After 78 years Dunkirk’s forgotten heroes find their voice
THE story of the forgotten heroes of Dunkirk is to be told for the first time. As the evacuation of Britain’s troops was being carried out in June 1940, the men of the 51st Highland Division were ordered by Winston Churchill to stay in France and, at all costs defend Britain’s ally against German troops.
The division fought alongside the French in Abbeville and Saint-Valery, where a mini-Dunkirk flotilla of 207 boats tried – but failed – to rescue them.
Churchill’s war office did not support the evacuation and, less than a week after Dunkirk, General Erwin Rommel’s well-equipped troops had the division surrounded. On June 12, the men, under Maj Gen Victor Fortune, surrendered along with the French. Two days later, France capitulated.
Back home, few learnt about the thousands of Scottish soldiers who were taken as prisoners of war. In France, the Highlanders had no idea about the evacuation at Dunkirk which had rescued 338,000 men.
The men were left behind and abandoned, then forgotten. “You’ll think I’m really silly,” says Eric Taylor, 98-year-old veteran of the 51st Highland Division. “But we didn’t find out about Dunkirk for years after we’d been taken prisoner. I found out when the Americans came in.”
The little-known story of the 51st Highland Division has gathered dust in the decades since the war ended. In 1940, news that 1,000 men had been killed in France after Dunkirk, 5,000 injured and 11,000 taken as prisoners of war was suppressed. Any attention on the men may have undermined Churchill’s propaganda victory.
Righting the historical wrong while some members of the division are still alive, a documentary Dunkirk: The For- gotten Heroes tells their story for the first time. When Barbara Poll’s father Frank Madle returned to Scotland in 1945, he chose not to speak about what he and his regiment had been through. That was, until, the beginning of this year, when the documentary makers approached him. For the first time, Mrs Poll, 63, heard what happened when her father fought on with the French.
“It was very emotional, because I hadn’t heard most of it,” she says. “I had heard little things but he never told me about the slaughter and mayhem.”
But when filmmaker Craig McAlpine, whose father and uncle were in the 51st Highland Division, asked him to share his story he opened up.
“He started talking about it after the interview, it was almost like a release,” says Mrs Poll. “A lot of them felt guilty – I know he did – that he survived and went on to be a prisoner.”
Weeks later, Madle passed away at the age of 97. While the heroism of the 51st went unnoticed in Britain, after the Allied victory the French Government presented members of the division with the Somme medal.
Mr McAlpine petitioned the Ministry of Defence for a retrospective medal for the comrades. It said: “Their service is held in the very highest regard. It is long-standing policy that awards are not approved for events or service that took place in the distant past.” Dunkirk: The Forgotten Heroes, Channel 4, 8pm tonight