Retreat and Rearguard--Dunkirk 1940 by Jerry Murland

Author:Jerry Murland
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HISTORY / Military / World War II
ISBN: 9781473881044
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2016-03-31T04:00:00+00:00

Nicholson opted to defend the seventy-year-old heart shaped, outer perimeter of Calais part of which, to the south of the town, roughly followed the line of the railway to Gravelines. This perimeter was interspersed by twelve bastions which had originally been an integral part of the outer earth rampart. While units of 30 Brigade would garrison the majority of the perimeter, the northernmost bastions and fortifications around the harbour would be manned largely by French naval reservists under Capitaine de Lambertye. The term ‘bastion’ was somewhat of a misnomer as many of these ageing redoubts – where they existed at all – now bore little resemblance to their original grandeur, as Lieutenant Davies-Scourfield found when deployed to Bastion 9 with 5 Platoon on the Coquelles road. He found himself defending ‘a high semi-circular mound with blocks of stone and concrete round the crest of its circumference’, which was all that remained after the embankment and bastion had been demolished to make way for the railway.

The 229/Battery anti-tank guns had arrived on the SS Autocarrier earlier in the afternoon of 23 May still carrying the vehicles of 12/Wireless Section which it had failed to unload two days earlier. According to Lieutenant Austin Evitts, the ship’s captain had scuttled out of the harbour after being told he would have to wait until morning before power was restored to the dock cranes.15 Now berthed alongside the Gare Maritime, there had only been room for eight of the twelve guns in the crowded hold. Disembarking with the men of the anti-tank battery was Gunner Ron Boothroyd, a territorial with eight year’s service, who was soon employed with his mates digging a gun pit by ‘the side of a country lane between two small hills’. Quite where Boothroyd’s gun was is unclear but he may have been near Bastion 9 in front of the flooded gravel pit. Every gun, he wrote, went to a different spot outside the town about one mile apart. One of these guns was in position with D Company of the QVR at Les Fontinettes.

The QVR had passed a relatively peaceful night on 22 May with nothing particularly untoward taking place. Dawn the next day saw the platoons of D Company consolidating their road blocks on the approach roads to the town. The first brief contact with the enemy came at around 9.00am when two attempts by German light tanks were repulsed by the guns of a French detachment. There was little further excitement until later in the afternoon when two platoons of the KRRC and RB took up positions astride the St Omer Gate on the ramparts behind them. Jabez-Smith’s account records that orders to retire to the area around Bastion 8 came soon after dawn on 24 May when D Company were ordered to reinforce the perimeter line held by the KRRC. From all accounts it was not a moment too soon. ‘Immediately the men were in position, firing took place, the enemy being in houses and gardens in the neighbourhood we had just left.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.