During the night of June 2-3, Commander James Campbell Clouston of the Royal Navy returned from Dover where he met Vice Admiral Bertram Ramsay, who heads Operation Dynamo.
This 39-year-old naval officer returns to Dunkirk to oversee the latest departures of British soldiers. He arrived in the port on May 27 in the middle of bombing.
Since then, night and day, he has been at his post on the East pier to organize the boarding of soldiers.
Re-embarkations on the East pier of Dunkirk during Operation Dynamo in May / June 1940. –
British soldiers embarking from the east pier of Dunkirk in May / June 1940. –
On the evening of June 2, at around 7:00 p.m., the speedboat transporting Clouston, the RAF Seaplane Tender n ° 243, sailed 10 kilometers off Gravelines, in the company of a second identical “motor boat”. In the sky, they spot a squadron of eight German Stukas who immediately attack them by strafing and bombarding them. The star of Clouston is affected. The 16 crew members are at sea.
The shipwrecked cling to the bow of the wreck. Among them, Second Lieutenant Martin Solomon who sits alongside James Campbell Clouston. The second star Seaplane Tender stops to retrieve the superior officer but the captain refuses and decides to stay in the water, with his men. Clouston orders him to rush as quickly as possible towards Dunkirk to fulfill his mission.
One of the shipwrecked men said he saw a drifting boat nearby. Second Lieutenant Solomon says: “I asked for permission from Commander Clouston to try to (the) join and he and I left together. However, Commander Clouston quickly gave up swimming and returned to cling to what was left of the wreckage ” (quoted by Hugh Sebag-Montefiore in the book Dunkirk, Fight To The Last Man).
“As the sea was rather rough, it was impossible to see the boat and it was only possible, on occasion, to see the shore. But around 10:30 p.m., I saw the large, unoccupied boat of a destroyer maybe – or maybe not – the boat I was responsible for finding. “
The Royal Air Force (RAF) Seaplane Tenders featured in 1932
The film “Southampton. RAF’s newest ‘Arm” (1932) shows the motorized motorboats Seaplane Tenders of the RAF. It was aboard one of them that Commander Clouston and his crew were sunk by a German plane on June 2, 1940. –
“I joined (the boat) but I was unable to climb on board because its sides were too high, and I was slightly tired“, continues the second lieutenant.”At 11 p.m., I decided to swim to the “German” shore (Gravelines, already occupied by the Wehrmacht NDR), but luckily, before leaving the boat, I swam to the other side and found a buoy hanging down. With the help of the buoy and the remains of my equipment used as a ladder, I was able to board. I immediately took the helm and tried to row with a single oar in the direction where I imagined the survivors should be. “ In vain…
“After about an hour, I gave up the effort, because the boat was too big, the distance too far and it was already very dark“Solomon says. The British second lieutenant is then picked up by a French fishing boat which he guides to the place of the sinking.
When he succeeds, only one man is still hanging on the wreck of the speedboat. Everyone else died of hypothermia or drowned, the survivor said, including Commander Clouston, whose body he saw floating.
“When I left them hanging around the wreckage, already suffering from hypothermia, they sang and discussed together the good old days“will testify Second Lieutenant Solomon.”The example of Commander Clouston must have helped them all, as he has helped me. Although exhausted himself, he continued to argue and encourage them until the end“.
A Montreal native, James Campbell Clouston had supervised the embarkation of 200,000 soldiers but he will not have the chance to join England living at the end of Operation Dynamo …
His body was not found until much later, on August 13, 1940, after having drifted in the North Sea to the mouth of the Elbe, near Cuxhaven, in the northwest of Germany. It is there that he will be buried, with military honors.
Only two of the 16 or so officers and men aboard ST 243 survived the night. Clouston was reported lost at sea the next day. His body was recovered in the River Elbe more than two months later and buried with full military honors at Cuxhaven, Germany, on 13 Aug 1940. pic.twitter.com/2Dh1nKolcr
– Jeffrey Street (@streetwriter) June 2, 2020
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His remains were transferred in 1946 to the Becklingen War Cemetery in Niedersachsen. A commemorative plaque pays tribute to him today on the shores of Lake Saint-Louis, in his hometown. Clouston also inspired the character of Commander Bolton, played by Kenneth Branagh, in Christopher Nolan in the film “Dunkirk” (2017).
In Dunkirk, only one night left to board …
In the pocket of Dunkirk, 62,000 men remained to be evacuated to England. British Vice Admiral Ramsay, admiring the courage of the defenders of the entrenched camp, authorizes an additional night of evacuation, but to do so, the Germans must be prevented from arriving at the port.
In the morning, the French launched a new counterattack around the hamlet of Neiges, in Téteghem.
They have the reinforcement of the platoon of SOMUA of the second lieutenant Racine. It is necessary to protect the infantry which must retreat to the Moëres canal.
At 11 a.m., the Germans called in the air force to stop the French offensive. The losses are enormous. According to historian Dominique Lormier, a battalion now has only 50 able-bodied men out of 500 soldiers at the start of the fighting. Among the Germans, the losses are similar. Some of their battalions have lost up to 60% of their men.
German soldiers evacuating one of their own, injured, during the Battle of Dunkirk in June 1940. –
At 4 p.m., the last two French tanks are scuttled by their crew. The men of the second lieutenant Racine leave on foot towards the port where they will embark in the night on a rowboat. They will reach Le Tréport on June 6.
The village of Téteghem is taken. This is where Jacques Duquesne, with his family, took refuge. “Two officers (French) had arrived … One of them had hung a white handkerchief on a kind of cane. We had already heard the word “Ceasefire” circulating in a low voice. But nothing was guaranteed“The family stays under cover in a cellar, but on the evening of June 3, young Jacques Duquesne will sleep well, for the first time in weeks.
At 2 p.m., the Germans attack the Bourbourg Canal and manage to cross it after 4 hours of fighting. The French defense is organized in Coudekerque-Branche, the French fighters defend themselves house by house and end up arresting the Germans at the level of a level crossing, on the edge of Dunkirk. The opposing troops are now less than 3 kilometers from the port. French soldiers contain Germans everywhere who cannot enter the city.
The enemy is so close that the latter defenders know that they are unlikely to be able to fall back to board in time. In his book Dunkirk, Jean Beaux, a French officer, explains: “Everyone knows that resistance comes to an end, it would take a miracle to be able to keep enough the enemy, to pick up and go on board next night, because holding another day is no longer possible“.
At 5 p.m., Stukas bombed once again the Fort des Dunes in Leffrinckoucke where General Gaston Janssen died the day before. Vaults collapse, a hundred men are killed.
In Uxem, just south of Zuydcoote, the French resist until the night to prevent the Germans from reaching the beaches. After three days of fighting, the village is almost destroyed. He received the war cross in 1949, as did the village of Spycker.
In Dunkirk, in the cellars or shelters such as those of the Place de la République and the Place Jean-Bart, the civilian population is still hiding. The sub-prefect Le Gentil wrote in his memoirs that he had, until the end, tried to protect these inhabitants from the deserting soldiers who often reign terror.
“As events unfolded around Dunkirk, the city was plagued by looting and excess of all kinds“, he describes. “There were individuals of all stripes, deserters of all kinds, a plebs such as one sees only in troubled hours, who emptied many bottles of alcohol and Pernod rounded up in the shops and cellars of abandoned houses , sometimes even in occupied residences … But these brutes were armed and threatened anyone who allowed themselves an observation. Central Commissioner Preuilh, who bravely faced these fanatics, was injured by one of them during a cleaning operation in one of these shelters“.
In his novel Weekend in Zuydcoote, Robert Merle, then liaison officer in the pocket of Dunkirk, also describes this violence when his hero, the soldier Julien Maillat (played by Jean-Paul Belmondo in the film by Henri Verneuil) saves a young girl from a rape in killing two soldiers.
We follow the mole which seems to be at least two kilometers long. We step over the corpses… arrived at the end, we settle down and we have to fight against those who claim to overtake us under the most diverse and false pretexts.
French captain Patiot.
From 8:30 p.m., the last 8,000 defenders of Dunkirk are ordered to withdraw. General Barthélémy, commander of the fortified sector of Flanders, describes the scene: “Human streams came out everywhere and converged towards the East pier, forming by their junction, an immense river! Driven by the announcement that there were the last chances“.
Captain Partiot is one of these men: “We follow the mole which seems to be at least two kilometers long. We step over the corpses… arrived at the end, we settle down and we have to fight against those who claim to overtake us under the most diverse and false pretenses“.
A huge crowd of soldiers then flocked to the port and to Malo in search of a boat for England.
Defenders are normally given priority to board at port level. Lone soldiers must embark from the beaches.
British celebrate the end of Operation Dynamo
The film “Pathe Gazette Special – The War – Latest” celebrates the end of the evacuation of Dunkirk, the return of the British Expeditionary Force and cooperation with the French. –
At 10:30 p.m., the ships begin to leave Dunkirk. That last night, 26,175 French soldiers managed to embark.
Two soldiers of the French army, in a train in England on June 3, 1940, after their evacuation from Dunkirk. –
French soldiers and sailors in England after the evacuation of Dunkirk in June 1940. –
A French soldier evacuated from Dunkirk, photographed in an English station by the Daily Herald in June 1940. –
The incredible story of Léon Schulz, 12 years old
On June 3, the British discovered in the press the story of Leon Schulz, a 12-year-old French boy who had just arrived from Dunkirk with evacuated soldiers. A long article is dedicated to him on page 3 of the Daily Express.
Léon Schulz landed at Folkestone on 1er June on board Rouen, a liner transformed into a hospital ship by the French Navy.
Léon is the son of Jean and Caroline Schulz, miner and housewife of Polish origin in Escaudain (North), between Douai and Valenciennes.
The family lived in the Schneider city when war broke out. With his younger brothers, his sister and his mother, Léon Schultz left Escaudain in May 1940 to flee the German advance.
They leave for the coast with other residents of the mining town who have decided to flee. But on the road, the convoy is attacked by the German air force. Young Leon tells it to English journalists: “I was carrying the suitcase, it had become heavy for me and I was lagging behind. My mother, my younger brothers, Jean and Victor, and my sister Elise, had reached a bend in the road. Someone shouted and pushed me into a ditch as the bombers swept the road with their fires “.
Leon Schulz remains crouched in the ditch during the attack. When the convoy leaves, he drops the suitcase, runs to find his mother but cannot find it. As he cries by the roadside, a French military convoy stops. The soldiers interrogate him and take him a little further. Then it was Maurice Cadot, another soldier in search of his unit, who accompanied him to Quiéry-la-Motte.
“I was only scared once. It was when we crossed a small river and the planes came, fired with their machine guns, and we had to run to the other side. Some bullets almost hit us“, testifies the child.
“Maurice said it was better to leave the road so we crossed the fields. At night, we slept under the hedges or among the trees “. On May 22, in Quiéry-La-Motte, Léon Schulz is handed over to men from 329e artillery regiment that retreats to Dunkirk.
Private Marcel Harivel then takes charge of the child. “The soldiers gave him food. He had been found in the truck with a small helmet to put on his head and protect him from shards which could have hit him and injured him.“.
Arrived in England, the young Leon was entrusted to the refugee committee of the Red Cross and arrived in London on June 6.
Léon Schulz will be injured during the bombings on the English capital. He will then be placed in a family from the county of Devon (south-west of England), schooled and registered with the scouts of the Free French.
At the end of the war, Léon Schulz will find his family, thanks to the Red Cross which will organize his repatriation to France. He married in 1951 in Neuville-sur-Escaut where he lived until 1995.
It was his grandchildren, Romaric Bao and Romain-Gaël Richard, who retraced the young Leon’s odyssey from May 1940 to the Liberation. They are still looking for information on the soldier Maurice Cadot, on the date and the conditions of the return of their ancestor in France.
In May and June 1940, nearly 8 million civilians fled the fighting, 10,000 refugees died on the roads of Belgium and France during this exodus.
The Red Cross has identified 90,000 children who have lost their families …
► The continuation of our series tomorrow with the day of June 4, 1940. You can re-read the previous episodes in the summary below:
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