their pitiful situation was heightened by the weather, especially when their captors insisted on the prisoners handing over the gas capes and groundsheets that were helping to keep them dry.

As they pa.s.sed through the wire they were searched for any remaining sharp implements, like knives and scissors. Some men lost cigarette lighters and matches. Vast heaps of abandoned equipment were piled up as the dejected and defeated men faced their first day in captivity. A wave of helplessness and hopelessness swept over the Jocks as they slumped down on to the gra.s.s and contemplated what lay ahead of them. As the prisoners a.s.sembled some were in tears, others were praying, most were too tired to show emotion. John Christie later described the consensus of opinion: 'The general feeling was that we had been "sold down the river" and "left holding the baby". Don't forget that for a week we had been listening to the details of the evacuation at Dunkirk and being told of how all the stops had been pulled out to make it succeed.'5 In the eyes of all those who went 'into the bag' that day, Christie was right. The 51st Highland Division had fought on, against hopeless odds, to ensure the survival of others. As a result the survivors of an entire infantry division marched off to face almost five years in captivity.

CHAPTER FIVE.

The Wounded In battle you will live dangerously and you will feel the stark grip of fear; you will be unarmed amid violent, indiscriminate lethality; to you the hurt and the frightened will turn for eas.e.m.e.nt and comfort; through your devoted service the profession of medicine will gain added dignity.

From a speech given to medical students about to join the Royal Army Medical Corps during Second World War As the remnants of the BEF marched into captivity there were many others in no fit state to embark on a long journey by foot. The vicious battles that raged across France and Belgium resulted in vast numbers of wounded soldiers who were left behind in hospitals, aid posts and casualty clearing stations. Some were so badly wounded they were hardly aware they were now prisoners many were unconcerned about the fate of the BEF, focusing instead on their own physical situation. Unable to leave their hospital beds, they had no time to trouble themselves with the outcome of the war. Others had wounds which had been sufficient to result in their exit from the battlefield. Yet these same men were now considered fit enough to join the exodus towards the Reich.

There was a third group also left behind to the mercies of the enemy. In the aid posts and hospitals were a group of soldiers for whom the defeat of the BEF did not mean the end of their duties. The surgeons, doctors, medics, orderlies, stretcher-bearers and ambulance drivers were still focusing on the survival of the wounded who had been sacrificed in the retreat. Wounded men regardless of their nationality should be treated with respect. Medical treatment should be given wherever and whenever possible. The Red Cross was a symbol that stood out above all others. Regardless of their rank whether senior surgeons or lowly stretcher-bearers medical staff provided a standard of care to the utmost of their abilities long after the majority of the BEF had escaped across the Channel. To men like Les Allan, transferred away from his company to become a bearer simply because his commanding officer knew he had first-aid training from his time with the St John Ambulance, and Captain MacInnes, the padre with the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, who remained behind with the wounded since all the medical staff had already been withdrawn, the wounded would have much reason to be grateful in the years ahead.

The medics' status as 'protected personnel' was enshrined in Article 9 of the Geneva Convention: 'If they fall into the hands of the enemy they shall not be treated as prisoners of war . . . They shall be sent back to the belligerent to which they belong as soon as a route shall be open . . . They shall carry out their duties under the direction of the enemy; they shall preferably be engaged in the care of the wounded and sick of the belligerent to which they belong.'1 Although large sections of the Royal Army Medical Corps RAMC were members of the Territorial Army they considered their organization to be highly professional. The RAMC was one part of the army that had undergone many changes during the inter-war years. The changing weapons of war in particular the use of sh.e.l.ls that exploded with a greater force than those twenty years before called for a new system of care.

Wounded men would be immediately removed from the front lines by stretcher-bearers whose task was to deposit them at the regimental aid post. There they would receive first aid. From there they would be collected by RAMC stretcher-bearers, transferred to ambulances and taken to an advanced dressing station. At the ADS the wounded would be given any immediately required treatment, then cla.s.sified into three categories. The first group were men suffering from shock, who were taken to a field dressing station to be given blood transfusions and other treatments for their condition. The second group, those requiring immediate attention, were sent to an advanced surgical centre where they could be given emergency operations. The third group, those fit to travel, were sent to a casualty clearing station. These were equipped to give all manner of treatments, including x-rays. Following treatment, all of the wounded were transferred to a forward general hospital from which the lightly wounded could receive treatment prior to being returned to their units and the more serious cases could be transferred to a base hospital.

Graham King, a pre-war Territorial, serving with the 13th Casualty Clearing Station, had a good understanding of the modern treatment methods and how the RAMC had changed during the inter-war years: 'Medics always seemed to be despised. They got the idea we were sitting on our a.r.s.es way back from the front just waiting for the casualties to come in. That might have been right in the '14'18 war, but with what had happened in the Spanish Civil War they found the quicker you treated patients for secondary shock they had a far better chance of survival. So we were placed up near the front, treating casualties as they occurred.'

Every man captured by the Germans in May and June 1940 experienced the same emotions: shock, bewilderment, fear and, in a great many cases, loneliness. These were combined with thirst, hunger, sleep deprivation and an all-engulfing sense of mental and physical exhaustion that numbed the prisoners. Such was the hunger experienced by one wounded man that he ate a hunk of bread green with mould he had pulled from the mud of a farmyard. If the physical and mental impact caused emotional turmoil for the fit prisoners, the shock was far worse for the wounded men. Not only did they have to cope with the impact of captivity but they had to do it while enduring physical pain and often the knowledge they might either succ.u.mb to their wounds or never fully recover.

The scenes witnessed by many wounded as they made their way slowly to get treatment left an indelible impression. Fred Gilbert, shot three times prior to surrendering, had to march past the twisted corpses of the rest of his section as he made his way to an aid post. Another soldier recalled being transported by his captors on the front of a tank and seeing the charred corpses of his fellow soldiers in the doorways of burning barns. The horror of such scenes, combined with the pain of their wounds and the fear of what might happen to them, created a general sense of hopeless isolation for the wounded men.

The experience of being wounded and captured was recorded by Geoff Griffin, a twenty-two-year-old, serving in the Royal Army Service Corps, who was sent to defend a ca.n.a.l to the east of the Dunkirk perimeter. While exposing himself in order to fire at the enemy he noticed another German swing a machine-pistol towards him: 'I felt as if someone had knocked me down with a tank and I fell backwards into the trench, with blood streaming from four bullet holes in my left shoulder. Yes, the German had missed my head, so I lived for that moment in time. Strangely, I felt no pain.'2 In an effort to help stem the flow of blood from Griffin's wounds, his mate tore away his tunic and applied field dressings to his shoulder. When his mate attempted to leave the trench to get a.s.sistance he was immediately cut down by a burst of machine-gun fire.

Griffin later wrote of the hours that followed: 'Somehow I survived the night, drifting in and out of my delirium, praying and imagining myself back home with my parents . . . Darkness faded into light and I awoke to complete silence except for birds singing . . . this is it, I thought, this is death and hopefully it's heaven.' The very silence confounded him and he looked around, to discover he was still alive, left all alone in the aftermath of a vicious battle. One thought filled his mind: 'Had the war ended?'3 Unsteady from the loss of blood, he rose to his feet, putting on his helmet and picking up his rifle. He soon dropped the rifle, realizing his wounds rendered him incapable of firing it. Standing on the edge of the trench, he surveyed the scenes: 'Bodies of my friends littered the garden and there were many lifeless forms on the ca.n.a.l bank further away.' He came across the surreal sight of two men beside a Bren gun, one as if ready to fire it, the other kneeling ready to reload the gun. He tapped one on the shoulder only to see the man topple over. Both the men had been killed by blast. Eventually, searching for food, he found a house full of dead and wounded, most of whom had crawled in to seek shelter from the battle they had been no longer able to contribute to. There Griffin awaited the inevitable arrival of the Germans.

Wounded in similar circ.u.mstances, Fred Gilbert didn't have to wait for the Germans in order receive treatment. Instead, at gunpoint, he was waved away into a village where an aid post had already been established. There he was joined by a handful of other survivors of his unit. Arriving in the village, they were struck by the irony of what happened next. British artillery the supporting fire they had asked for to help drive back the enemy from their positions finally landed around them. But it was too late; the battle was over: We were driven to the village school where they had set up an aid post. There were two British medical officers. They were patching blokes up and cutting arms and legs off just throwing them into a bucket. This horrid place was packed and they were using a trestle table to operate on. I had my arm, side and ear bandaged up, I was covered in blood I was a mess. There were plenty of lads in a bad state worse than me. The doctors said to me, 'You're all right, you're only wounded!' I was glad to get out of there; it was more like a slaughterhouse than a surgery.

Blessing his good fortune, Gilbert moved into one of the school rooms and was mobile enough to go outside to escape the tragic scenes within. What he saw only helped to increase his despair: The thing that made me feel sick was when I went outside. The whole French army seemed to be marching past. They were prisoners. This endless column four abreast seemed to be going past from dawn to dusk, there were thousands of them. They were carrying food, all with their full kit. They were all clean and tidy. I thought to myself 'G.o.d, I've been fighting to save you b.l.o.o.d.y lot!' Then I looked at our boys with their torn, bloodstained battledress, unshaven and hungry, no equipment, nothing, all of them wounded, some of them incomplete. They had given their all to try and save France. It made me so sad and, in a way, bitter.

Doing his best to forget what he had seen, Fred Gilbert attempted to offer whatever a.s.sistance he could to the more badly wounded men: 'The floor was absolutely full of bodies blokes with arms and legs missing. I had marked my s.p.a.ce I could stretch out, I was lucky. There was a bloke lying next to me who had lost his arm and his other hand was damaged. He couldn't get up. He wanted to go to the loo, so I had to help him. I only had one arm. I had to pick him up enough to get him into a position to do it.' Yet if these scenes of suffering were enough to tax the more resilient of men, it was about to get worse: 'There was just a narrow pathway through the middle of us. They came and put a wounded bloke in the way, he was laid right up against me. I said, "You can't put him there what if we want to get up?" The bloke said, "Don't worry, he won't be there long. I think he might be dead now." He didn't last the night. It wasn't very pleasant sleeping next to a corpse having to climb over him to get to the loo.'

Despite these conditions, Fred Gilbert was fortunate to receive such swift treatment. Any delays risked the increased possibility of infection. For those with abdominal wounds, the reality was that they faced death if their wounds were not treated within six hours. Prompt treatment was also vital for those wounded who came in contact with the soil because of the increased chance of gas gangrene.

The stretcher-bearers were the vital link to rapid treatment, and of all the medical staff were the men in the greatest danger. They were the ones, like Les Allan at Hazebrouck, who crawled out into the open to pull the wounded men to safety. They were the men who braved incoming fire to save the lives of soldiers who were no longer able to save themselves. Theirs was an intense world, one in which they had to face everything the enemy threw at them without having the means to protect themselves. As the BEF fell back on Dunkirk, these front-line medics were among the hardest pressed of all the troops. They had to face the harsh reality of saving men to whom they could sometimes offer little more than the most basic first aid. It was combined with the realization that when the wounded could not be moved someone would have to stay behind to a.s.sist them. At the Mont des Cats this had cost the medics dear. As the troops retreated from the hill they had to watch the enemy blasting the monastery and the aid posts within.

As possibly the only survivor of this final bombing of the convent cellars at Hazebrouck, Les Allan despite his wounds soon found himself joining the march into Germany. He was not alone. As the Germans began to round up prisoners across France and Belgium there were plenty of instances of wounded men being refused transport on the journey into captivity. Outside Arras a group of walking wounded were sent on a twelve-mile (twenty-kilometre) march, without food, that lasted twenty-four hours. In one group of marchers was a sergeant with a shattered arm and a private with a wounded foot. Their officers found a German officer who spoke English and requested that food should be given to the men and transport provided for the wounded. As soon as they had completed their request the German turned and walked away without reply.

Another group of walking wounded found themselves abandoned in the middle of a French village. For three days they waited for the Germans to come to offer them medical treatment. When treatment finally came they were roughly treated by the German doctor, who pulled off their bandages, causing them to cry out in pain.

One of the wounded men who was forced to join the march into Germany reported that such were his injuries that he could hardly walk and had to hobble along supported by his mates. As he was so slow he was beaten across the back by the guards who marched with the column. He was later given transport into Germany but arrived at his final destination to be left outside in the rain, despite his wounds, sleeping on the bare earth.

These were not isolated incidents. When Captain Derick Lorraine was wounded in the leg he was moved by ambulance towards Ca.s.sel. However, the ambulance was captured by the enemy and the driver was taken away as a prisoner itself a clear breach of the rules concerning medical staff. With the driver gone, the four wounded men inside were left without treatment for two days. When the Germans eventually returned to the ambulance Captain Lorraine was not offered immediate a.s.sistance, instead he was taken away to help force the surrender of a British unit holding out nearby. Lorraine insisted he was too badly wounded to walk but the Germans refused to accept his excuses, waving a revolver at him to demonstrate the consequence of his refusal.

Realizing any resistance was futile, the captain covered by the rifles of the German soldiers made his way to the position, a large concrete blockhouse that was holding back the enemy advance. He shouted to the men inside not to reply to him, hoping they would continue to defy the enemy and not see his actions as treacherous. Using Lorraine as cover, the Germans then approached the blockhouse and poured petrol into the rubble, igniting it with hand grenades. Despite the efforts of the Germans, and the blackmail enforced on Captain Lorraine, the platoon within the blockhouse continued to resist. They eventually surrendered after four days of hard fighting. For three of those days they had no food and for the last thirty hours of the siege the building was on fire.

The unfortunate captain was not alone in being denied treatment. All across Belgium and France those patients within aid posts, casualty clearing stations and hospitals were given a cursory inspection by their captors to see whether they were really in need of further treatment. Anyone whose wounds were not considered deserving of further care was told what they should do in no uncertain terms. Cyril Holness, a company runner, was wounded during the retreat through Belgium. His introduction to battle was violent and b.l.o.o.d.y: I was crawling along a trench and I can remember my officer jumping on top of me when we were bombed. All the young soldiers outside the trench were killed by blast. It was terrible to see. Two of my colleagues were shot down beside me. I was wounded in the neck by shrapnel; it wasn't too bad but I thought it was my ticket home. We were in makes.h.i.+ft beds in the aid post. My pal Jimmy Bryant was next to me, he'd been badly wounded he'd got a fractured leg and everything. I was waiting for the ambulance to come back for me. I thought our pals would be coming to take us home. But it never came. Next thing I knew there was a German with a great big revolver shoved up my nose. I thought I was dead, that they would b.u.mp us off. My mate looked up and asked him for a f.a.g. The German went berserk. I said, 'You'll get us shot, Jimmy!' The German looked at my neck, said, 'Nix' nothing and ripped the dressing off. That was the end of my treatment.

With aid posts being overrun, the men within them and the field ambulances which transported the sick were increasingly in danger. With the Wehrmacht driving through the Allied positions there was no longer a definite front line behind which the medical staff could feel protected. As a result the staff of the field ambulances faced some of the greatest dangers on the battlefield. In the flat lands of Belgium and northern France this left them hopelessly exposed as they rushed their patients from aid posts to field dressing stations. As one observer noted, the ambulance crews found it difficult to maintain the balance between keeping out of the range of the enemy's field guns and keeping in range of the casualties. Furthermore, like so much of the BEF, the RAMC had gone to war with ambulances that were often unfit for their purpose. Many were mechanically unreliable and unable to cope with the weight of travelling fully loaded. Some of the RAMC stretcher-bearers were forced to march towards the front line since their vehicles could not carry them. It was a less than auspicious start to a violently dangerous campaign. A further problem was that some ambulances had nowhere to store a bedpan during their journey. Nor were there sufficient bedpans to allow one per ambulance.

There were other problems for the staff of the ambulances. Such were the realities of war the Red Cross symbol was not respected by everyone on the battlefield. Some soldiers even reported seeing German doctors armed as if ready for battle. John Forbes Christie later wrote of seeing German ambulances being used to ferry fully armed troops into battle prior to the defeat of the Highlanders at St Valery: 'From the British point of view the idea of pus.h.i.+ng forward armed infantry in ambulances with Red Cross markings would be "just not on", even though winning the battle depended on it. In the language of the day such a move would have been cla.s.sed as "just not cricket". War never was and never will be cricket.'4 If ambulances could be used as weapons of war they could also become targets. Wounded men from the Warwicks.h.i.+re Regiment were killed when the ambulance they were travelling in came under attack. There was no mercy shown to the stretcher cases. The ambulance doors were slammed shut by the Germans, trapping them inside. The ambulance was then set on fire, killing all of those within.

The experience of being targeted while within an ambulance marked the turning point in one young medic's war. Norman 'Ginger' Barnett was a Territorial soldier serving with 133 Field Ambulance, attached to 133 Brigade of the 44th Division. Barnett had never planned to become a medic; quite simply, circ.u.mstances had thrown him into the job. He had joined the TA only because a friend had suggested it would be a good idea. Their main concern was that if conscription was introduced they might be sent to work in a coal mine. Anxious to avoid this fate, Ginger and his mate had tried to join the Royal Artillery, only to find the local TA unit was full up. Then they visited their local barracks and offered their services to the Queen's Regiment. Again they were told there were no vacancies. Eventually they were told to volunteer for the RAMC, whose local unit was based in a wooden hut in a Croydon back streeet. Their fate was sealed.

Just a year later Ginger Barnett found himself in Flanders, where he and his fellow ambulance men were soon introduced to modern warfare: The first casualties I ever helped pick up were in an air raid on Bethune. We were just s.h.i.+pping men to aid posts and taking civilians to hospital. We were 'blooded' there. There were some horrific wounds coming through. I can remember the first one we picked up. It was a civilian woman. The whole of the muscle on her leg had been torn away. You could virtually see the bone. But after that you quickly got used to it. Later on we were seeing bullet and shrapnel wounds. You just put M&B693 powder on it, slapped a field dressing on and got them back as fast as possible. Some of them took it well, but some didn't crying that they were going to die.

With the 44th Division falling back, Barnett and his comrades continued their b.l.o.o.d.y tasks, until they were in the shadow of the Mont des Cats. Here, like so many from that division, Barnett and his comrades faced their final action. By that time the Mont des Cats was in enemy hands, giving them a perfect vantage point from which to observe the surrounding area. Barnett was travelling in a loaded ambulance when it reached a crossroads. Instructions were swiftly given for them to take one particular road to avoid the enemy: 'Sod's Law we went the wrong b.l.o.o.d.y way!' From nowhere small-arms fire began hitting them as they came under fire from SS troops: In the end we were surrounded. We had stopped and bullets were coming through the canvas sides of the ambulance. I said to the sergeant, 'C'mon let's get out of here!' But he told me to wait for orders. I thought 'You're joking!' He told me to pile all the blankets up the side of the lorry. But it didn't stop the bullets they were firing tracers through the side of the ambulance. They set fire to the ambulances. So we slit the sides of the ambulances and dived out into a ditch. It was every man for himself, you just got out and ran after the bloke in front of you, hoping to get to some sort of shelter.

As the ambulance crew dived for cover there was nothing they could do to help those wounded trapped within the burning vehicles: 'That was the first time I'd ever smelt burning flesh. It was bloomin' horrible.'

Crawling to safety, the shocked medics reached the cover of a farm where they awaited their fate: 'The first German I saw had a tommy gun, he had bandoliers of ammo round himself and a steel helmet. Was I frightened? Christ, was I? Oh yeah, I was scared b.l.o.o.d.y stiff. I was "tom t.i.tting" myself! I really thought it was going to be the end of me. My mate said to me, "Well Ginger, I think this is going to be our lot." Christ, I was frightened.'

With war raging across the front, British medical staff found themselves swamped by the casualties who had safely escaped from the front lines. At one hospital 1,200 patients were received in a single day. The surgeons worked in four teams, each undertaking eight-hour s.h.i.+fts. Even when off duty the surgeons had little time to relax, since they still had to eat and were supposed to scrub up for an entire ten minutes prior to operations, plus they found themselves continually interrupted in their endeavours as they scuttled for shelter during seemingly endless bombing raids. When one hospital was finally ordered to evacuate, the senior surgeon was found to be finis.h.i.+ng off an operation while wearing an unsterilized tin helmet.

One of those who became well acquainted with the realities of surgery under battlefield conditions was Ernie Grainger. A pre-war insurance surveyor in the City of London, Grainger had joined the Territorial Army in 1938, a period when junior staff in the City were encouraged to serve their country: 'It wasn't compulsory, but G.o.d help you if you didn't.' Having originally dreamed of being a doctor, joining the RAMC (CCS) was a simple choice life with 10th Casualty Clearing Station was the closest he would ever get to realizing his ambition. Thus he had trained as an operating room a.s.sistant (ORA), a position in civvy street that would be held by a theatre sister. Their role was to a.s.sist the surgeons, mopping up blood as the surgeon worked, holding clamps in place and generally fulfilling whatever tasks the surgeon found for them.

The clearing station was established in the Belgian town of Krombeke, just miles from Dunkirk, when it began to receive casualties. For the next few weeks Grainger and his eighty or so comrades worked incessantly to save the lives of the wounded of every nationality on the battlefield: We were well trained we were like para-medics. In the BEF medics were pretty thin on the ground, so you had to take over and do lots of work you didn't expect. We were permitted to do a lot more than civilians could do during surgery, like st.i.tching up wounds. We were also allowed to administer morphia without a doctor's permission. Sometimes the surgeons were so busy that they did the essential part then left us to clear up they didn't have time. They were doing amputations, then they'd take out some shrapnel and leave it to us to st.i.tch it up. We weren't concerned with the cosmetic aspects of surgery, we were just keeping them alive. It was crude but it was effective. We were so busy, but of course on top of all the wounded we'd still be getting people with appendicitis! While we were doing all this, clerks were labelling the wounded to keep a record of them.

There were men s.h.i.+pped straight from the front lines by the field ambulances, whose staff had done little more than staunch the blood flow with bandages and hastily applied tourniquets: We were in a few old houses, we had a few tents and a marquee as an operating room. That was all. During the retreat we were treating men from the units who were retreating and the men who were fighting in the rearguard. The Germans had the 88mm gun. It was a vicious weapon. When the boys got hit with that they really got cut to pieces. So all of a sudden you'd get fifty or sixty casualties in an hour coming in. It wasn't a surprise to see a man with his leg amputated or with a load of shrapnel in his stomach. We just expected it. We thought we'd be frightened of blood, but for some reason we weren't.

Alongside the British wounded, 10th CCS also accepted large numbers of French and Belgian wounded. Although they might have expected a language barrier, there were no problems most of the wounded were too badly hurt to be able to worry about what was happening. All that mattered was that they were being treated and might therefore survive: 'If they were in pain, we gave them a shot of morphine or some chloroform, knocked them out and got on with the job.'

Despite the urgency of their surgical work, all the staff at the clearing stations had another vital task to fulfil to prevent the spread of infection in wounds. Though they could not always work in aseptic conditions after all, who could keep the interior of a marquee full of men direct from the battlefield spotlessly clean? but they could make sure infections were spotted and dealt with as early as possible. There was no shortage of such infections arriving with men who had been wounded in the fields of Flanders: 'The biggest problem was gas gangrene. It's caused by soil infected with animal waste getting into wounds. It was terrible. There was nothing you could do about it they were immediately an amputation case. It didn't take long to set in. You could smell it a mile away. Once you've smelt gas gangrene you can never forget it. The smell stays with you.'

Grainger and his fellow medical staff worked around the clock, cutting men open, extracting shrapnel, cleaning wounds, removing amputated limbs, st.i.tching wounds hardly able to care about anything that was taking place outside the green marquee that had become their home. Sometimes with three or four surgeons working at once, they were doing operation after operation, just stopping for a brief rest after every few patients, then returning to continue their b.l.o.o.d.y tasks. Grainger and his fellow ORAs, doing work reserved for surgeons in more peaceful days, were forced to learn the job quickly.

Hour after hour, day after day, the teams worked to save the lives of their patients so that they could be swiftly ferried back to the general hospitals established in the rear areas: Eventually we found ourselves in the front line. We were absolutely knackered. We were with the Norfolk Regiment and they really hammered the Germans. So much, that when they captured the Norfolks the Germans shot a lot of them. It was pretty vicious, it wasn't a gentleman's war by any stretch of the imagination. But we were so busy we never knew what was happening outside our tent. We never knew anything about being defeated. It came as a big shock. We didn't even know they were near us. We were at work in the operating theatre and all of a sudden a German medical officer came in, said, 'For you the war is over' and then watched us working.

Though shocked by the arrival of the German doctor who arrived with a stunningly modern mobile operating theatre that was towing a trailer used for x-rays the staff of 10th CCS could not stop to worry about their fate. Instead they carried on working, treating whatever wounded arrived, and working side by side with the German medical staff. As Grainger recalled: 'We carried on for five days, working side by side it was just medicine. Yes, we knew they were Germans and we weren't very happy about being prisoners, but the German doctors were very efficient. We stayed there until they decided the war had pa.s.sed by and then we were treated as prisoners.'

Despite the efficiency and speed with which Grainger and his fellow medical staff had worked, the carefully planned system of swiftly pa.s.sing wounded men down a chain of aid posts and hospitals to ensure their rapid and effective treatment could not function perfectly. With the BEF and its allies retreating at speed, the medical staff were met with all manner of difficulties. Quite simply, at no time was the BEF holding static positions long enough to put the system into complete use. Some medical units found they had hardly reached the front line before they were forced to pack up and move backwards. To avoid this problem many of the hospitals were positioned further away from the front lines than had been intended. At the forward dressing stations the question was how long should they keep working before closing down and joining the retreat? If they waited too long they faced treating all the wounded but being captured. If they withdrew too soon they would condemn some among the wounded to death, but would also ensure they were available to function at the next battle. It was a difficult choice for any commander to make.

Such was the chaos of the retreat towards Dunkirk that one column of ambulances, caught in a traffic jam, were told they would have to carry all their patients over a bridge in order that it could be destroyed to prevent the enemy's advance. After the bearers had toiled through the night to get the wounded men safely over the river resulting in the patients spending a night in the open the news was given that the bridge was not to be blown. Similarly, Ginger Barnett's unit had wasted hours trying to find a river crossing since so many bridges had been blown. As he later recalled: 'It wasn't organized chaos it was just chaos.'

One of the units caught up in the chaos was the 13th Casualty Clearing Station, as Graham King recalled: Our unit was unfortunate really. We were supposed to be moving up to the front. We were cut off by the sweeping movement of Rommel's division. We had about 100 miles to move but we had no transport. We couldn't move any of our equipment. We'd sent the more mobile stuff ahead. They were going to prepare the ground. We were supposed to bring the heavy stuff up afterwards, once they'd prepared the ground. But we were having to march up. On the way we met some French medics who were retreating. They told us the Germans were ahead. But our colonel said, 'My orders are to go St Pol so we will make our way on.'

Despite the colonel's understandable desire to reach his destination, the odds were stacked against the 13th CCS. Splitting into three separate groups, each group tried to find a way through the Germans to reach the rest of the unit: 'That's when it all came unstuck. We'd been wandering around in the wilds trying to make our way through. We had very little food just our iron rations. Loads of the blokes had eaten them before we even started, so they had nothing. The rest of us had to share our food with them. So that cut down how long we could survive. We were absolutely starving and getting weaker with it.' On 23 May, now desperately hungry, King and his comrades decided to barter for food in a French village: 'We got eggs and bread and milk. Whilst we were sat at the roadside eating and drinking a German patrol came up. We wondered if someone had gone and told the Germans. We weren't a fighting unit so we couldn't fight. They just rounded us up. I later discovered the ones who had gone ahead with the light section actually got away from Dunkirk. But when they got back the 13th CCS wasn't reformed. I suppose they thought it was unlucky.'

King and his fellow medics were refused permission to remain in France to fulfil the role they had trained for, and since they had no medical equipment, the Germans made no effort to treat them as protected personnel: 'We were just treated as ordinary POWs. You couldn't do anything about it, especially when there's a man pointing a gun at you. When you're captured no one says to you, "Well done, old boy. Sorry you've found yourself in such a mess. Would you like to sit down and have a cup of tea." War's not that simple.'

King and his comrades began the long march into Germany: After much to-ing and fro-ing, we were herded into columns and were marched off . . . This was a calamity as we had been given no food and were forced to find sustenance from the fields we pa.s.sed, if there was anything left. From the back of the column one could see a brown ma.s.s moving along to a distant green field. As the head reached there, it hesitated and then spread out over the green until it covered the field. This seething ma.s.s then began to retreat, leaving a field of dark earth as all the crops had been harvested. For those who were at the rear there was little chance of getting any kind of adequate foodstuff and they became weaker . . . One evening I bartered with two French Moroccan soldiers for a cigarette tin of stewed stinging nettles. We settled on two cigarettes and an English s.h.i.+lling. Very tasty were the nettles. Eventually, our captors got things organized and began to give us barley soup, which looked like bleached porridge and army bread covered in green mould but eaten with relish.

If getting used to the realities of captivity was tough for those captured on the battlefield, it was perhaps worse for those who had had no opportunity to create their own destiny. Those who were patients by the time they were captured were already helpless and could think of nothing but survival any notion of evading the enemy was but a distant dream. However, among the patients there was one group with a particular sense of bewilderment. These were the men who had reached the supposed sanctuary of Dunkirk only to be taken prisoner in the hospitals that lined the evacuation beaches. For them it was a case of 'so near, yet so far'. At the beginning of the evacuation the wounded had been given priority, being carried on to s.h.i.+ps by stretcher-bearers. Later, even when evacuation became more difficult, both walking wounded and stretcher cases had been helped out on to the waiting s.h.i.+ps. However, as the situation worsened, it became more difficult to get the wounded on board the boats. Quite simply, many were too sick to be moved.

Others who found themselves left behind in Dunkirk hospitals were men who had safely reached the beaches only to be wounded while they awaited evacuation. Among them was Leslie Shorrock, who was wounded in the back when German artillery sh.e.l.ls landed amid the sand dunes. His battledress tunic running with blood, Shorrock was helped by two soldiers who dressed his wounds, then two French sailors wearing berets and striped jumpers helped him to the nearby French sanatorium that was being used as a hospital. As he arrived at the red-brick building he noticed there were fully armed British soldiers in trenches around the building, as if expecting an imminent a.s.sault.

What he found, he later described as 'h.e.l.l upon earth'.5 Inside, the entire floor was covered with the wounded, groaning in pain. To Shorrock the sound of their pain mingled in with the h.e.l.lish cacophony of war German planes screaming down from the skies, naval guns firing, sh.e.l.ls and bombs exploding. Elderly nuns comforted the injured, doing what little they could to ensure the dying men were as comfortable as possible. As one worked she had tears streaming down her face. Elsewhere a priest in full robes administered the last rites to soldiers as they lay dying on stretchers.

Having fallen asleep, Shorrock awoke to find himself being lifted on to the operating table of a makes.h.i.+ft theatre. Around him were French surgeons whose ap.r.o.ns were covered with blood. Shorrock was fortunate the doctors still had gas available to put him to sleep for the duration of the operation. When he