5 Fast, small German craft, similar to the U.S. PT-boat.
6 The record for these ships belongs to the Impétueuse (Lieutenant Commander François Bachy), which disembarked 649 men at Dover on May 31. In time of peace no commanding officer would dream of embarking half that number on a ship of that class.
7 Captain Urvoy de Porzamparc, well known and very popular in the Navy, commanded the 2nd Flotilla, based on Brest, which consisted of 12 destroyers of the Cyclone class (1,500 tons). Of the 9 placed under the orders of Admiral, North, 5 were sunk and 4 damaged. Only the Ouragan, undergoing repairs at Brest, and the Boulonnais and Brestois, sent to Norway and then to the Mediterranean, were absent from this battle.
8 Note by Jacques Mordal: Among them I was fortunate to find myself with Lieutenant Jacquelin de la Porte de Vaux, one of my shipmates in the Jaguar, sunk 15 days before. The Emile Deschamps went down in a few seconds, taking with her a great many of our sailors, as well as a number of the survivors of the Jaguar. But, as in all tragedies, this event had its lighter side. After I had surfaced and recovered my breath, I heard myself being hailed by de la Porte de Vaux with, “Hello, Hello! Let’s sing!” And he began singing “The Song of Departure (“Le Chant du Départ”), one of our most famous military marches.
I was picked up by the British sloop Albury; I do not remember the ship which picked up de la Porte de Vaux. But it so happened that the same ambulance carried us both to the first aid station at Margate. En route I was strongly reproached by him for not having sung while in the water, “as all sailors with their hearts in the right place must do in such circumstances.”
I had been in no more of a mood to sing patriotic songs than my clothing could be said to give me a martial appearance. In fact, I was covered by a single blanket, which I felt sliding off me while I was being carried by a big devil of an Englishman toward a group of nurses who were attending the wounded. An indignant “Shocking!” coming from the lips of a blushing young nurse finally conveyed to me the fact that the said blanket and I had parted company.
It so happened that I was repatriated to France shortly afterward, while de la Porte de Vaux was still in a hospital in England at the time of the armistice between France and Germany. I continued to serve in what became known as the “Vichy Navy,” while he joined the Free French Naval Forces. The reverse could just as well have happened; and astute is he who will tell me what my feelings would have been if I had been in my comrade’s place. Meeting unexpectedly one evening in Paris after the liberation, we fell into each other’s arms, calling each other “You dirty Vichyite!” and “You dirty De Gaulliste!” Then we ran together to the nearest bar to swap reminiscences. We almost left our whole month’s pay there!
Fall of the French Atlantic Ports
Day after day the inspiring message had gone out over the radio to a breathless France: “The entrenched camp of Dunkirk still holds fast.” Now it was over. Dunkirk had fallen.
But thanks to the Navies, all had not been lost. And remembering 1914, when a new line of defense had been created, even after days and weeks of suspense, the French wanted to believe that a new front could again be established—this time on the Somme.
But the French Navy could think only of its immediate job—keeping open the seaways, the only means by which France could continue to live. The northern ports had fallen, but the Atlantic and Channel ports still remained.
And the Navy’s prestige had never stood so high. Admiral Abrial’s name was on every lip. The survivors of Dunkirk, returning from England, were loud in their gratitude.
One of the immediate results was that on June 8, 1940, a Government decree placed all the Channel and Atlantic ports under the authority of the Commander in Chief of the Naval Forces in the same manner as the cities on the land front came under the authority of the Army.
The majority of those ports were in desperate situation. Their harbors choked by refugee ships, their roadsteads blocked by enemy magnetic mines, they were in danger of quick strangulation. The French Admiralty immediately sent to each port a qualified senior officer, with the title of “Delegate of the Admiralty,” to coordinate and direct the action of all services, civil or military, concerned with the operation of the port. It was hoped that these Missi dominici11 would clear the waterways and speed up traffic. But they arrived only in time to preside over the evacuation of the operable ships, the scuttling of those not able to get under way, the burning of petroleum stocks, etc.
Messengers of the Lord.
For after the collapse of the Meuse front, nothing could stop the German tide from sweeping over the country and engulfing the ports, one by one, from the rear.
For fifteen days General Weygand had been working diligently to set up a new front on the Somme, but it never existed except as a few isolated fortifications. And on June 5, within 24 hours after the fall of Dunkirk, the enemy attacked again along the entire line from the Argonne to the sea.
Against them the small observation posts on the coast, with batteries hastily strengthened with guns borrowed from the Navy, fought to the last. At the request of the Army, the Léopard, Epervier, and Savorgnan de Brazza laid down a barrage on the roads from inland. The old battleship Paris took firing station off Le Havre, but a direct bomb hit forced her to Brest for repairs.
FALL OF THE CHANNEL AND ATLANTIC PORTS
As at Dunkirk, the danger came from inland. A German armored corps crossed the Somme between Amiens and Abbeville on June 5, and reached the Seine three nights later. On June 9 the German tanks were at Rouen.
Here, Captain de Porzamparc had been assigned as Delegate of the Admiralty. Leaving his disabled destroyer Cyclone at Brest, he arrived at Rouen only in time to witness the destruction of the bridges just ahead of the advancing Germans, to rescue personally some sailors stranded on the opposite shore, and to evacuate anything that could be evacuated. He arrived at Admiralty headquarters, only 85 miles from Rouen, that same day, with the news of the enemy’s approach. Within two days the French Admiralty was forced to withdraw from Maintenon and to move southward, beyond the Loire.
The Germans’ lightning advance cut off all the Allied divisions which were still in upper Normandy. They no longer had any bridges—only ferries, with which to cross the Seine downstream from Rouen.
An attempt was made to rescue them by sea from Le Havre just as had been done at Dunkirk. All the small trawlers of the Pas-de-Calais Flotilla were sent for. Twenty freighters got under way from Brest and Cherbourg. The ferries were manned with armed sailors. The huge oil stocks at Port Jérôme were set on fire, to blacken the skies for days with smoke.
At Le Havre itself, Admiral Platon, who had assumed the command, did his utmost to insure the escape of the exhausted infantrymen. Motor busses were requisitioned to bring them out. But they were still 100 kilometers away, and the Germans moved too fast. On June 10, General Erwin Rommel reached the coast in the vicinity of Fécamp, where a small group of soldiers and of sailors from a minesweeper under repairs held him up for 24 hours.
Out of the five encircled Allied divisions, only a few French units and two motorized British brigades succeeded in reaching Le Havre. The remainder dug in at Saint-Valery-en-Caux, 53 miles up the coast from Le Havre, to await rescue that could only come by sea.
But miracles take place only once. Despite fierce resistance by the French and Scottish troops, the Germans drove forward until their artillery could sweep both the port and the beaches of Saint-Valery with shellfire, ending the Allied hopes. General Rommel announced the capture of 46,000 men.