Fierce fighting still continued at centers of resistance through the night of the 23rd. At daybreak a small sweeper succeeded in landing a few supplies for the defenders despite heavy machinegun fire from nearby enemy posts. With dawn the Luftwaffe reappeared. The super-destroyer Chacal, under Commander Jean Estienne, took two direct bomb hits and sank just off the jetties with heavy loss of life. Other ships were more or less seriously damaged.
General Lanquetot, holding out in the citadel, received his last telephone message from Admiral Abrial, at Cherbourg, on the morning of May 25. The message said, “Warmest congratulation of the High Command on your heroic resistance!”
But the fight was coming to an end. One by one the last defenses fell. General Lanquetot accepted the German terms, and the citadel’s defenders surrendered with the honors of war.
Similar battles were taking place at the same time at Cape Gris-Nez and Calais.
At Gris-Nez itself there were no coastal batteries. Construction of a battery to control the channel between the minefields and the shore had been started several months before, but never completed. The four 100-mm. guns which constituted its armament had been installed a few days previously but not yet supplied with ammunition. The several hundred Navy men stationed there had nothing but a couple of 37-mm. guns, 4 machine-guns, and 20 rifles. Yet their commanding officer, Lieut. Commander Ducuing, refused the German demands to surrender. After resisting all attacks for 24 hours he met his death at 0900 on May 25, under the flag which he himself had hoisted during the height of the fight.
Calais had no stronger French garrison than Boulogne, but the British Army was doubly interested in holding on to the port as a vital link in the British communications with England. On May 19 British infantry, coming from the front, installed themselves in the city, along with strong artillery and searchlight detachments. During the next few days a fresh infantry brigade and a regiment of tanks arrived from England. These forces made a series of attacks in an effort to cut through the enemy to the south and relieve Boulogne, as well as to rush 350,000 rations through to Dunkirk for the use of the British Expeditionary Force pocketed there.
Not one of these attempts succeeded. Upon their failure, the British set fire to their truck trains, destroyed their tanks, and prepared to evacuate. Dumfounded, the naval commander at Calais informed Admiral, North, of the British intentions.
Admiral Abrial had just been personally directed by General Weygand to defend the northern ports at all costs. For without entry ports for supplies, the surrounded troops could not be maintained.
The British War Office, upon receiving the French protest, changed its orders. The English troops in Calais remained. It was in the ensuing siege that Brigadier C. N. Nicholson, in command of the polyglot collection of English troops and French soldiers and sailors, was to win honor and fame.
With all its forces fully occupied elsewhere, the French Navy was unable to send any combatant ships to Calais. The British Admiralty sent one cruiser and five or six British and Polish destroyers, of which two were seriously damaged in bombing raids by the Luftwaffe.
Training their guns inland over the roofs of the city, the French coastal batteries fired on all targets that appeared in the field of fire. When the shifting zone of battle rendered the guns of Bastion No. 2 (three 194-mm. guns) useless, the gun crews received orders to destroy their guns and attempt to cut their way to freedom through the German lines already encircling the city. But in the effort another tragic mistake occurred. The lieutenant who had commanded the bastion stumbled into an English position, gave the wrong answers to the questions—which he did not understand—and was shot on the spot as a spy.
Bastion No. 11 was defended until May 25 by a handful of French sailors and soldiers, aided by some 30 Moroccan infantrymen and a detachment of British soldiers. Before overwhelming the position the Germans had to call in all their artillery and air forces in that sector.
Finally, on the evening of May 26, after a heroic resistance that lent added luster to the proud history of the ancient city, General Nicholson was forced to surrender to overwhelming forces.
When one hugs the French coast from Gris-Nez toward Calais and Dunkirk, the cliffs dominating the sea fall away to make room for a flat and sandy moor, intersected, 20 kilometers from Dunkirk, by the river Aa. The Aa is a canalized stream, not over 20 meters wide a little bit up from Gravelines. Under no circumstances could it be considered a serious military obstacle. Yet, other than the Aa, there was nothing else in the plain that could stop even an automobile driving toward the waterfront at Dunkirk.
It was at the Aa, therefore, that Admiral Abrial made an attempt to throw up a barrier to check what he was still advised were no more than mere “infiltrations” by isolated German tanks.
As a matter of fact, on May 22—just when the first assaults were taking place at Boulogne and Calais—a third German armored division was arriving in sight of the Aa. The only Allied forces there, at Gravelines, were some units of the Services of Supply, which, finding their further retreat blocked, had stopped there, all mixed in with a horde of refugees.
During the day, however, Admiral Abrial brought up some detachments of reconnaissance groups retreating from Belgium, the two mobile batteries he had pulled back from the mouth of the Scheldt, and an infantry battalion. Other elements were to follow—among them isolated groups of sailors from the ships that had been sunk in the harbors. In all, there were around 4,000 or 5,000 men, to which were to be added a very weary British battalion, which took position before Gravelines—and then retired as soon as the French arrived.
There were also two motorized 75-mm. guns and three English tanks which arrived from Calais. How they got there in the night, they did not know—but when daylight came, they found themselves practically surrounded by German tanks! From seaward, the coastal batteries of Fort West (164-mm. guns) and of Fort Philippe (95-mm. guns) provided supporting fire on the improvised front, and the 194-mm. guns of the Mardyck fortifications also chimed in. These latter guns were entirely manned by the crew of the French destroyer Adroit, which had just been sunk off Dunkirk.
Fortunately the German tank division headed for Gravelines was delayed by a confusion of orders and then counterorders from the German High Command. But, farther upstream, one SS division and two other Panzer divisions took position on the left bank of the Aa all the way up to Saint-Omer, 28 kilometers above Gravelines. This was a far stronger force than would be required to break through the improvised French positions.
The critical battle began on May 24, and for a time all went well at Gravelines. The morale of the French Army, Navy, and Air Force, as well as of the British units participating, was, as Admiral Abrial reported that evening, exceptionally high. The three British tanks did wonders. The Navy’s 155-mm. guns fired through open sights on the German tanks, stopping them dead in their tracks, though not without suffering considerable loss in return. An intercepted German message testified to the stern resistance encountered on the lower Aa.
But, farther upstream, the river was crossed at several points. Nothing—nothing except an order from Adolph Hitler—could now prevent these enemy columns from emerging the following day on the very docks of Dunkirk and thus completely encircling a half million French and British fighting men in this Flanders trap.
Nothing except an order from Hitler. And, amazingly, that order came!
The reasons for it are still being debated.
One contention is that the German High Command had already begun planning for the operations to come. It considered—too soon, no doubt—that this first phase of the Battle of France was virtually over—and won. The tanks needed a breathing spell; they should be regrouped before driving ahead in the second phase—the march on Paris and the annihilation of the remaining French Armies.
Another view is that Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring had persuaded Hitler that he could eliminate the Dunkirk pocket with his Luftwaffe alone—the psychological value of which would have been tremendous.
At all events the German generals,