My visit in 2004 to the port of Saint-Valery-en-Caux in Normandy, France, where the 51st Highland Division was forced to surrender to the Germans in 1940 when evacuation failed.
Note: the photographs used in this article were taken by me on that trip.
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Most people know about the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk between 24th May and 4th June 1940, when almost 340,000 British and French troops were rescued from defeat at the hands of Hitler’s German Army at the start of the Second World War. But much less well known is how a
single British division, the 51st Highland (Scottish) Division, was isolated from the main British force and had to retreat instead to the port of Saint-Valery-en-Caux, where they eventually surrendered on 12th June 1940 after evacuation failed.When the Germans invaded France and the Low Countries on 10th May 1940 they did so with two main thrusts. The first was through Holland and northern Belgium and was designed to fool the Allies into thinking it was the main attack. This was what the Allies expected, and they were ready to rush the British forces and the most mobile French forces into Belgium to meet it, relying on the Maginot Line to hold the common border of France and Germany to the south. What the Allies didn’t expect was the second German thrust, through the Ardennes Forest of southern Belgium, hitting the gap between the northern end of the Maginot Line and the southern flank of the Allied field forces, a gap that was poorly defended because the Allied planners reckoned the Ardennes too heavily wooded to move large tank units through. But the Germans managed it, bursting through then swinging north towards the coast, up behind the Allies, cutting them off. After an attempt to cut the southern German spearhead failed at Arras, the surrounded Allies retreated to Dunkirk where they were evacuated to Britain.
But before the Germans attacked, one British Division had been separated from the British Expeditionary Force and attached to French forces to the south to practice working together. So when the Germans attacked, this British unit found itself south of the German spearhead coming through the Ardennes, cut off from the rest of the British forces and unable to reach Dunkirk. This unit was a Scottish infantry division, the 51st Highland Division, consisting of 152nd, 153rd and 154th Infantry Brigades. The 51st fell back to the Somme with the French Tenth Army, where it took part in an ill-fated counter-attack near Abbeville. When the Germans surged forward again, the 51st and large numbers of French troops retreated towards the coast well to the west of Dunkirk. 154th Brigade was detached to aid in the defence of Le Havre, from where it was evacuated by sea on 13th June, but the other two brigades continued to Saint-Valery-en-Caux, along with French 9th Corps. There they were trapped by German forces of Rommel’s 7th Panzer Division which overlooked them from the high ground surrounding the port. General Fortune, commander of the 51st, called for the Navy to evacuate his troops whilst mounting a vigorous defence with counter-attacks to try to eject the Germans from the cliffs that overlooked the port. But these counter-attacks failed and with Germans poised with direct line of fire onto the port and beaches it was decided a daytime evacuation was impossible. A night-time evacuation attempt on 11th June failed when fog and communications problems prevented troops making contact with ships and the next day, with ammunition running out, the French and British units surrendered. Most of the men spent the rest of the war in German prisoner of war camps. In name at least, the division fought on – the 9th Highland Division, a division of territorial (reservist) troops in the UK was renamed as the 51st and went on to fight in North Africa and D-Day.
I visited Saint-Valery-en-Caux in August 2004 with my father as part of a holiday together visiting D-Day related sites in Normandy. Although Saint-Valery-en-Caux relates to the start of the war four years earlier, we decided the opportunity to go there was too good to miss. The port is situated in a narrow V-shaped ravine cutting through the cliffs that form most of the coast here, and it is on the cliffs on the eastern side that the monument to the 51st Highland Division stands.
The monument is a rough granite obelisk about 15 feet high, set in the middle of a St Andrews cross of light and dark paving slabs. The obelisk has the HD logo of the 51st Highland Division in a roundel at the top, with
an inscription one third-way up that reads (in English on one side and French on the other): To the memory of the glorious men, officers, NCOs and soldiers of the Scottish 51st Division. The Scots erected this monument on the ground of their old ally, 1939-45.From the monument, one can see how the cliffs dominate the town and how, once taken by the Germans, this vantage point made evacuation so difficult.
There are several other sites in and around the town which commemorate the stand. On the western cliffs, on the opposite side, stands a memorial to a French cavalry unit that also took part in the defence, though we didn’t know of this monument at the time we visited the town so didn’t go across to see it.
The town church has a stained glass window, installed in 1940, dedicated to the 51st. It is a modern design based on a plan view of the town aflame, nestling between the cliffs and topped with the HD logo.
A plaque in French on the harbour wall commemorates the five Belgian boats which managed to evacuate a small number of men of the 51st Highland Division and French 9th Corps, the only ones to escape surrender. The plaque was erected by a Belgian veterans’ association.
The most poignant reminder of the battle, and one that hammers home the joint defence put up by French and Scottish units, is the joint Franco-British military cemetery on the south-eastern edge of the town. It is a long, thin cemetery, winding along a side ravine and almost hidden by the trees. It can be difficult to find, but is worth a visit. Look for Commonwealth War Grave Commission (CWGC) signs or signs to Cimitiere Militaire Franco-Britannique.
There lie 234 Commonwealth military burials, most from the 1940 battle, 63 of which are of unidentified bodies (“known unto God” as the inscriptions on them say), and 218 French military burials. The cemetery has at its centre the Cross of Sacrifice that is standard to all Commonwealth War Grave Commission cemeteries and on one side of it the British and Commonwealth graves lie in four long lines, with the French and French colonial graves on the other. They are easily to tell apart: the Commonwealth gravestones are slabs with slightly rounded tops and the French ones are crosses (see the photographs below).
Photograph: British military graves at the Saint-Valery-en-Caux military cemetery (click to view)
Photograph: French military graves at the Saint-Valery-en-Caux military cemetery (click to view)
The majority of the British graves bear the regimental insignia of the Scottish units that made up the 51st Highland Division: the Seaforth Highlanders, the Cameron Highlanders, the Black Watch and the Gordon Highlanders. Below is a photo of two graves of soldiers of the Gordon Highlanders. One can see the regimental insignia of a stags head within boughs, with the regimental motto “bydand” (Scots Gaelic for steadfast) below.
The French Army had a large number of colonial units from the then-French possessions of North Africa and French Indo-China (Vietnam, Indonesia and surrounding areas). The French 9th Corps at Saint-Valery-en-Caux included some colonial units, as attested by the grave in the photograph below, of tirailleur (light infantryman) N’Go Doan Ton from a French Indo-China unit. It is sobering to imagine young men like him fighting and dying a continent away from their homeland.
The visit to this quiet cemetery was a fitting end to our short visit to this small port that is such an important symbol of Franco-Scottish brotherhood.
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This article was previously published on Socyberty, here.