Timeline June 1940

TIMELINE—JUNE 1940 This month is mainly about the fall of France, and the continued evacuation of Allied troops not just from Dunkirk but other north western ports. It also sees Italy enter the war, albeit ill-prepared to do so. It ends as the Battle of Britain 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 Arras. 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 Gloucestershire Regiment (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 Prisoner of War camp in Germany. 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 Paris for the first time, killing 45 people, and the Allies began evacuating Narvik in Norway. 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 Europe 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 our 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 Somme. 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 Jersey. 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 Sweden to Germany, and he who had ordered the incursion into neutral Norwegian waters – for example, the ‘Altmark’ incident in February 1940 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 destroyers HMS Ardent and HMS Acasta. The three British warships were taking part in Operation Alphabet, 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 Royal Navy 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 Plymouth Naval Memorial 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 the Battle of Britain 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 Winston Churchill - 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 Charles de Gaulle to London to request more assistance from the RAF.

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