New Brighton RSA president Geoff Butler (right) presents 90-year-old Bert Small with his life membership award from the club.

The night the people rose to the troops

‘Tired, dirty, hungry they came back – unbeatable’, said the headline above HILDE MARCHANT’s front-page story in London’s Daily Express newspaper of May 31, 1940. Christchurch-based Dunkirk veteran Bert Small has a copy of the paper in his memorabilia. Marchant’s report, filed from Dover, continued:

The Army is coming back from Belgium. It is a dirty, tired, hungry army. An army that has been shelled and bombed from three sides, and had to stagger backward into the sea to survive. An army that has been betrayed, but never defeated or dispirited.

There was a touch of glory about these returning men as I saw them tramping along a pier, still in formation, still with rifles. For this army still had a grin on their oily, bearded faces.

They were exhausted. Thay had not slept or eaten for days. Many tramped off in their stockinged feet. Others were in their shirt-sleeves.

Many had wounds. Many had torn uniforms, and their tin hats blasted open like a metal cabbage.They saluted their officers, who stood with ragged macintoshes and battered hats, said “Thank you, sir”. Then they left to sleep. Here was Belgium’s betrayal. But here was no defeat. That had not lost their battle. Their eyes, bloodshot and half-closed, still mirrored the spirit and cause of their fight. That has not gone, nor can it be taken away. How to start telling you of these men? It is the greatest and most glorious sight I have ever seen. I saw them first huddled in old tramp steamers, ships of all sorts, even barges in tow.

The ragged bits of transport had been ploughing backwards and forwards. Germans had chased them halfway over the Channel, and in their turn had been chased back.

Young crews volunteered for the job, and the older, local skippers who know the Channel better than the land. Without fear they went into the blast and hell on the other side.

Sitting under the curtain of fire that hangs over the wrecked coast, they brought out our boys alive. The soldiers struggled out to the ships. Then, with fire on their tail, they crept out again and dashed for England. The men came ashore in heaps, scarcely able to stand. Yet they pulled themselves into straight lines and walked to the harbour gates.

I saw one man with a handkerchief tied over his head wound. Another with a torn trouser-leg soaked in blood. Another with his arm tied up in a scarf. There had been no time for bandages.
And, as they came though the gates they were met by just one of those simple gestures from ordinary people that makes them feel it is all worth it.

People in a row of houses near the harbour, disturbed in the night by the noise, went to see what was happening. They saw the troops. They went back, raided their pantries, gathered the sheets and blankets off their own beds, and went to help.

All night and all day these men and women, and even children, have been standing there with cups of tea, lumps of bread, and cigarettes. They paid for them themselves. When their stocks
ran out, they sent schoolboys with barrows round the town appealing for help. The barrows came back laden piled with food and hundreds of cigarettes.

Many of the soldiers arrived in only a vest and socks. Clothes were gathered up in the town and given to them. One woman I talked to said: “It was so pitiful when they first came. We had
not expected them and we soon ran out of food. They were so hungry that we had to give them just plain dry bread and they took it as if it was a whole meal.”

As the busloads went through the town the men cheered to the crowds and shouted, “Don’t worry. We’ll get them yet.”
One young lad I saw stagger out of a ship rather dazed, looked towards the town and said: “So this is it! So this is England! God bless it!”

Let us not forget the Navy and the skippers who went to carry them home, making many trips in two days. They, too, had no sleep.

The men, when they came on shore, stood and gave three cheers for the crews that had brought them back. And they gave three cheers, too, as they climbed into the buses. They handed empty cups back to the women. They were so grateful that they
patted them on the head and said, “God bless you.”

That is the Army. They have come back from a bitter fight. Yet they are grateful for the small things the women were only too glad to do.

While these men breathe, they CANNOT pass.

Note: Hilde Marchant emerged as one of England’s foremost World War 2 writers. Her work reflected her ability to look at the war from people’s perspectives.