Winston's War_ Churchill, 1940-1945 - Max Hastings [30]
On June 12, the 51st Highland Division at St.-Valéry-en-Caux was forced to join a local capitulation by troops of the French Tenth Army, to which the British formation was attached. Had an order been given a few days earlier, it is plausible that the troops could have been evacuated to Britain through Le Havre. Instead, they became a sacrifice to Churchill’s commitment to be seen to sustain the campaign. That same day, Gen. Sir Alan Brooke arrived with orders to lead British forces to the aid of the French. Reinforcements were still landing at the Brittany ports on the thirteenth.
When Ismay suggested that British units moving to France should hasten slowly, Churchill said: “Certainly not. It would look very bad in history if we were to do any such thing.” This was of a piece with his response to Chancellor of the Exchequer Kingsley Wood’s suggestion a few weeks later, that since Britain was financially supporting the Dutch administration in exile, in return the government should demand an increased stake in the Royal Dutch Shell oil company. “Churchill, who objected91 to taking advantage of another country’s misfortunes, said that he never again wished to hear such a suggestion.” At every turn, he perceived his own words and actions through the prism of posterity. He was determined that historians should say: “He nothing common did or mean upon that memorable scene.” Indeed, in those days Andrew Marvell’s lines on King Charles I’s execution were much in his mind. He recited them repeatedly to his staff, and then to the House of Commons. Seldom has a great actor on the stage of human affairs been so mindful of the verdict of future ages, even as he played out his own part and delivered his lines.
On June 14, the Germans entered Paris unopposed. Yet illusions persisted in London that a British foothold on the Continent might even now be maintained. Jock Colville wrote from Downing Street that day: “If the French will go on fighting92, we must now fall back on the Atlantic, creating new lines of Torres Vedras behind which British divisions and American supplies can be concentrated. Paris is not France, and … there is no reason to suppose the Germans will be able to subdue the whole country.” Colville himself was a very junior civil servant, but his fantasies were fed by more important people. That evening, Churchill spoke by telephone to Brooke in France. The prime minister deplored the fact that the remaining British formations were in retreat. He wanted to make the French feel that they were being supported. Brooke, with an Ulster bluntness of which Churchill would gain much more experience in the course of the war, retorted that “it was impossible to make a corpse feel.”93 After what seemed to the soldier an interminable and absurd wrangle, Churchill said: “All right, I agree with you.”
In that conversation, Brooke saved almost 200,000 men from death or captivity. By sheer force of personality, not much in evidence among British generals, he persuaded Churchill to allow his forces to be removed from French command and evacuated. On June 15, orders were rushed to the Canadians en route by rail from the Normandy coast to what passed for the battlefront. Locomotives were shunted from the front to the rear of their trains, which then set off once more for the ports. At Brest, embarking troops were ordered to destroy all vehicles and equipment. However, some determined and imaginative officers laboured defiantly and successfully to evacuate precious artillery. For the French, Weygand was further embittered by tidings of another British withdrawal.