TIMELINE—

This month is mainly about the fall of , and the continued evacuation of Allied troops not just from but other north western ports. It also sees enter the war, albeit ill-prepared to do so. It ends as the begins.

On 1st June, as Operation Dynamo continued, a further 64,429 Allied troops were evacuated from Dunkirk.

The following day Hitler set foot on French territory for the first time, visiting the Canadian National War Memorial at Vimy Ridge near . It had been rumoured, and widely reported, that the Germans had destroyed the memorial, and it is thought that Hitler chose to visit the site to prove otherwise. It is also suggested that he particularly admired the memorial because it is a monument to peace, not a celebration of war. Make of that what you will! Whatever, he ensured that the monument was protected throughout the war.

On 3rd June the last British troops were evacuated from Dunkirk, and overnight over 26,000 French troops. At 10.20am on 4th June the Germans occupied the city and captured the 40,000 French troops who were left. Dunkirk was reduced to rubble.

Overall Operation Dynamo had rescued 338,226 men – two thirds of them British – from the beaches of Dunkirk, although 243 vessels and 106 aircraft had been destroyed in the process. Lord Gort, the Commander of the BEF, was also evacuated, leaving Lt General Harold Alexander in command of the remaining troops

Among those still in France was Private Herbert Mutton. The (Glosters) had sent two battalions to France, and Herbert and his brother, Dick, were among those whose role it was to cover the retreat of troops. Many were killed, and almost the entire 2nd Battalion captured, including Dick, who spent the rest of the war in a camp in . Herbert managed to escape the encircling Germans and went on the run. He was posted missing for over six weeks but made his way to St Nazaire … and we’ll pick up his story a little later in the timeline.

Also on 3rd June, the Germans bombed for the first time, killing 45 people, and the Allies began evacuating in .

Back on the home front an evacuation of a different kind was taking place. With the possibility of invasion looming, many children from the south east coast of England were being evacuated to areas deemed safer. On 3rd June a group of about 400 children arrived in Bridgend . Churchill had one leadership quality that Chamberlain had lacked – the ability to inspire – and during May and June 1940 he made some of his most memorable and stirring speeches.

The second of those speeches was on 4th June 1940 in the House of Commons when Churchill outlined the grim reality of the disastrous losses in and what was now facing the British people. He concluded with the following:

“We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God's good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.”

Although some MPs were moved to tears by the power of his speech, others, and notably members of his own party, listened in sullen silence. In fact, at the time it generated a rather downbeat reaction overall. But Churchill was willing to run the risk of depressing his audience if this would serve the greater purpose of bringing them into contact with reality; he was not attempting to win easy popularity by providing false hope. And he followed this formula throughout the war, not always with complete success in terms of audience response, but with the ultimate achievement of establishing his credibility as someone who would deliver the facts no matter how unpalatable they might be. Arguably, this is a lesson which some of our current politicians, both at home and abroad, might do well to follow.

With the northern ports secured the Germans began the second phase of their invasion of France on 5th June, with motorized units making rapid progress striking southwards from the River . Although the French in many areas fought well, the Germans destroyed the Allied forces in the field in short order between the 5th and 12th June.

On a lighter note, Thomas John Woodward – Tom Jones – was born in Treforest, and the following day the eldest daughter of another legendary singer and actor, Nancy Sinatra, was born in New . But, much more seriously, also on 8th June the ill-fated British involvement in the Battle for Norway came to an end with the evacuation of the last troops from Narvik. The disaster in France had compelled Churchill to order a withdrawal.

“It is the supreme irony of Churchill’s career that he was brought to power by a monumental cock-up of his own making.” ‘Waiting for War – Britain 1939-1940’ – Barry Turner

Not for the first time fancying himself a strategist, it was Churchill who had seized on a plan to cut off the vital supplies of iron ore from to Germany, and he who had ordered the incursion into neutral Norwegian waters – for example, the ‘Altmark’ incident in and the laying of mines. And he dismissed warnings that there were insufficient British troops trained and equipped for amphibious operations in the severe cold of the north. But Churchill managed to persuade a prevaricating Chamberlain to go along with his plans, at least in part, and ultimately it was Chamberlain who took the blame for their failure.

There is a tragic and still controversial postscript to the Battle of Norway.

Late in the afternoon of 8th June 8th HMS Glorious, one of Britain's largest and fastest aircraft carriers, was sunk along with her escorting HMS Ardent and HMS Acasta. The three British warships were taking part in , the evacuation of Allied forces from Norway, and in a remarkable achievement the Glorious had managed to evacuate both troops and RAF aircraft, not all of the latter adapted for deck landings.

The ships were spotted by the German battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. With no aircraft in the air to provide an early warning, and despite a heroic, Victoria Cross-nominated defensive performance by the destroyers, escape proved impossible. By around 6.20pm, the valiant Acasta, last of the British ships still afloat, which had torpedoed Scharnhorst in a last gasp attack, sank, blazing, beneath the waves. Aboard Scharnhorst a film crew recorded the action and Glorious became perhaps the first major ship whose demise was seen in moving pictures, triumphantly displayed to the world only days later on a German newsreel.

Some 900 men went into the cold, northern waters that evening and they faced a horrifying ordeal. The German battleships did not stop to pick up survivors. The British, on the other hand, unaware that the three ships had been lost until the following day, even continued to send radio orders to them until the Germans announced the sinkings. Hour after hour men waited in the water and in open rafts as their shipmates slipped away around them. When Norwegian vessels finally found them nearly three days later, only 40 remained alive. The death toll of 1,519 exceeded any of the other great British naval disasters of the war. One of those who died was Petty Officer Telegraphist Philip Barrow from Cardiff who is remembered on the

Also among the dead was the Captain of the Glorious, Guy D'Oyly-Hughes, a highly decorated submariner whose First World War record was legendary. One of the Royal Navy's precious few large aircraft carriers had been sunk, along with two destroyers and, with in the offing, two RAF fighter squadrons. Given the catastrophic loss an Admiralty Board of Enquiry was held within days of the 34 available survivors returning to Britain, its findings then sealed until 2041.

Controversy began almost immediately but given the exigencies of war no answers were forthcoming until 1946. A brief official statement was then released, effectively saying that, short on fuel, the ship was in the wrong place at the wrong time. First to contradict this was - who said the explanation was ‘not convincing’ - but the story held.

Then, in 1980, the Navy’s official historian lifted the lid on the controversy, placing much of the blame on the ‘cantankerous and incompetent’ Captain D’Oyly-Hughes. Other accounts also began to emerge, the most notable suggesting that HMS Devonshire, a cruiser carrying the Norwegian royal family to Britain, had received but failed to act on signals from the Glorious. The truth remains elusive, and perhaps always will, but the sinking of the Glorious and her two escort ships was an inglorious end to British involvement in Norway.

On 9 June 1940, with France reeling under the German assault, the French Prime Minister sent General to London to request more assistance from the RAF. Of his first meeting with Churchill at Downing Street de Gaulle later wrote: “Mr. Churchill seemed to me to be equal to the rudest task, provided it also had grandeur….The humour, too, with which he seasoned his acts and words, and the way in which he made use, now of graciousness, now of anger, contributed to make one feel what mastery he had of the terrible game in which he was engaged.”

That same day the Germans launched a major offensive on Paris and the French government fled the capital.

Norway eventually surrendered to the Germans on 10th June, the King and the Norwegian government having escaped to form a in London.

That same day Italy declared war on France and Britain, and overnight began an invasion of France although in reality this was limited to border skirmishes for the first few days.

Operation Cycle, the evacuation of Allied troops from began.

The following day was eventful. The RAF bombed targets in and in Italy, unsuccessfully, triggering a retaliation bombing of . That day, 11th June, saw the beginning of the Siege of Malta which was to last for two long years.

Churchill flew to Orleans for a meeting of the Anglo-French Supreme War Council. Although the French expressed determination to continue fighting, the possibility of France seeking an with Germany loomed.

On 12th June 1940, just days after the evacuations at Dunkirk, thousands of British troops remained in France fighting with the . Largely comprised of men from the 51st Highland , they fought almost continuously for ten days against overwhelming odds until many of them who had not been evacuated from Le Havre were surrounded at St-Valéry-en-Caux by Rommel’s Panzers.

A combination of fog and the proximity of German artillery above the town prevented a flotilla of ships from reaching the shore to evacuate them. Those who were not killed in the fierce fighting, or fell to their deaths from the cliffs trying to escape, were captured and marched hundreds of miles to PoW camps in Eastern Europe, where they endured appalling conditions for five long years. The decision to surrender had not been taken lightly by their Commander, General Fortune, but there was no viable option.

There was hardly a town or village in the Highlands that was not affected by the loss, but relative to Dunkirk, the story of those who fought and fell at St-Valery-en-Caux is less well known.

As Paris was declared an , the Anglo-French Supreme War Council met for the final time at on 13th June. Although the meeting ended in some confusion, the surrender of the French to the Germans appeared inevitable.

The following day the Germans entered Paris unopposed. The city was silent and seemingly empty – two million Parisians had already left and all shops and businesses were closed. On 15th June the French fortress at - which had been defended at such enormous cost to life during the First World War and never surrendered – capitulated to the Germans. And as Verdun was lost Operation Ariel began – the Allied evacuation of tens of thousands of military personnel and civilians from the ports of north west France.

The following day the French Prime Minister Reynaud failed to motivate his government to continue fighting and resigned. He was replaced by 84 year old Marshal Pétain, a veteran and hero of the First World War, and on 17th June Pétain requested Germany armistice terms.

We now pick up the story of Herbert Mutton. Having escaped from Dunkirk Herbert had made his way to Saint-Nazaire where the troopship RMS Lancastria was evacuating British troops, Herbert being one of them.

The RMS Lancastria was a Cunard liner that had been requisitioned as a troopship at the beginning of the war. On 14th June 1940 the Lancastria set sail from . Her mission was to sail to the French port of Saint-Nazaire to participate in Operation Ariel.

The Lancastria arrived at Saint-Nazaire on 17th June. Her Captain, Rudolph Sharp, set about loading the ship with as many and soldiers as possible. Indeed, the orders were to disregard conventional limits on the safe number of passengers that could be carried. The usual limit was 2200 including a crew of 375. On 17th June 1940, around 9000 were squeezed on board.

Although the Lancastria was full and permission was granted to depart from Saint-Nazaire, Captain Sharp chose not to do so immediately. He had to balance the risk of U-boat attack without escorts against attack from the air, and in port there were additional anti-aircraft guns. He decided to wait for destroyer escorts.

At 3.48pm on 17th June 1940 a Junkers Ju88 attacked the Lancastria. In total four bombs hit the target. One exploded in the engine room. The explosions opened the fuel which poured into the water around the now listing vessel. This had horrific consequences. Many of those who jumped from the ship found themselves in crude oil. This is incredibly hard to swim in, causing some to drown. Worse still, the then strafed the seas around the Lancastria. This ignited the oil, creating a blaze in the sea. Within 20 minutes of being bombed, the Lancastria had sunk.

No precise numbers are available for the number of lives lost. Estimates vary from a lower end of 3500 to an upper end of 6500. It is known that 2477 survived the sinking. 900 were picked up by one trawler. Other vessels in the area were able to save others. Whatever the actual numbers, the sinking of the RMS Lancastria was, and remains, the worst* maritime disaster in British history. And yet it is a largely forgotten story. Why?

To quote from a BBC article and interview: "The trouble with the story of the Lancastria is it doesn't fit with the grand narrative of that period - the miraculous evacuation of Dunkirk, and the Battle of Britain … No amount of spin can turn the story of the Lancastria into something triumphant."

The losses were so catastrophic that Churchill ordered news of the sinking to be kept from the British public. Families of those who perished knew only that their loved ones had died whilst serving with the BEF in France.

One of those who did survive the evacuation from Saint-Nazaire was Herbert Mutton, on which ship it is not known. But his is one of many remarkable stories of survival against the odds.

[*Within a month Britain had experienced both the worst naval disaster in history, the loss of HMS Glorious, and the worst maritime disaster, the loss of RMS Lancastria]

On 18th June Hitler and Mussolini met in to discuss the French armistice request. Mussolini had been hoping to obtain Hitler’s agreement to total surrender and Italian occupation of territory in the southern part of France that was still free. But Hitler was not interested – he wanted to offer France easy surrender terms to avoid them continuing the fight from – and this left Mussolini embarrassed and frustrated and needing to secure a separate peace with France.

Meanwhile, in London, the BBC broadcast a speech by General de Gaulle calling on the people of France now in Britain to join him in continuing to resist the Germans.

That same day Churchill delivered the third of his most notable speeches in the House of Commons, commonly remembered for his reference to “their finest hour”.

When Churchill began speaking his fellow parliamentarians knew that 18th June marked a significant date in British history—the 125th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo, when British troops under the Duke of Wellington defeated . Churchill’s task was to rally their descendants to stop another authoritarian from dominating the European continent, this time against even greater odds.

Churchill spoke for thirty-six minutes. His final paragraph summarized what Britain and the world faced:

“The is over: the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilisation. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity ofour institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be freed and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the , including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duty and so bear ourselves that, if the and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say: This was their finest hour.”

That night Churchill repeated his speech almost word for word, this time on BBC radio. He spoke the entire time with a cigar in his mouth, leaving some of his listeners to conclude he was drunk. However imperfect Churchill’s delivery may have been, the emotional power of his words was considerable. Three weeks later, on 10th July, the Luftwaffe began bombing Britain. What Churchill had named the Battle of Britain had begun.

On 21st June Italy launched an offensive along the border with France but with very limited success – it was, in reality, a greater defensive success for France. But by that stage France was nearing an armistice with Germany, and an armistice with Italy would follow.

In what would symbolise and underline the humiliation of France, Hitler determined that the 1940 armistice would be signed in the same railway carriage and in the same location – the Forest of Compiègne - that was used in 1918. The carriage was removed from a museum and on 21st June Hitler visited the site and joined the negotiations. He sat in the same chair as General Foch had sat in when he faced the defeated Germans in 1918. In what was regarded as a calculated act of disdain he left then the meeting after the preamble.

The armistice was signed the following day – 22nd June – and left Germany in control of northern and western France and the vital Atlantic ports. The unoccupied part of France became known as Vichy as a new capital was established there. The Vichy regime, led by Marshal Pétain was authoritarian and collaborated with the Germans. While de Gaulle formed an army and a government in exile in Britain, he was technically a rebel.

On Hitler’s orders the armistice site was demolished three days later. The carriage was taken to as a trophy, and the only statue left on the site was that of General Foch, now overlooking only wasteland. The carriage was later exhibited in Berlin, and then moved to Thuringia where it was destroyed by SS troops and buried. After the war the Forest of Compiègne site and memorials were restored by German PoW’s.

On 23rd June Hitler took the train to Paris and surveyed various sites there, notably the which provided the perfect backdrop to several iconic photographs. He did not visit Paris again.

The 24th saw the signing of the French/Italian armistice with only a small zone of Italian occupation established.

The collapse of France and the signing of the armistice left the strategic assumptions on which Britain had planned to fight Hitler completely obsolete. With France out of the equation, Britain's war for the next four years would be fought in the air, at sea, and in the Mediterranean, but not on the Western Front. Not until D-Day, almost four years later, did a major return to France.

On 28th June the Germans bombed the Channel Islands of and Jersey, unaware that the islands were undefended.

Sitting just 20 miles off the French coast, the Channel Islands had no strategic importance to Britain. They were demilitarised and the pre-war garrisons and militia were assigned to new duties.

As the German army moved through France, some 30,000 Channel Islanders - about a third of the population - were evacuated, but the rest decided to stay put.

The bombing killed 44 people. Two days later Luftwaffe personnel took control of Guernsey airfield. There they met the chief of police, who informed them that the islands were undefended. The other islands surrendered and each was subsequently garrisoned. They remained under German occupation until May 1945.