The Sinking of the Lancastria Read Online Free PDF Page B

paying for food and offering their seats to old ladies on the Métro. But, with the soldiers came the first Gestapo agents, and Hitler made his aims quite clear: a new phase of the war was starting – ‘the pursuit and final destruction of the enemy’. Unknown to the invaders, and unrecognised by their own government across the Channel, 150,000 of those enemy troops were lying in the path of the advancing Wehrmacht.
    On 3 June, at the end of the exodus from Dunkirk, Churchill had told the War Cabinet that the troops of the British Expeditionary Force in France and Belgium ‘had now been withdrawn to this country practically intact, except for their lossesthrough casualties in combat’. 12 The following day, a report to the War Cabinet said it was ‘possible that a certain number of men might be trying to make their way back independently in a south-westerly direction’. The First Sea Lord chipped in to say that the navy was keeping a watch for individual British soldiers who might reach the French coast.
    A confidential annexe to the Cabinet minutes did note that the Secretary of State for War was anxious to withdraw remaining divisions south of the Somme which had been out of the main line of the German advance. But, as far as everybody in Britain was concerned, the BEF had come home on the armada of small ships. That impression remains in place six decades later – one recent history of the fall of France written by an eminent British historian records that ‘after Dunkirk, there was hardly any further British armypresence on the Continent’ except for a Highland division which was still in Franceafter retreating from the Saarland. 13
    Churchill’s government had every reason to encourage the belief that Dunkirk had drawn a line under the disastrous opening of the war. With France about to be defeated, the evacuation marked the end of the beginning, a manifestation of unquenchable spirit by a nation standing united against the technological prowess of the Luftwaffe and the Wehrmacht.
    The reality was very different. The British troops who ‘might’ be trying to get away from the Germans were far from being the scattered individuals suggested by the War Cabinet reports.
    In all, 150,000 British troops were left across the Channel – almost half as many as had been taken off from Dunkirk. There were also 85,000 Poles fighting on French soil.
    Some of the British soldiers still in France had failed to get to Dunkirk, or had not been told of the evacuation; some had been cut off from the Channel by the German push northwards from the Ardennes. But most had not been near the battles of May and early June. Many were support troops, in what were known as Lines of Communication units, engineers, repair men, transport and communications staff, wireless operators, RAF ground crews, NAAFI store minders, cooks, bakers, pay clerks and guards for arms and supply depots.
    They were often poorly armed, and had received little or no combat training. The British high command showed scant interest in them – they were referred to as ‘the Grocers’.
    Many had been stationed in areas which had not been attacked, or had moved away from the main line of the enemy advance. One unit of the Royal East Kent Regiment spent amonth being shuttled round France by rail in cattle trucks without seeing any fighting – its men were led to understand that a second British Expeditionary Force was on its way and that they would join it. The senior officers of one RAF unit, whose airfield was guarded by French soldiers armed with rifles dating from the war of 1870 against Germany, drove about in a Bentley, at one point saving the life of the gunner from a downed German plane whom French peasants had wanted to kill with their farm implements.
    Three divisions saw action at the collapsing front. One of them, the 51st Highland Division made an excellent impression on the British commander, General Henry Karslake. But he was shocked by others he