Dunkirk: The Men They Left Behind by Sean Longden Read Free Book Online

hot food aggravated their bellies – but every step westwards was a step nearer home and safety.
    If marching taxed their dwindling reserves of energy, then to halt and have to prepare defensive positions only deepened their misery. The experiences of the 2nd Battalion of the Gloucestershire Regiment reflected the experiences of thousands of retreating soldiers. In one day they marched thirty miles, much of the time wearing gas masks, the result of unfounded rumours about imminent chemical attacks. Despite the heat of the summer sun they had marched onwards, the sweat collecting inside the rubber of their masks. The dust they kicked up from the roads as they marched further heightened their sense of despondency when the battalion’s exhausted anti-tank gunners mistakenly shot-up two British tanks. As the battalion’s adjutant later wrote, the men were ‘drunk from lack of sleep’. 8 But if the Gloucesters were exhausted, the effects of the weather, constant marching, lack of hot food and shortage of sleep had an even greater effect on their officers whose responsibilities prevented them taking proper rest: ‘To stop moving: to sit down was to sleep at once. To obey an order was simple, to have to give one was torture to the brain. The desire for sleep predominated all others.’ 9 At one briefing of three officers it was found that none had been awake all the time. Eventually the meeting was abandoned when the adjutant had fallen asleep for the fourth time. At another briefing officers arrived, saluted the CO, then immediately sank to the floor and fell asleep. Once all the officers were slumbering, a liaison officer was forced to wake them. Eventually the RSM placed an upturned bayonet into his belt. His logic was simple: if he fell asleep, his head would slump forward, then the bayonet would prick him and cause him to awaken.
    Despite such deprivations, the BEF had slogged onwards, seldom more than one step ahead of the enemy. As they retreated, the troops were struck by the contrast between their advance into Belgium to meet the enemy and the disarray that now surrounded them. One unit had engaged the enemy for a total of thirty-six hours and then marched for twenty-seven hours, covering forty miles. The men of another battalion recalled stopping during the march into Belgium to change their socks and have their feet powdered. As they fell back there was no time for such niceties. Instead they had to scrounge socks and towels from a nearby convent and slumped down to sleep on grass verges as they waited for the endless columns of refugees to pass. Such was their exhaustion that their commanding officer was rendered speechless by exhaustion before finally collapsing. Weighed down by their weapons and equipment, some dumped their arms in the battalion carriers alongside the carcasses of pigs and chicken that had been taken from abandoned farms. Failing to carry their weapons was against all orders – they should always have remained ready to fight – but these were men approaching the limit of their physical endurance.
    Nature itself seemed to be working against them. In the mornings they awoke to the sun rising in the east, obscuring the day’s first movements by the enemy. For the rest of the day the summer sun scorched them, soaking their already dirty and stinking uniforms with sweat, while the heat assaulted throats parched by the clouds of dust kicked up from beneath their weary feet. On days when the sun failed to shine, the heavens opened and rain soaked the marching men. Their blistered feet squelched in sodden boots and the musty aroma of dirty, sodden clothes arose to suppress the stench of unwashed bodies. At the end of each day nature taunted the men marching westwards. As they looked towards the horizon they could see the sun setting far in the distance, mocking them as it signalled the seeming impossibility of ever reaching the end of their journey.
    This interaction with nature was experienced by many