farther upstream, the river was crossed at several points. Nothing—nothing except an order from Adolph Hitler—could now prevent these enemy columns from emerging the following day on the very docks of Dunkirk and thus completely encircling a half million French and British fighting men in this Flanders trap.
Nothing except an order from Hitler. And, amazingly, that order came!
The reasons for it are still being debated.
One contention is that the German High Command had already begun planning for the operations to come. It considered—too soon, no doubt—that this first phase of the Battle of France was virtually over—and won. The tanks needed a breathing spell; they should be regrouped before driving ahead in the second phase—the march on Paris and the annihilation of the remaining French Armies.
Another view is that Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring had persuaded Hitler that he could eliminate the Dunkirk pocket with his Luftwaffe alone—the psychological value of which would have been tremendous.
At all events the German generals, acting under strict orders, but mad with rage, halted on May 24 on the left bank of the Aa. There they remained immobilized for three days—a delay that was to prove the salvation of the trapped men of Dunkirk.
Even so, there is no doubt that had it not been for the unexpected resistance at Gravelines, and, to a lesser degree, the heroic combats of Boulogne and Calais, the order to halt would have found the German tanks at Dunkirk instead of still back at the Aa. It can even be supposed, without too great a stretch of imagination, that General Guderian would have been better advised to proceed with his Panzers directly toward Gravelines instead of delaying for the capture of Boulogne and Calais. Those two bypassed cities could have no effect on the main German drive, and thus Guderian would have been at Dunkirk itself before he received the order to halt.
The French Navy’s role in all this had been extraordinary in that it is not part of the naval profession to fight on land. Nevertheless it had done its utmost to hold back the land forces of the enemy. It had made possible the delays which immediately preceded Hitler’s amazing order to his tanks to halt—delays without which the British Expeditionary Force would most likely never have seen England again.
1 This barrier was to produce no results, as the German surface forces did not take any part in this phase of the offensive. On the contrary, with ships so close together, the danger of mistaken identities was considerable. To avoid regrettable errors, the commanding officer of each submarine received orders not to attack any other submarine! Thus it was that the German U-9, prowling in the area and knowing that it was the only German submarine there, was able to surprise and torpedo the French submarine Doris (Lt. Comdr. Jean Favreul) shortly after midnight on May 9. This was the first French submarine destroyed by enemy action.
2 This battalion, oddly enough, belonged to one of the two divisions the elements of which had made such a poor showing at Walcheren and Zuid Beveland. Later it was to distinguish itself by its last-ditch stand in defense of the beaches of Dunkirk—proving that all the division lacked was training under fire before the decisive battle.
3 Now an admiral and Chief of Naval Operations.
Few 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
