Читать книгу The French Navy in World War II - Paul Auphan - Страница 19
ОглавлениеFew cities in the Republic of France have had as stormy a history as Dunkirk. In early days it had been the lair of corsairs, whose hunting grounds had been the rolling seas, and France, England, and Spain had each in turn sought to capture or destroy it, depending upon the circumstances of the moment. During the French Revolution, the War of 1870, and the First World War, Dunkirk had been a focus of conflict. The heroic conduct of its inhabitants had twice gained for it the accolade of the French Assembly that “Dunkirk deserves well of the Republic.”
This time the city was to undergo an even more severe trial.
Immediately after the failures in Belgium and Holland, the port and roadstead were filled with warships and merchantmen returned from that northern essay. The night of May 17 was filled with air raid warnings, followed by the explosions of bombs, machineguns, and magnetic mines. The return antiaircraft fire of the ships was incapable of stopping the enemy planes. Two piers were set on fire, another was blown apart. The inner harbor locks were temporarily disabled. The 11th Torpedo Boat Division, which was cruising offshore, had two of its three 600-ton torpedo boats seriously damaged.
The local naval commander no longer had any air protection at his disposal. The squadrons of the aircraft carrier Béarn, which had already lost part of their strength on the Oise River, had to evacuate the Dunkirk airstrips and fall back to Cherbourg, whence they were very quickly ordered to the Mediterranean. An Air Force fighter group, assigned to the Navy, was called to other duty, and left without notice. The British had sent their units back to Britain one after the other as the German advance reached their respective bases in France.
Nevertheless an attempt was made to evacuate everything not essential to the safety of the Army. In succession there were lost immediately off the jetties almost a dozen ships: the freighter Pavon, loaded with bales of wool, and with 1,500 Dutch soldiers on board—sunk on May 20; the destroyer Adroit, the fleet-tanker Niger, submarine chaser No. 9, and six minesweepers—sunk on May 21. On the 22nd it was the turn of the Jaguar, a super-destroyer, which, after having survived almost continuous air attacks, was struck during the night almost off the entrance to the port by a torpedo from a German motor torpedo boat.11 The officers and crews of sunken warships were immediately sent to coastal batteries in the neighborhood to bring their complements up to strength.
It is known today that this success on the part of the German motor torpedo boats based on the Dutch coast was due in part to their deciphering the message which the Jaguar sent to Dunkirk giving the time of her arrival.
Confusion and chaos reigned in the city and the suburbs. The roads were filled with refugees of all nationalities. The area was without water and light. The shops were practically empty of both customers and goods. Many of the inhabitants, fleeing the bombardment, joined the refugees who were milling about in the suburbs without anywhere finding an avenue of escape.
There was no naval base at Dunkirk. Like all other cities on the front, Dunkirk lay within the zone of the Armies. Nevertheless the port was of such importance that the Navy obtained, from the Army High Command, the post of governor for an energetic naval officer. This officer was Rear Admiral Platon, just returned from Walcheren, who in the trials to come gained the respect of everyone. He was everywhere, looking after all needs; he was unperturbed even under the most intense bombardment, often stopping to adjust his monocle as an example of coolness to others. To bolster the civilian morale, he started a newspaper, the Jean Bart. A few of the leading citizens who had not fled the city—the Assistant Prefect and the Archpriest of the church of Saint-Eloi, among them—aided him devotedly and untiringly. Had it not been for Platon’s success in restoring order in the martyred city, the ultimate evacuation of the Allied troops might have been far less successful.
The appointment of an energetic governor was not the only thing done to strengthen Dunkirk. On May 21, after his conference at Ypres, General Weygand paid a short visit to Dunkirk in company with the Commander in Chief of the Naval Forces of the North—Admiral Jean Abrial. The two men knew each other well, and they were well matched—Weygand, the old soldier and Generalissimo, and Abrial, a former Commander of the Mediterranean Squadron and an officer who had held many staff positions. Weygand, greatly concerned for the safety of the Armies, yet still confident that a counteroffensive would be successful, had no need to impress Abrial with the vital importance of the northern ports. In entrusting their defense to the Admiral, the Generalissimo said, in conclusion, “I know to whom I am talking.”
Abrial called attention to the unpreparedness of the Navy for such a task, as well as the inadequate means at his disposal.
“Means?” retorted Weygand. “I will give you all I can. But what is needed above all is a stout heart. I am counting on you to save everything that can be saved—and, above all, our honor!”
On May 23 the appointment became official. Hitherto, the Admiral, North, had only had the responsibility of protecting commercial shipping in his zone and defending the coast against attacks from the sea. Henceforth he had the duty of building an impregnable bulwark around Dunkirk against enemy attack by land as well as by sea in order that, first of all, the Allied armies could continue to live—and then, if all else failed, to insure their safety in embarking.
To assist him in carrying out his orders, Admiral Abrial was given an able Army officer, Lieutenant General Marie B. A. Fagalde, as aide, and the remnants of two Army divisions which had escaped from the trap of Flanders by retreating along the coast.
Ever since May 20 no supplies had been able to reach the surrounded troops except by sea. The Army High Command had asked the French Admiralty to arrange for the transport to Dunkirk of approximately 3,000 tons of munitions and provisions daily. Since the Seine estuary was filled with enemy magnetic mines, the cargo ships requisitioned by the Navy were loaded at Cherbourg instead of at Le Havre, and then were sent across the Channel to the Downs. From there they were to slip into Dunkirk.
This plan was put into effect on May 22, and the first convoy of seven ships reached Dunkirk three days later. In the Channel they had come under the fire of several German coastal batteries situated to the east of Calais, and had returned the fire vigorously. Now, in the port, they were subjected to continuous air raids. The electric wires to the piers had already been knocked out by enemy bombs, and consequently no mechanical unloading facilities were available. Discharging the cargoes by hand was a slow and tedious job, all of the time under enemy bombardment. Some munitions trains were blown up almost as soon as they were formed. A good part of the remaining cargoes was set afire as soon as it reached the shore. Four freighters were sunk.
Manifestly it was impossible to continue under these conditions. Accordingly the French Admiralty sent the supply ships thereafter to Dover, where the cargoes were to be transshipped on a multitude of small fishing boats for the final run to Dunkirk. To provide the numerous fishing boats necessary for the operation, groups of French sailors, under junior officers, were sent to all the French Channel and even Atlantic coast ports, with orders to requisition everything that floated—including the Belgian trawlers which had fled from their home country at the coming of the German invasion.
If the crews of the requisitioned ships volunteered, they were reinforced by two or three naval ratings armed with automatic rifles, or sometimes only with carbines or revolvers. If they did not volunteer, they were replaced promptly by naval personnel. In this way more than 200 small vessels displacing between 10 and 150 tons were sent on their way, but it would take them several days to reach Dover, and meanwhile the situation had changed radically. As for the cargo ships similarly requisitioned, 25 out of the 30 got as far as the Downs; of these 25, only 13 arrived at Dunkirk—and only 8 returned from there, the other 5 having been sunk.
At Dunkirk, however, the landing of supplies had become a matter of purely secondary interest. The land front facing the Germans had become disorganized; no counteroffensive could succeed in consolidating it. The few munitions and rations which the ships succeeded in landing, often at cost of heavy casualties, found no takers to deliver them to the troops. The latter surged constantly toward the sea in ever thickening masses. The problem of evacuation would soon take precedence over that of supplies. During the last days of the battle the only supplies landed from the incoming vessels were some loaves of bread thrown quickly over onto the docks; the supplies loaded aboard at Dover remained in the holds, while the decks were jammed with troops seizing every means of escape from the closing trap.
At the beginning of the Dunkirk tragedy, the French Admiralty, motivated by a deep attachment to the soil of France, urged that the port be reinforced rather than evacuated. It declared, on May 19, that without air support any attempt to reembark the troops would be “doomed to disaster.”
The British viewed the matter in a more realistic light. They did not have the same feeling toward the Dunkirk soil that the French did. What came first with the Commander in Chief of the British Expeditionary Force was to insure the safety of the only army the United Kingdom had. With less illusions than the French, he was little inclined toward the launching of a counteroffensive without the means to sustain it. In fact it is now known that on the same day, May 19, General Lord Gort advised his Government that it would be prudent to contemplate the evacuation of the whole British Expeditionary Force to England.
The British Admiralty, like their French allies at Maintenon, replied that such an operation would be both hazardous and impractical—a unity of viewpoint that was flattering, since the two organizations had not conferred on the subject. But from then on, urgent natural interests dictated diverging courses of action. The French planned to give their best efforts to revictualling Dunkirk; the British moved quickly toward the evacuation of their Army without even informing their ally of their decision. Although a meeting of the Franco-British War Council was held on May 22 at Vincennes, headquarters of General Weygand, Mr. Churchill did not breathe a word of the British intentions during the conference.
It was not until May 25 that the French Government and French High Command received real intelligence of the matter. On that day a liaison officer, Major Joseph Fauvelle, came to Paris from the Armies of the North. He did not hesitate to deliver his message in plain language, and the Prime Minister, deeply impressed, that evening for the first time used the word “armistice.” For Fauvelle had described the military situation as tragic, and had added that from information he had personally gathered, the British Expeditionary Force was preparing to disengage and to reembark for England.
Up to that moment the French had had no thought except to continue fighting to hold Dunkirk—“to save, above all, the honor of the flag,” as was repeated in one of General Weygand’s telegrams that day. But although Admiral Abrial had momentarily checked the Germans on the Aa River, he did not conceal from the Admiralty his opinion that the situation was extremely critical. The Admiralty, reading his telegrams, received the impression that at any moment everything could break wide open—particularly if, as Fauvelle had just indicated, the British were thinking more of evacuating than of holding. It was necessary to prepare for the worst.
It was under these conditions that Captain Auphan, Deputy Chief of Staff of the French Admiralty, was sent to Dover on May 27 to make an on-the-spot estimate of the situation. He arranged for a meeting there with Vice Admiral Odend’hal, Chief of the French Naval Mission to the British Admiralty at London, and with Rear Admiral Marcel Leclerc, Chief of Staff to Admiral Abrial. Naturally he was to confer also with the British naval authorities.
While awaiting the arrival of Leclerc, who had left Dunkirk in a fast motor boat, Odend’hal and Auphan exchanged information at the Allied Officers Mess. Both were considerably astonished at the large number of British naval officers in battle dress who were present.
Living at London and mingling in British naval circles, Admiral Odend’hal knew many of these officers, at least by sight. All these officers, he learned, had been assigned by their various branches to the task of manning the hundreds of small craft which had been requisitioned at Dover and other English ports several days before. In khaki, and carrying gas masks over their shoulders, they were at work on the plans for evacuation, which had already been in preparation since the day before.
It was thus—that is to say, by chance—that the French High Command learned of a decision already made of vital importance to the battle then raging, and, in fact, to the future of the whole alliance. When Weygand and Darlan learned of it, through Auphan’s report, they had some rather sharp words to say about the British—not because of the decision itself, which time was to prove was highly correct, but because it had been made unilaterally, and because the evacuation thus made would disorganize the entire defense. When, two or three weeks later, the question of a separate Franco-German armistice arose, it was the opinion of the majority of French leaders that after such a breach of trust and disregard for the spirit of teamwork, France was not required to make a greater sacrifice for the common cause than England had.
At Dover Captain Auphan met Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay and Admiral Sir James Somerville, who briefed him on “Operation Dynamo”—the evacuation of Dunkirk—which was already in progress under their direction. Auphan agreed with them upon a plan whereby the French could join the operation without delay. This plan was approved by the French Admiralty the day after Auphan’s return.
Now the requisitioning of the small vessels in the Channel and Brittany ports proved an enormous advantage. Orders were sent out to the requisitioning officers to expedite the program to the maximum. Even so, the British, who had had much more time than the French to set up their program, began complaining that the French vessels were not arriving quickly enough.
On May 28 Rear Admiral Marcel Landriau was designated to command all the small French naval vessels assigned to the operation, which would be called the Pas-de-Calais Flotilla. This short-lived naval force consisted of two super-destroyers, seven fleet-destroyers, six 600-ton torpedo boats, four sloops, some twenty patrol vessels, submarine chasers, or fast motor boats, and a host of miscellaneous small craft—approximately 200. Landriau hoisted his flag on the antiaircraft sloop Savorgnan de Brazza, and proceeded to Dover. At Admiral Abrial’s direction he joined Admiral Ramsay’s force in establishing a shuttling bridge of ships between the English coast and Dunkirk. Although the Royal Air Force provided some protection, mostly the shuttle ships operated without air cover.
As his part of the operation, General Weygand sent one of the generals of his staff to the Armies of the North to order them to counterattack once more. But in view of the inability to stage such an attack, and in light of the collapse of the Belgian front and the withdrawal of the British, all General Weygand could do was to order a general withdrawal of the French also. At 0720 on May 29, he telegraphed22 General Georges Blanchard, General Billotte’s successor, “Fight your way through to the coast!”
Ever since the fall of Abbeville, when the last remaining land wire was cut, all messages between Supreme General Headquarters and the First Group of Armies were handled by the Navy.
However, only a few divisions succeeded in getting through; the remainder sacrificed themselves before Lille in order to cover the retreat of the others.
Despite the speed with which they acted, the French naval operation was always one week behind that of the British. This, added to the fact that the Royal Navy had greater means at its disposal, explains why the French Navy rescued fewer people than its ally. But if Abrial and the Dunkirk defenders had not checked the German attacks for several days, neither the British nor the French would have brought as many men out of the trap as they did.
When the Dunkirk evacuation is mentioned, one thinks almost entirely of the British operation. The two authors of this book, one of whom was at French Admiralty headquarters and the other at Dunkirk itself, were in an excellent position to observe the “magnificent work” and the personal bravery of the British crews,33 who, with their French comrades, rescued from that infernal trap some 338,000 men, of whom 120,000 were French. The British operation is known to the world. What will be attempted here is the account of the French part in that operation.
Extract from Admiral Abrial’s official report.
To evacuate anything at all, it was first of all necessary to hold on to Dunkirk. It would serve no useful purpose to send evacuation ships there if they found the Germans already occupying the wharves and the beaches when they arrived.
The entrenched camp established around Dunkirk by Admiral, North, extended in the main from La Panne and Bray-Dunes to Mardyck, via Bergues. As they fell back, all French forces came under the orders of Admiral, North, as soon as they entered this defense perimeter. Many, however, were not fit for combat. Only the freshest troops were sent to man the lines.
As far as the French generals were concerned, no command difficulties confronted Admiral Abrial, as all had received definite instructions from General Weygand. On the British side, however, the situation was more delicate. A single command did not exist, which resulted in frequent consultations at Government level. On May 31 the Supreme Allied War Council decided, in principle, in favor of Abrial, but then it was too late. Too late also was another decision on that date—demanded by Mr. Churchill as a matter of honor for the British Army—that the British be assigned the rear guard. The British, acting independently, had already taken their dispositions, which often superimposed themselves on Admiral Abrial’s.
When orders are contradictory, incidents are bound to occur. For instance, the British demolition parties wished to destroy immediately certain installations which the French wanted to hold to the very end.
In general, the British undertook to defend the Eastern Sector, while the French took over the Western. In reality, however, by the 1st of June the British rear guard had already been reduced to 4,000 men, and General Sir Harold Alexander, to whom Lord Gort had given this command, made it known that he had orders to withdraw this last contingent on the following night. However, as a result of a decision of the Supreme Allied Council, he actually held on for another 24 hours. Nevertheless, during the last 48 hours—the most critical period of the entire evacuation—the French found themselves alone in manning the defenses of the entrenched camp.
At sea, collaboration was infinitely easier. Even after departure of the last man of the British Expeditionary Force, the Royal Navy, exhausted as it was, continued its efforts for another two days—all for the exclusive benefit of the soldiers of France. That, France will never forget.
Meantime the state of the defense perimeter was precarious in the extreme. The Navy could provide some precious artillery support for that front—four coastal batteries with 164- and 194-mm. guns (not counting the less important batteries), and the two mobile batteries of 155-mm. guns which had fought at the Scheldt and on the Aa. Whenever the enemy came within range, these batteries never stopped firing, notwithstanding intense enemy air attacks and counterbattery fire. When not a single shell remained, the crews destroyed their guns, but continued to resist with small arms alone. Particulary notable was the Third Mobile Battery, under Lieutenant Henri Jabet. After destroying their guns, the crew of this battery, only a few thousand yards from the embarkation points, fought the Germans for every inch of ground during the night of June 3 to cover the escape of their comrades. Jabet was killed in this action.
In the matter of seaborne artillery, the French Admiralty could provide a great deal more support to Dunkirk and the evacuation. Two veteran battleships, the Courbet and the Paris, each with ten 305-mm. guns, were overhauled in 96 hours at Brest, equipped with antiaircraft guns, and sent to Cherbourg on May 28—there to await the Admiral’s orders as “expendable.” It was Admiral Abrial’s intention to use these ships at pointblank range to support a counterattack planned to extend the perimeter of the Dunkirk entrenched camp to the westward, toward Calais. If successful, this enlargement would have greatly facilitated the troop evacuations. Lacking sufficient ground troops, however, the operation was cancelled.
On account of shallow water and enemy mines, the evacuation and escort ships—even those of shallow draft—could not enter and leave Dunkirk by the shortest route. Only two routes existed—or rather two channels which were regularly cleared by French sweepers.
Route Z, the shortest, and the one used by commercial shipping before the war, followed the coastline to the west before heading for the open sea and Dover. However, it passed close under the guns of German batteries now installed between Calais and Gravelines, and was seldom usable except at night. It was to clean out these batteries that the French and British Admiralties had planned the counteroffensive to the west previously mentioned.
Route Y followed the coast toward the east and passed around the northern edge of the French minefields, but it was exposed to the fire of the more distant batteries which the Germans had installed at Nieuport. By day, if the ships shied away from the German shore batteries, they took the risk of running afoul of the minefields. At night they ran the still greater risk of being attacked by German motor torpedo boats at the Hook of Holland. As a matter of fact, several French and British destroyers and many transports were thus torpedoed. Admiral Abrial offered Admiral Ramsay the assistance of his super-destroyers and of the special sloop, the Amiens, to fight the German MTBs but the operation never materialized and Route Y eventually had to be abandoned.
EVACUATION ROUTES FROM DUNKIRK
A third route was then established—Route X, the best but the most difficult from a navigational point of view because of the shallow waters and the minefields it skirted. It was practical to use it only in clear weather and at certain hours of the tide. Furthermore it could be reached by fire from the German battery installed at Clipon, nine kilometers west of Dunkirk, which the R.A.F. had been unable to knock out.
In brief, from May 26 on, German artillery within range of the port and beaches of Dunkirk kept the points of embarkation under continuous fire, day and night. This was the cause of heavy losses among the evacuating vessels and many casualties among the troops waiting to embark.
Such was the setting in which was accomplished the miracle of Dunkirk—an accomplishment which neither the French Navy nor the Royal Navy—not to mention the Germans—believed in any way possible.
The first to be evacuated were the wounded. This was natural, as the longer they were denied the necessary medical care and hospitalization, the worse their condition became. At Dunkirk the French Navy medical units were bombed out of one first aid station after another and finally had to establish themselves some ten kilometers to the east of the city, close by an Army field hospital set up in the sanatorium of Zuydecote. Here conditions were really tragic. Some 600 to 800 wounded were always waiting for treatment by the first aid surgical teams, which were already working 24 hours a day, without a break. Many of the wounded died without ever having seen a doctor. Others were killed by bombs. In the midst of an operation, one surgeon had to take his anesthetized patient in his arms and quickly dump him under the operating table in order to protect him from German 77-mm. shellbursts which were riddling the operating room.
Ever since May 20, Admiral Abrial had been making a determined effort to evacuate the wounded at every opportunity. The mail steamer Rouen took 420 patients to Cherbourg on May 26. The following day two minesweepers disembarked 175 more in England.
An attempt to bring in French hospital ships was without success. One evening a large convoy of ambulances, waiting at the waterfront for the expected arrival of a hospital ship, came under heavy enemy fire directed at the quays. They were forced to leave and return to the hospital at Zuydecote; only a few ambulances and a few men survived the round trip. The British were having enough trouble with their own hospital ships, so finally the French Admiralty had to resign itself to giving evacuation priority to combat-fit soldiers.
Next on the priority list were certain categories of specialists whose return the Army asked for prior to the issue of the general evacuation order. For their sake Admiral, North, assembled a convoy on May 28 in which 2,500 men were embarked. Scarcely had it cleared the harbor when the cargo ship Douaisien, with 1,000 men on board, hit a magnetic mine. The majority of its passengers were rescued by small trawlers en route to Dunkirk.
On the following day, May 29, general evacuation began. The English generously offered space for 5,000 men on their ships. The French Admiralty sent three destroyers of the Cyclone class and five sloops from Dover to Dunkirk. The destroyers arrived in midafternoon, under a violent German bombardment. The Cyclone got away without damage, and returned to Dover that evening with 733 passengers, of whom 158 were survivors of a sunken English sloop picked up on the return trip. The Siroco, also undamaged, brought away 509 men. But the Mistral, her superstructure shattered by a bomb bursting on the quay alongside and with her commanding officer mortally wounded, had to back out at full speed without being able to take on board any troops whatsoever.
As a matter of fact, there were no longer any evacuees on the quay, everyone having taken shelter wherever he could find it. The port was now completely untenable. When the Mistral cleared the harbor, there was no longer a single ship left afloat there. The English had not been spared, either, and, as Admiral Ramsay wrote in his report, “The day closed with a formidable list of ships lost or damaged.”
The sloops arrived after nightfall and waited until dawn to enter the harbor. For once the air raids were lacking and they encountered only enemy artillery fire. They took safely away a full load of passengers, despite the interference of a German battery which saluted them off Nieuport. In all, embarkation figures for the 29th amounted to 5,178.44
Counted from 0800 on May 29 to 0800 on May 30. In principle, evacuees embarked on a ship that was sunk are not counted; instead, they are credited to the rescuing ship.
May 30, however, was a disastrous day. It brought the end for three ships: the Bourrasque, sunk off Nieuport; the Siroco, hit by two torpedoes from a German Schnell-Boot55 and then finished off by two bombs; and the Cyclone, disabled through having her bow blown off by a torpedo. This glorious ship of Captain de Porzamparc had participated in every engagement from the very first. She had fought at Flushing, at Boulogne, at Ijmuiden. She seemed invulnerable. But this time she got it. She did manage to reach Dover under her own power, and later crossed to Brest. There she had to be scuttled while in drydock, on June 18, the very day the Germans arrived.
Fast, small German craft, similar to the U.S. PT-boat.
Notwithstanding all these losses, 6,363 French soldiers were embarked on the 30th and safely landed, thanks to a decision to risk five supply ships which had been anchored in the Downs. These ships were able to evacuate a total of 3,000 men, with very few losses and only minor damage. In addition, two small torpedo boats of 600 tons each brought back survivors. The Branlebas evacuated 520 men, including a great number from the Bourrasque; the Bouclier saved 767 men—a prodigious number to those familiar with that type of ship.
The following day saw the entry into Dunkirk of four more of these small torpedo boats, and five more of the 600-ton Elan-class. All handled extremely well, and were skillful at evading bombs. They yielded remarkable returns.66 Unfortunately the French Admiralty recalled these ships to escort transports which, in compliance with the Army’s urgent demand, were returning the Dunkirk evacuees from England to France.
The record for these ships belongs to the Impétueuse (Lieutenant Commander François Bachy), which disembarked 649 men at Dover on May 31. In time of peace no commanding officer would dream of embarking half that number on a ship of that class.
MERS-EL-KEBIR, JULY 3, 1940. The battleship STRASBOURG underway within seconds after the first British salvo. The super-destroyer in foreground is getting underway.
TORPEDO PLANES from the ARK ROYAL attacking the DUNKERQUE at dawn on July 6, 1940.
MERS-EL-KEBIR HARBOR during the battle on July 3, 1940. In the foreground is seen the super-destroyer MAGADOR after being struck in the stern and set on fire by a large shell.
Finally, acknowledgment should be made of the services of the three mail steamers, Côte d’Argent, Newhaven, and Rouen, which between them transported almost 12,000 men during the evacuation.
At last, on May 31, there arrived the horde of small fishing craft which had been requisitioned. Admiral Landriau had established control stations in the Dover roadstead and was sending to Dunkirk everything that arrived. Needless to say, the trips were made under the least orthodox methods of navigation. There were insufficient charts—compasses were lacking—courses were mainly set by following the ship ahead. It was easy enough proceeding to Dunkirk, for the lofty columns of flame and smoke were visible from miles away. But the return trip was less easy, and many boats missed the mouth of the Thames altogether.
Also, there were engine failures. Thus, the motor of the little Jacqueline positively refused to function after arrival at Dover. Never mind—its crew of three sailors from the destroyer Triomphant set off boldly for Dunkirk under sail, and returned the same way, bringing off 33 men.
In all, 48 ships brought back 9,967 men on May 31. On the 1st of June, 38 craft brought off 7,483. Forty-three ships had actually started out, but five were sunk off Dunkirk, including the Foudroyant, last survivor of Porzamparc’s flotilla,77 and three sweepers sunk by the Luftwaffe. On the 2nd of June, 43 ships evacuated 6,177 men, and on the 3rd in a last go, with both Navies vying with each other, 63 ships brought off 10,248.
Captain Urvoy de Porzamparc, well known and very popular in the Navy, commanded the 2nd Flotilla, based on Brest, which consisted of 12 destroyers of the Cyclone class (1,500 tons). Of the 9 placed under the orders of Admiral, North, 5 were sunk and 4 damaged. Only the Ouragan, undergoing repairs at Brest, and the Boulonnais and Brestois, sent to Norway and then to the Mediterranean, were absent from this battle.
It was scarcely hoped to continue the evacuation as late as the night of June 3. The enemy was already nearing the inner defenses of Dunkirk. Admiral Abrial was burning his codes. But from Dover the English and French were preparing one final coup in force. When Admiral Abrial left his headquarters in Bastion 32, to view the last embarkations from on board a MTB, a tremendous activity was taking place in the harbor of Dunkirk. For the moment the sky was clear of enemy aircraft, but the furor of the land battle was increasing minute by minute. In an uproar of sirens the torpedo boats maneuvered at full speed—went alongside, took on their loads without making fast, and backed full away in brief minutes—crossed each other and sheered off in a whirlpool. The final miracle of Dunkirk is that there were not more collisions that night. Only one serious collision occurred, and even then, thanks to the fog, the ships succeeded in getting away to sea. The last loss of Operation Dynamo was the French minesweeper Emile Deschamps, which on the morning of June 4 blew up on a magnetic mine within sight of the North Foreland. Of the 500 men aboard, only 100 or so were rescued.88
Note by Jacques Mordal: Among them I was fortunate to find myself with Lieutenant Jacquelin de la Porte de Vaux, one of my shipmates in the Jaguar, sunk 15 days before. The Emile Deschamps went down in a few seconds, taking with her a great many of our sailors, as well as a number of the survivors of the Jaguar. But, as in all tragedies, this event had its lighter side. After I had surfaced and recovered my breath, I heard myself being hailed by de la Porte de Vaux with, “Hello, Hello! Let’s sing!” And he began singing “The Song of Departure (“Le Chant du Départ”), one of our most famous military marches. I was picked up by the British sloop Albury; I do not remember the ship which picked up de la Porte de Vaux. But it so happened that the same ambulance carried us both to the first aid station at Margate. En route I was strongly reproached by him for not having sung while in the water, “as all sailors with their hearts in the right place must do in such circumstances.” I had been in no more of a mood to sing patriotic songs than my clothing could be said to give me a martial appearance. In fact, I was covered by a single blanket, which I felt sliding off me while I was being carried by a big devil of an Englishman toward a group of nurses who were attending the wounded. An indignant “Shocking!” coming from the lips of a blushing young nurse finally conveyed to me the fact that the said blanket and I had parted company. It so happened that I was repatriated to France shortly afterward, while de la Porte de Vaux was still in a hospital in England at the time of the armistice between France and Germany. I continued to serve in what became known as the “Vichy Navy,” while he joined the Free French Naval Forces. The reverse could just as well have happened; and astute is he who will tell me what my feelings would have been if I had been in my comrade’s place. Meeting unexpectedly one evening in Paris after the liberation, we fell into each other’s arms, calling each other “You dirty Vichyite!” and “You dirty De Gaulliste!” Then we ran together to the nearest bar to swap reminiscences. We almost left our whole month’s pay there!
Plans had been made to save everybody, but the dispositions taken to embark the defenders of Dunkirk were defeated by the sudden appearance of thousands of men, coming from no one knows where. Out of caves, out of shell and bomb holes, came disarmed men, forming small human streams converging toward the jetty and joining together to form a huge, impressive human river almost congealed on the spot. With all approaches to the jetty blocked, the real last ditch defenders looked on in silence from a distance and saw the last embarkation leave the quay and the last ships clear the harbor. The night paled and the early dawn rose over an empty sea from which no further help could be expected.
And thus the bravest remained in the hands of the enemy. In all, there were from 35,000 to 40,000 prisoners, but 215,000 British troops and 123,000 French had been snatched from the hands of the enemy. Of the total, the French Navy had evacuated 44,352 men landed in England, 3,936 sent directly to Le Havre or Cherbourg, and the passengers of a few transports who were not counted. The total was in the neighborhood of 50,000.
The French Army Command was naturally in a great hurry to recover the use of the troops of the Armies of the North evacuated to England, as well as those waiting in Scotland or returned from Norway. The French Admiralty therefore set in motion, even during the evacuation, a continuous shuttle of transports, mostly French, between the English ports and Cherbourg and Brest. By June 9 one hundred thousand men had been repatriated without a single loss. At any other time the escorting of so many transports across the Channel with means primarily French would have been considered quite a feat; in view of what was taking place at Dunkirk, it received scarcely any attention at all.
In addition to the evacuation, one last duty had been left to the defenders of Dunkirk—to make the port useless to the enemy thereafter. Despite repeated orders from Admiral, North, the British had begun to bottle up the port with blockships on the night of June 2; the following night the work was completed, this time in agreement with the French. The hulks of four sunken ships, each over 100 meters in length, blocked the inner harbor for a long time—in fact the Germans were still complaining about them in 1941.
In addition the French Navy completed the Pas-de-Calais minefields. Between the 6th and 12th of June the Pollux and three other French minelayers from Cherbourg finished blocking the channel along the French coast there in an operation that was full of danger.
On the 4th of June the following Navy communique was published to an anxious France:
During the night of June 3, the last Army and Navy units which, under the orders of Admiral Abrial, had been defending Dunkirk to permit the withdrawal and embarkation of the allied Armies of the North, were, in their turn, evacuated in good order after having rendered the port unusable. The British and French Navies, by their close collaboration, successfully concluded an operation unique in history which permitted them to rescue over 300,000 men of the Allied Armies. . . .
This was followed by the names of the ships lost. At that time only part of the French losses were given out. Moreover, on June 4 the actual losses were not even known to the Navy. The casualties, as finally tabulated, amounted to 2 super-destroyers, 5 fleet-destroyers, 30 auxiliary mine-sweepers (armed trawlers), 5 tugs, 3 oil tankers, 12 cargo ships, 1 passenger liner, and several other small vessels of which no trace has ever been found. Numerically these losses amounted to approximately one-fifth of the 300 ships of all sizes which the French Navy had committed to this operation.
Thus ends the story of the miracle at Dunkirk. It was successful beyond all expectations. Even if the results had only been half so great, the incalculable importance of the defensive measures taken by the Commander in Chief of the Naval Forces, North, should always be remembered. There were countless others who contributed their share to that triumph, but it would be impossible to do justice to them all. Pilots of the Royal Air Force—ships’ gunners—firemen—infantrymen on the Mardyck Canal—masters of fishing boats or captains of destroyers—all of these, and others, share with Admiral Abrial and Admiral Ramsay in the glory of the feat which robbed Germany of a great part of her victory in the West. And who knows if it did not later influence Germany’s decision to forego the invasion of England?
1 It is known today that this success on the part of the German motor torpedo boats based on the Dutch coast was due in part to their deciphering the message which the Jaguar sent to Dunkirk giving the time of her arrival.
2 Ever since the fall of Abbeville, when the last remaining land wire was cut, all messages between Supreme General Headquarters and the First Group of Armies were handled by the Navy.
3 Extract from Admiral Abrial’s official report.
4 Counted from 0800 on May 29 to 0800 on May 30. In principle, evacuees embarked on a ship that was sunk are not counted; instead, they are credited to the rescuing ship.
5 Fast, small German craft, similar to the U.S. PT-boat.
6 The record for these ships belongs to the Impétueuse (Lieutenant Commander François Bachy), which disembarked 649 men at Dover on May 31. In time of peace no commanding officer would dream of embarking half that number on a ship of that class.
7 Captain Urvoy de Porzamparc, well known and very popular in the Navy, commanded the 2nd Flotilla, based on Brest, which consisted of 12 destroyers of the Cyclone class (1,500 tons). Of the 9 placed under the orders of Admiral, North, 5 were sunk and 4 damaged. Only the Ouragan, undergoing repairs at Brest, and the Boulonnais and Brestois, sent to Norway and then to the Mediterranean, were absent from this battle.
8 Note by Jacques Mordal: Among them I was fortunate to find myself with Lieutenant Jacquelin de la Porte de Vaux, one of my shipmates in the Jaguar, sunk 15 days before. The Emile Deschamps went down in a few seconds, taking with her a great many of our sailors, as well as a number of the survivors of the Jaguar. But, as in all tragedies, this event had its lighter side. After I had surfaced and recovered my breath, I heard myself being hailed by de la Porte de Vaux with, “Hello, Hello! Let’s sing!” And he began singing “The Song of Departure (“Le Chant du Départ”), one of our most famous military marches.
I was picked up by the British sloop Albury; I do not remember the ship which picked up de la Porte de Vaux. But it so happened that the same ambulance carried us both to the first aid station at Margate. En route I was strongly reproached by him for not having sung while in the water, “as all sailors with their hearts in the right place must do in such circumstances.”
I had been in no more of a mood to sing patriotic songs than my clothing could be said to give me a martial appearance. In fact, I was covered by a single blanket, which I felt sliding off me while I was being carried by a big devil of an Englishman toward a group of nurses who were attending the wounded. An indignant “Shocking!” coming from the lips of a blushing young nurse finally conveyed to me the fact that the said blanket and I had parted company.
It so happened that I was repatriated to France shortly afterward, while de la Porte de Vaux was still in a hospital in England at the time of the armistice between France and Germany. I continued to serve in what became known as the “Vichy Navy,” while he joined the Free French Naval Forces. The reverse could just as well have happened; and astute is he who will tell me what my feelings would have been if I had been in my comrade’s place. Meeting unexpectedly one evening in Paris after the liberation, we fell into each other’s arms, calling each other “You dirty Vichyite!” and “You dirty De Gaulliste!” Then we ran together to the nearest bar to swap reminiscences. We almost left our whole month’s pay there!
