The Highland Division Read online

  THE

  HIGHLAND

  DIVISION

  By ERIC LINKLATER

  Contents

  Author’s Note

  1. The Fifty-First

  2. Highlanders in the Maginot Line

  3. The Affair of Grossenwald

  4. The Division Moves Westward

  5. The Battle of Abbeville

  6. The Germans Drive Forward

  7. The Fight at Franleu

  8. Fight and March and Fight Again

  9. Exploit of the Argylls

  10. Rumour and Retreat

  11. Ark Force

  12. Fate was in a Hurry

  13. The Defence of St Valéry

  14. “Scorched Earth” and Escape

  15. The Auld Alliance

  Order of Battle

  A Note on the Author

  Footnotes

  “I can tell you that the comradeship in arms experienced on the battlefield of Abbeville in May and June 1940 between the French Armoured Division, which I had the honour to command, and the valiant 51st Highland Division under General Fortune, played its part in the decision which I took to continue fighting on the side of the Allies unto the end no matter what may be the course of events.”

  GENERAL DE. GAULLE at Edinburgh

  20th June, 1942

  ISSUED FOR THE WAR OFFICE

  BY THE MINISTRY OF INFORMATION

  Author’s Note

  The framework of this narrative was constructed of War Diaries of the Fifty-First Division and a table of movements compiled by Lt.-Colonel C. P. R. Johnston. For an obvious reason the War Diaries of most units were incomplete, but with the generous help of certain officers and men who were so fortunate and daring as to contrive their escape after being taken at St Valéry, I have been able to fill, in part at least, many gaps in the record. Other gaps remain, however, and I am conscious that to certain units justice has not been done. I know, for example, that somewhere between the Somme and the Bresle the 5th Gordons offered a most gallant and stubborn resistance to the enemy, but I could not describe the action because I know of only one surviving spectator, and he is now several thousand miles away.

  But I am very grateful to the officers and men who have given me their help: in particular to Brigadier H. W. V. Stewart, who was tireless in assisting; to Lt.-Colonel A. Buchanan Smith, whose aid I first solicited; and to Brigadier A. C. L. Stanley-Clarke, who read and corrected the final draft. I have also to thank Lt.-Colonel Thomas Rennie, who endured cross-examination for eight consecutive hours, and Lt.-Colonel the Earl Cawdor, who suffered at least as long; Lt.-Colonel C. P. R. Johnston, whose table of movements was invaluable; Captain B. C. Bradford for a most vivid account of the last days, Major J. A. Hopwood, who showed me a long and admirable letter which his batman, Private McCready, had written to him, and Private McCready himself for permission to quote it; Lt.-Colonel R. W. Macintosh Walker, Captain C. W. Thomson, Captain Webb who shared the Argyll’s escape from Ault, and Major Lorne Campbell for his excellent story of that escape; Major C. J. Y. Dallmeyer for two most useful reports, Second-Lieutenant Fullerton, Captain Sandford, and a number of N.C.O.’s and men of the Royal Corps of Signals who gave evidence with a clearness and detail that were a credit to their Corps; Mr. G. E. Ley Smith, of the Aberdeen Press and Journal, who had himself gathered much material and who lent me a very good narrative by an officer of the Royal Artillery; Mr. M. V. Hay of Seaton, Lt.-Colonel Scott-Elliot, and several others who contributed personal knowledge of various events.

  The official opinion of the Division’s performance during the battle of France can thus be judged by the fact that it has been reconstituted under its old name. The new 51st Division is in every way the equal of the old as the following tribute from the Secretary of State for War testifies.

  “I should like you to know how much I enjoyed my day with the 51st Division. I was filled with comfort and admiration at all I saw and congratulate you and everybody else concerned at producing such a tiptop body. I wish you all the best of fortune and abundant opportunity for revenging your comrades and for adding new glories to an already glorious history.”

  1. The Fifty-First

  To the Highland Territorials who composed the Fifty-First Division in the earlier German War, a strange thing happened: regimental loyalty—the normal sentiment of a soldier—was to a large extent replaced by their greater pride in the Division. Like other divisions with a consistently good record, it became corporate, and in a few years’ time it acquired such a tradition as many a regiment has hardly won by a century of fortunate campaigning. Its quality was acknowledged, not only by English commanders and French allies, but by the enemy, while in Scotland its prowess became an accepted legend.

  In the years of truce, when the Army was starved by Government and neglected by the people, many of the Highland battalions continued to recruit their full strength. The Fifty-First and its legend went on living, and when the Germans renewed their war against the civilised world, the Division mobilised, as well as men and officers, a fairly confident hope of winning new fame from its old enemy.

  This hope was not realised. The Fifty-First, though separated from the British Expeditionary Force, shared its defeat. In May it was fighting near the Saar. It traversed France and came within sight of the sea. It fought before Abbeville and on the Bresle. Then, caught in the rout of the French, two of its brigades, or what remained of them, were trapped, on a morning of rain and the miscarriage of their plans, in the little town of St Valéry-en-Caux, and forced to surrender.

  To Scotland the news came like another Flodden. Scotland is a small country, and in its northern half there was hardly a household that had not at least a cousin in one of the Highland regiments. The disaster, for a little while, seemed overwhelming, because, to begin with, nothing was known of the Division except the apparent shame of its surrender, and the undeniable capture of nearly six thousand men.

  But the black morning at St Valéry does not tell the whole story. Before the Division walked into that disastrous trap it had fought well, endured with hardihood, and shown a youthful spirit that might have grown again to the victorious temper of Beaumont-Hamel. It failed indeed, but only in the grip of circumstances that made failure inevitable. Under the chalk-cliffs that overlook the Channel the legend of the Fifty-First went into eclipse, but not before it had gathered new substance on the river-banks of Normandy and Lorraine.

  Normandy was frozen hard when, about the end of January 1940, the Fifty-First went ashore at Le Havre. Trees were sheathed in ice, the weight of it broke their branches, and the roads were armoured. A few days later came a thaw. Fog and rain obscured the country, while underfoot it melted deeply into mud. Then the frost returned.

  The early weeks of foreign service were uncomfortable, and transport-drivers lived dangerously. The villainous weather prohibited most forms of training, but there was so much movement that everyone learnt by heart the tedious routine of military travel. Day after day they read in orders: “Breakfast will be consumed at 0700 hrs. and a haversack ration will be issued to all ranks. … Picks and shovels will be taken for digging latrines, scrubbing material for cleaning billets. O.C. ‘A’ Coy. will detail a fatigue party of 1 N.C.O. and 20 men to report to O. i/c loading at 0900 hrs. at Railway Station to distribute straw throughout the train.”

  The battalions moved towards the Belgian frontier, and were lodged in towns and villages with familiar names. Their French hosts were far more friendly than they had been a generation before, and the Highlanders did what they could to make a return of hospitality. Their Pipes and Drums played on occasion before the local Mairie; they collected money for the children of a kindly village; and now and then they gave a party. The All
iance had, so it seemed, more than political reason for its existence: there was mutual good feeling.

  On March 28th the Division took over from the 21st French Division the line from Bailleul to Armentières, and set to work, with pick and shovel, with concrete-mixers and Dannert wire, on section-posts and platoon-positions. That was the day when the Supreme War Council of France and Britain made a solemn declaration of unity, and affirmed the intention of the two countries to fight as one, and live as one when fighting was finished.

  2. Highlanders in the Maginot Line

  In the early months of 1940, British formations, not larger than a brigade, were being attached for periods of fifteen days to the French Army in front of the Maginot Line. Service there offered useful experience. German patrols in the valley of the Saar were continually active, and men could be introduced to the sensation of being shot over. That was the purpose of attachment: not to relieve the French, but to acclimatise our new battalions to battle.

  In April, however, it was decided that the British Army should take over a divisional sector on the Saar front, and the first and only division to be nominated for duty there was the Fifty-First. The Division had been reorganised, and now included three Regular battalions: the 1st Black Watch, the 1st Gordons, the 2nd Seaforths. These battalions had arrived in France within six weeks of our declaration of war, and the Black Watch had already done a tour in the forward defences of the Maginot system, spending Boxing Day, with frost and fog, in the Ligne de Contact.

  The Maginot system included a lot more than its almost fabulous and quite futile concrete forts. In front of them lay what was known as La Couverture: the Ligne de Contact, which was roughly an outpost line; behind that, in many places, a Ligne de Soutien, or support line; and behind that the Ligne de Recueil. In the area of the Saar the Ligne de Contact was seven miles in front of the Maginot forts, and perhaps six miles from the forts of the Siegfried Line. The Maginot forts, or many of them, were also protected by what were known as brisants—strong infantry positions, projecting forward and designed to break and divert a frontal attack; And behind the forts there was an additional line of resistance—on paper, at least—the Ligne d’ Arrêt.

  The Fifty-First were allotted the sector about Hombourg-Budange, a cross-roads hamlet that lies between the Saar and the Moselle, some eighteen miles north-east of Metz. It is a rich green countryside of undulating hills, well watered by many streams, patched heavily with forest, sprinkled with orchards and numerous villages. The fields were wet, the ground soft, when the Highlanders arrived, but the weather was improving, and before long the midday sun was hot enough. After the bleak neighbourhood of Bailleul, bare and wintry, there was something like enchantment in the warmth and beauty of Lorraine. The woods were beech, and the huge pale trees were dressed in the brilliance of new leaves. The forest-floor was patched with lilies of the valley, and all the orchards were in bloom. Behind the forts there was still the foolish comfort of a land at peace. The people of Metz were dining well, dancing gaily, enjoying themselves. But the Fifty-First had work to do, for no army in the world can ever regard with full approval another’s defensive system, but must always deepen what has been dug, site guns anew, and re-wire perimeters.

  Outposts in the Saar Valley

  It was in the third week of April that the Fifty-First took train for the Saar front, and by May 1st, with their attached troops, they had relieved the French at Hombourg-Budange; the 154th Brigade, first on the field, had already had their turn in the front line, and the 1st Black Watch had been in action. They had beaten off a small but fierce attack on some posts in the Ligne de Contact, about the fringes of Hartbuch Wood. Our outpost line consisted of platoon-posts among the woods from Heydwald to the Grossenwald, from the village of Remeling to Grindorff-Ewig, to the Hartbuch and through Flastroff towards Neunkirchen, which the Germans held.

  The typical platoon-post comprised a group of what appeared to be log-cabins within a dense perimeter of barbed-wire. About the fringes of the woods the ground was so wet that it had been scarcely possible to dig positions into it: they had had to be built on top of it. The log-cabins had been constructed by the French, and unfortunately they were not bullet-proof. In open ground there were field trenches, sand-bagged and revetted, but the French had created many more positions than the Fifty-First could hold, or thought desirable; and the surplus ones had to be flattened, or the Germans might occupy them. The two Pioneer battalions, the Royal Scots Fusiliers and the Norfolks, were kept busy and did some strenuous work. Forward of the Maginot forts they used mules to carry their building material. This was the only form of transport that could be taken right into the outpost line, and though the mules were sometimes temperamental, they served their purpose well. With remarkable speed the log-cabins were replaced by dug-in positions of a more serviceable sort.

  The forward view from the Ligne de Contact was stopped by a wooded ridge about a mile away. The countryside, beneath its greenery, wore a strange look of suspended animation, for the many villages in front of the Maginot Line, though they stood unharmed, had all been evacuated. Empty houses stood on vacant streets, and all the windows were shuttered.

  But though the villages were deserted, the woods, in a furtive way, were still populous. Some of them were virgin forest, unthinned, almost impassable. The 4th Seaforths, beating Bouzonville Wood in mid-May, were amazed by the wild and curious noises that came from its depths. A soldier, leaping into the undergrowth, caught a wildly squealing pig. Another came out hugging a young barking-deer. The wild animals in the wood were very noisy indeed, but the German soldiers who lay hidden there were silent fellows. There were always some Germans in Bouzonville Wood.

  The battalions took their turn in the Ligne de Contact, and the skirmishing there grew fiercer. A typical encounter would start with a few shots fired from the darkness into a platoon-post, or the throwing of a grenade at a figure seen dimly in a forest ride, and from its explosion might flare a miniature battle. Very lights, splitting the darkness, would reveal the enemy beyond the coiling wire. If the attack were pushed, and reinforced, the green-and-white lights of an S O S would bring a defensive curtain of artillery-fire, or might summon the comforting noise of Bren-carriers. Our dawn patrols, searching the woods, would see where some German had lain wounded, or fallen dead.

  By day and night there was unremitting attention to the enemy’s movement, and everything was reported that might be a clue to his purpose or dispositions. A working-party of five men come over such-and-such a ridge, carrying corrugated iron-sheets. … At 1800 hrs. enemy working-parties finish for the day. … Heavy transport is heard by a patrol from the direction of Waldwisse. … There are bird-calls, quickly answered, very frequent, moving to the rear. … Four shells come over: time of flight 10 secs. … There is movement in the wire of 3 men and a dog near No. 4 post. … Noises like an owl, in an orchard. … Two upstairs windows of white house, extreme left of Biringen, open to-day for the first time. … There was a pole and stick, carrying barbed-wire head-high, across the stream. … Flastroff church-tower—but this comes later—is said to be occupied by the enemy: the clock hands are revolving.

  Routine Patrol

  The German troops who held the advanced positions of the Siegfried Line had the great advantage of knowing the country. Many were local men who had poached the woods they now patrolled, and were familiar with every yard of the ground. Their patrols were aggressive, and dominated the area. On a front so thinly held it was impossible to keep them out, and sometimes they penetrated as far as Waldweistroff. They made much use of trained dogs, and of tricks to unnerve the defence: such as removing from the wire of a platoon-perimeter the empty tins strung upon it to give warning of trespassers.

  The French had inclined to an attitude of live and let live, but the Fifty-First was more active. Patrols went out to hamper and observe the enemy, to provoke him to fight. It was the Divisional policy that the routine patrol should be carried out in so enterprising a fashion as
to make deliberate raiding unnecessary, and the nightly stalking of the enemy—with grenade and tommy-gun, the patrol with their faces blackened—was done with persistent energy and a high spirit. Here, for example, is an illuminating report by Second-Lieutenant A. L. Orr Ewing of the 7th Argyll and Sutherlands, who led a fighting patrol:

  “I left our own wire near F 9 in the Grossenwald at 2300 hrs., and made my way to the S.E. corner of the Lohwald. I lay-up in the trees on the rt. hand side. About 0130 hrs. I heard someone moving in the wood, and 10 minutes later more movement. I lay quiet for 5 minutes and then decided to investigate. I left 4 men with 2 automatic guns in the trees to cover me, and also to shoot anyone trying to leave the corner of the wood. With the remaining men I moved forward between the stream and the wood. About 40 yds. away from me I saw 3 men running from the wood towards the stream. I opened fire with my sub-machine gun, and two men dropped. Heavy firing from at least 4 tommy-guns immediately opened on my flash. My patrol and I all dropped flat, and continued to fire and throw grenades. About 8 or 10 men then left the wood and opened fire. More men in the wood also fired on us. One man advanced towards us, but was severely hit in the stomach. At least two more were hit by grenades, as we heard them screaming. The enemy threw stick-grenades, one landing near my batman and me, cutting us both, and temporarily blinding me with blood. Owing to the superior numbers of the enemy, and the fact that our ammunition was running low, we withdrew about 60 yds. under covering fire from the 4 men we had left in our rear. The enemy then also withdrew, and we heard them talking on the other side of the stream. As it was then our time to return, we made our way back to our own wire.”