THE REAL HERO OF DUNKIRK
He’s played by Branagh — but you won’t see his name on the big screen. Here we reveal his truly awesome courage
For a few harrowing days in May 1940, the most valuable piece of real estate anywhere in Western Europe was a 10ft- wide jetty stretching a few hundred yards from northern France into the English Channel.
From this pier alone, amid the chaos and carnage of modern warfare, around 240,000 allied troops who’d wound up on the beaches of Dunkirk were bundled onto a makeshift flotilla of vessels and whisked away from Hitler’s advancing armies during the ten- day evacuation, operation Dynamo, tiptoeing to freedom four abreast and under heavy bombardment.
Their escape — hungry, exhausted, and dodging fire from marauding Stuka dive bombers — is etched into our national psyche: part of a ‘miracle’ which helped turn the tide of World War II and spawned the expression ‘Dunkirk Spirit’ to describe dogged British stoicism.
This summer, it’s also at the centre of a much talked-about blockbuster movie, Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk, which made more than £81.5 million at the box office at the weekend, putting it on course to become the most acclaimed release of the year.
The film stars Sir Kenneth Branagh as Commander Bolton, a royal Navy officer assigned the role of pier-master in charge of the all-important jetty, and who — in a display of epic heroism — stays in place until the bitter end.
His character’s derring-do has captivated audiences. Yet, behind the scenes, it’s causing consternation to relatives of the real-life Commander Bolton, a charismatic 39-yearold called James Campbell Clouston, who manned the crucial pier, or ‘Mole’, for six days and five nights, without a break.
Clouston’s family feels snubbed by Nolan’s decision not to give Branagh’s character the name of their forefather, who was famed in naval circles — and perished in tragic circumstances during the latter stages of the evacuation.
They are further upset that the film-maker was unwilling, when they asked him via letter in January, even to name him in the credits. ‘I was quite upset,’ is how his son, Dane, now 78, puts it. ‘I understand it would be impossible to use everybody’s names correctly in a film, but he was the one piermaster. There was no other person in that role.’
Dunkirk’s producer Emma Thomas, who is married to Nolan, said in response that all characters in the film were fictionalised ‘out of respect to the real-life heroes’.
Meanwhile, the director himself told an American interviewer: ‘Clouston has an incredible story we could not do justice to.’
on the final point, Nolan is at least partly correct. For while war is often defined by acts of selfless courage, few such displays can match those by this gallant Commander during a few historic days in May 1940.
A strapping and highly compelling man, nicknamed ‘Father’ on account of his premature baldness, Clouston went to Dunkirk at his own request, after the ship he usually commanded was sent to Portsmouth for repairs. one of a dozen officers working under Captain William Tennant, the man placed in charge of evacuating the ill-fated British Expeditionary Force, he arrived on May 26 to discover a scene of chaos: almost half a million men on just a few miles of beach in Northern France.
At that point, the organisers of operation Dynamo thought they would be lucky to get more than 50,000 back home. Then Tennant had a bright idea.
Though Dunkirk harbour had been destroyed, the eastern ‘Mole’ was still intact and could be used as a makeshift pier, along which a steady stream of destroyers, minesweepers, ferries and steamers could ease.
After cutting a pack of playing cards with colleagues, and drawing the highest, Clouston was named pier-master, a job that was expected to be relatively easy. In fact, it would be the reverse.
Described as ‘big, tough, athletic and amusing’ by maritime historian Walter Lord, Clouston had spent his childhood in Canada (emigrating to join the royal Navy in 1917), where he’d grown up as a
keen ice-hockey player ‘ bursting with energy’. This job would require every ounce of it.
Armed with a microphone, Commander Clouston set up a control system, posting men at the foot of the pier to organise evacuees into groups of 50. each group was assigned a leader with a specific number. When the number was called, they would march swiftly onto the pier and into a waiting ship.
Using orderly queues — compared by one survivor to those outside London cinemas when ‘talkies’ came out — they were soon evacuating 2,000 men an hour, with up to a dozen boats at a time shuttling alongside. It was a masterpiece of military logistics.
For two days, the operation proceeded smoothly.
Then, on May 29, disaster struck: rain and heavy clouds, which had reduced the Luftwaffe’s ability to attack, lifted and an onshore breeze began clearing clouds of smoke from a nearby burning oil refinery.
Though a 3pm air-raid did little damage, and a second was seen off by the RAF, a third attack, at 6pm caused chaos, with the Mole taking a series of direct hits.
A destroyer called Grenade was set ablaze — but, thanks to Clouston’s quick thinking, it was towed out to sea before it could sink and block access to the pier.
Then panicking men began attempting to evacuate the pier, a move that could have sparked a disastrous stampede.
Marching towards the crowd, with a junior officer alongside him, Clouston promptly restored order by waving a revolver in the air.
‘We have come to take you back to the UK,’ he shouted. ‘I have six shots here and I am not a bad shot. The lieutenant behind me is an even better one. So that makes 12 of you. Now get down into those bloody ships!’ They did.
In another display of natural authority, now a much-told naval anecdote, Clouston spotted that one of the men waiting by the pier had shaggy hair and ordered him to get a haircut.
‘All the barbers are shut, sir,’ the soldier replied. But Clouston didn’t budge. Their confrontation was broken only when the soldier lopped off a lock of hair and presented it to him. ‘What do you want me to do with it now? Put it in a locket?’ he asked.
Displaying formidable reserves of energy, Clouston remained in post, without a break, until June 1, overseeing the evacuation and masterminding rebuilding of the pier — which remained under occasional heavy attack — with doors and planks from wrecked ships.
It wasn’t until five days and six nights on the front line had passed that he returned to Dover for a shower, a hot meal, a night’s sleep and a chance to report back on the situation to his superiors.
A family man, who had met his wife Gwyneth while skiing in 1935, and had one young son plus another on the way, he could have been forgiven for staying put back in Kent.
Yet, the following afternoon, Clouston volunteered to head back across the Channel to complete the evacuation on the grounds that, having been born in Montreal, he spoke French, so could assist with loading French troops onto boats.
He made the trip with a group of 30 men in two speedboats. But it proved an ill-fated journey.
ASTHeY approached France, the boats came under attack from a group of eight German dive bombers, and Clouston’s craft sustained serious damage. The second speedboat came back to rescue them, but Clouston waved it off, saying the extra cargo would turn them into sitting ducks.
Though the second boat then offered to pick up just Clouston, as senior officer, he refused to leave his men.
Instead, he clung with them on the upturned hull of the boat, attempting to keep spirits up by telling white lies about the nearness of the rescue.
But no rescue came and one by one, they began to die from exposure. Just two of the 15 men would survive: an Aircraftman Carmaham, and a Sub Lieutenant Solomon.
‘even though they must have known the end was near, they never grumbled; nor were they afraid,’ Solomon later recalled of his colleagues. ‘They even went so far as to ask permission of Commander Clouston before removing their tin hats.
‘Though already suffering from exposure, they were singing and discussing old times together. Commander Clouston’s example must have helped them all as it helped me. Although exhausted, he continued to chat, encourage and white lie to the end.’
The second speedboat continued to Dunkirk, where it contributed towards the rescue of more than 25,000 soldiers that day, helping turn a military disaster into one of the great propaganda triumphs of modern warfare.
Word of Clouston’s streadfast courage, meanwhile, spread far and wide, with the evacuation’s senior officer Captain Tennant crediting him with saving at least 100,000 men.
Lord Louis Mountbatten, then a senior naval commander, was reportedly livid that Clouston was denied high honours, and possibly even a Victoria Cross, having to make do with being belatedly Mentioned in Dispatches.
At the Grand Armistice Concert, a celebratory event held after the war, he was nonetheless memorialised in a specially commissioned opera: ‘Remember James Campbell Clouston / Pier-master of the plankway / The Dunkirk Mole.’
This was a source of immense pride to his beloved wife Gwyneth, who never remarried, and died in 2003 aged 96.
‘He was a formidable character,’ is how his son Dane, who also served in the Royal Navy, described him to me yesterday.
‘I, of course, don’t remember him. But what happened at Dunkirk has always been a part of my life, and whatever the film’s director Christopher Nolan might say, nothing will stop me from being very, very proud of him.’