Dunkirk: The Men They Left Behind (56 page)

Men who had never imagined themselves as soldiers were occupying the promotion ladder. War had seen the advancement of officers who had been schoolboys during the Dunkirk evacuation. Now many of the newcomers were senior to men who had spent long years in the army, men who had earned their pips and stripes through years of square-bashing and service throughout the Empire. If that was not galling enough for the old-timers, the newcomers also had a far better understanding of the modern battlefield than men who had been captured in 1940. While they had been enduring German captivity the British Army had been relearning so much about war.

Despite the general desire to get away from the army as soon as possible, the mental effects of captivity led some men to make the decision to stay on as regulars. The impact of five years of captivity was such that they dared not yet return to civilian life. David Mowatt was among them:My mind was all over the place. I was terrible. I’d been to three different rehabilitation camps. Physically, I was all right, but not my mind. They put up a notice asking for ex-POWs to attend the Nuremburg trials, but you had to sign on for four years. That’s it – that was the get out for me – I wasn’t looking forward to ‘civvy street’ at all. So I signed up. It was the best decision I ever made in my whole life. It was five wonderful years. I couldn’t handle being a civilian. I couldn’t have gone back to the farm. Life was quite different after five years away. When I went home on leave, I couldn’t go on a bus, I couldn’t go on a train – I couldn’t even go into a pub unless I knew one of my mates was going to be in there. I didn’t want to meet civilians – people asking me all sorts of questions. Lots of other boys said the same.

As the prisoners returned home there was a general lack of understanding of what they had endured. The world had become obsessed by the eventual victory. Even Dunkirk was turned into a victory, eulogizing the escapers and ignoring the rest of the BEF. Whether it was the soldiers surrounded at St Valery, the men who received disabling wounds during the battles, or the men who had been plucked from the sea following the sinking of the
Lancastria,
the plight of those left behind at Dunkirk seemed like a footnote in history.

When Geoff Griffin returned home he received just a 15 per cent disability rating giving him a pension of 13 shillings a week. His return to civvy street was hampered by the discovery that many vacancies advertised by firms had immediately and mysteriously been filled as soon as he showed his disability card. He remained jobless for some months and was disgusted with the reception he received. He was also unhappy that officials did not intervene to assist him with finding work.

When the repatriates were followed home by the mass of prisoners, the psychological symptoms they displayed were similar to those displayed by the wounded men. The returning men were unable to switch off the ‘stalag mentality’ that had been essential to their sanity during five long years of captivity. They were found to be restless, irresponsible and irritable. They had a deep disrespect for authority. They displayed a fear of confined spaces and disliked being in the midst of crowds. They were also cynical, embarrassed in polite society and quick-tempered. It seemed they suffered a collective crisis of confidence, something summed up by one returning man: ‘It’s fantastic – me, a sergeant major and I can’t cross the traffic in Shaftesbury Avenue.’
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For some returning prisoners, the five years away from home had an irreversible effect. They had lost their youth and felt out of step with the post-war world. Peter Wagstaff recalled the effect on one of his friends, a very bright man who was tormented by a deep fear of mental illness: ‘A very good friend of mine had spent his time as a prisoner writing a long, long novel. He came back and tried to sell it but he found it was completely out of date. He committed suicide within three weeks of coming home. A lot of us did that – or turned to drink.’

Under such pressures to fit back into society, it was little wonder some of the returning prisoners found themselves clashing with the authorities. Around 70 per cent of ex-prisoners reported having problems with the pay owed to them by the army. Some of the protected personnel reported having used the seemingly useless Lagergeld paid to them by the Germans to light cigarettes. They were then upset to discover this money had actually been deducted from their credits upon their return home. These men felt bitter that, having voluntarily stayed behind in France to care for the wounded, they were penalized upon their return to the UK. As one commented: ‘I volunteered to stay behind in France because I felt it was my duty. When I came home I find the War Office quibbling about my pay and trying to pay the lowest possible minimum. This makes a man a little bitter.’
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Another RAMC soldier described the process of attempting to claim the back pay he believed he was owed; it was most easily visualized as: ‘a bundle of split hairs wrapped up in miles and miles of red tape’.
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For some, the arguments over pay have continued for more than sixty years. For Graham King, the fight for the money he feels he is owed has never finished. Always describing himself as a protected person rather than a POW, King had money deducted from his back pay in lieu of money supposedly paid by the enemy. Yet since he was not receiving these payments he lost out. Furthermore, King felt he had been denied medals. He believed he was entitled to the France and Germany Star for service in north-west Europe between D-Day and VE-Day. He was informed by the Ministry of Defence that he was not entitled to the medal since he had been a POW: ‘I pointed out that as a member of the Medical Services I could not be a prisoner of war under the articles of the Geneva Convention. They rebutted this reply so I said I would like the money refunded that had been deducted from my pay. The reply was that was impossible as I was a protected person!’

With these arguments continuing for so many years, it was unsurprising that the men left behind in France in 1940 have always felt their plight has been ignored. There was no campaign medal struck for the BEF, meaning those whose war finished in 1940 have no permanent record of their service and suffering, something that has always caused annoyance to so many of the men left behind. As Les Allan has always pointed out, he can spot a 1940 POW by how bereft his chest is of campaign medals. In recent years the National Ex-Prisoner of War Association has struck its own medal for former POWs, depicting the dove of peace against a background of barbed wire. However, many felt it was not their role to be making the medals, as Jim Pearce noted: ‘It would have been nice for the government to do it. Instead we had to pay for the medal – my daughter bought me it for Christmas!’ Similarly, Fred Coster noted: ‘I think the government should have given us a campaign medal, because we fought behind the lines. I was forever using my ability to speak German to demoralize the Germans. I told my guards, “You don’t stand a chance. We’ll wipe you out! We’ll bomb you with a thousand planes.” I made it all up – but in the end it was true! They were so demoralized, I ended up feeling sorry for them.’

The story of the miracle of Dunkirk has always revolved around the plucky amateur sailors ferrying soldiers from the beaches. It is a mythology that ignores the plight of those whose sacrifices meant the escape could take place. The neglected veterans include those who kept fighting – and dying – for weeks after the beaches of Dunkirk had fallen. The forgotten men of 1940 also include those who chose to remain in France to administer medical care to the wounded – giving up their freedom in the name of duty. The true story of Dunkirk must also include those who never gave up the struggle, who hid in France, endured interrogation by the Gestapo and yet somehow still managed to get home via Spain or North Africa. Moreover, it should never be forgotten that for every seven men who were evacuated via Dunkirk one man was left behind as a prisoner of war. All the physical abuse and mental anguish they suffered in the five years that followed are part of the Dunkirk story.

Ever since the world’s press first celebrated the miraculous evacuation from the beaches, the story has been a onesided affair. The pain that has been omitted from it has always angered the veterans. When Graham King was contacted by the BBC for a programme about Dunkirk he was appalled that they knew little about the rearguard and were once again focused on what happened on the beaches. The subject of the post-war films about POWs also always raised a laugh with the former prisoners. ‘A load of crap,’ thought Norman Barnett. ‘They just looked too well fed, they needed to get some skinny blokes in there.’

For Fred Coster the sacrifices of the rearguard need to be more widely known: ‘You’d think they’d mention the rest of us. Dunkirk was a great success, but it wouldn’t have been a success if it wasn’t for the rearguard. Every time the rearguard held up the Germans another thousand men got away. It wasn’t a willing sacrifice but we did our duty.’ As Dick Taylor remembered: ‘They’ve forgotten all about us. There were eight thousand prisoners from my Division. We were still fighting whilst those who get all the credit were getting away. We didn’t get any recognition. The 51st Highland Division gets forgotten. People think everybody got away at Dunkirk.’ Another of the Highlanders, Jim Reed, put it even more bluntly: ‘I still believe Churchill sold us down the river, he said “stay behind to stiffen French resistance”. It was a load of bullshit.’

One of those left behind in 1940 found his version of events questioned by government officials. Corporal Hosington, who escaped from one of the columns of prisoners marching into Germany, found staff at the Treasury Solicitors Office did not believe his story. They could not accept that the Germans had inflicted so much suffering on their captives. In July 1943 they questioned his account: ‘The only thing I don’t like about it is the length of time you were either without or with a wholly inadequate amount of food. It is difficult to conceive how a column could have remained on the march for six days under these conditions.’
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The corporal could not accept their protestations, writing back to them that: ‘As far as I am concerned it is quite in order and none of the contents are exaggerated.’ He later wrote to reinforce what he had told them: ‘You will find out when our men return from German prison camps that my statement has not been exaggerated. If life itself is at stake men will, and can, carry on even though conditions seem to make it impossible to do so.’
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With these words Corporal Hosington had unwittingly provided a fitting epitaph to all the men who – whether wounded, a prisoner or an evader – had been left behind in France in June 1940.

And so the 40,000 men left behind at Dunkirk came home to a strange, new world – one far removed from that they had left back in 1939. After five years nothing had prepared them for this. They had been on rehabilitation courses, retrained, enjoyed leaves, found employment, re-acquainted themselves with their families, picked up relationships with wives and tried to rekindle affection with girlfriends. But there was always something missing.

Beneath the smiles of rejoicing for their survival were emotions that would remain hidden for many years. Parents found themselves with sons who had outgrown their childhood bedrooms. Wives hardly knew the men who returned. Girlfriends remembered the youths who had left home five years before, full of enthusiasm, eager for ‘a crack at the Hun’. Instead they got tired, prematurely aged men, often nervous, painfully malnourished and bitter about wasting five years of what should have been the prime of their lives.

Perhaps we should finish where we started – Dunkirk. Like so many of those men who fought in the BEF, Bill Holmes finally made the return trip to the beaches from which so many of his comrades had escaped and where his own war had come to an abrupt end as a German soldier pointed a machine-gun towards him. Returning to that fateful location, it was difficult for him to suppress the memories of all those years before:The first time I went back to Dunkirk, I looked out to sea as a military band was playing ‘Abide with me’; that took some stomaching, I can tell you. Everywhere was peaceful but I looked back to remember what it had been like in 1940. You think of everybody who’s died. The last time I saw my mates from the village was when they were going to the cinema and I was going to Chichester barracks to start my training. They said ‘Cheerio, Bill’ but only one of them survived the war. The rest were killed. I was lucky to survive and stay healthy. The only thing I have are three or four marks across my back – where the skin grows scaly – I will never lose them. It was when we were made to ‘run the gauntlet’; we all got beaten across the back by the guards with their rifle-butts.I’ll never forgive the Germans. I can’t trust them, but I don’t hate them. But when you see things that bad – to see someone shot for no reason – and the guard laughs about it – well, how low can you get? There was a railway near our camp. Twice a day a train would go up to Auschwitz carrying the Jews. You knew they were going to the furnace – it went on day after day, month after month. I don’t think you can forgive people like that.When I came back home from Germany, I only weighed nine stone. I got out at the railway station and I was quite frightened. I’d left the lads at Victoria Station and I was suddenly on my own. I’d not been alone for five years. So I was a different character when I came home. I sat in the room and just flung my cigarette butt on the floor. Mum said, ‘What are you doing? You’ll burn the house down!’ Then I realized I had to get rid of my POW behaviour. Words would slip out; POW language wasn’t what you should use in front of your mum!It took ages to get over the war. I spent three years on valium. I used to shout and scream out in the night. Even now I sometimes still do it, so my wife clouts me. The effect on the mind of having to kill – you have to do it. It’s not your own choice. If I had a choice I would never have done it. You can only put up with so much. I never spoke about my experiences, I thought people wouldn’t believe me. People would be horrified if they realized what we had to go through. I look back and think ‘Did that really happen?’ So I stayed silent. It wasn’t until I joined the Dunkirk Veterans Association that any of it came out.