The “Nasties” may be near but gloom is still many smiles away from Britain
By Gregory Clark, June 22, 1940.
LONDON
In the past few weeks there have been, without question, darker hours for Britain than ever in her long and often hazardous life, and there is no question either that the people of Britain have fully and deeply realized it. Yet I have never seen such examples of that assurance and good humor and that aplomb for which British people have been famous amongst their friends and notorious amongst their enemies since Shakespeare first made fun of it in Falstaff and all the lads centuries ago.
The most completely amusing example of this imperturbable characteristic has to come from the troops, but it serves for dukes and earls and busmen and charladies. I talked to 40 soldiers who witnessed the incident. One of the trawlers taking troops off Dunkirk was about three miles off shore the last day of the evacuation when in the early morning light they saw from their crowded deck a man swimming. He was three miles off shore and headed toward England 40 miles away. The English papers had it eight miles but my witnesses say three. The trawler, jam-packed with troops so thick they had to stand up, swung starboard to pick up this phenomenon. He was a British tar whose ship had been sunk in Dunkirk roadstead. As they threw him a line he took hold, shook water out of his eyes and hailed the deck. “I say,” he yelled, “you’re pretty crowded, up there. Have you enough room for me?”
Astounded shouts assured him that of course they had.
“I’m still going strong,” shouted up the tar, “if you haven’t.”
And they hauled the wholly nude tar aboard. Now this was not bravado, nor was it conscious humor. It was the unconscious humor of the English which is completely indescribable in terms of any other humor we know.
In one of the factories where they have increased production 100 per cent. in two weeks we were being shown through and I got in conversation with a lanky, eagle-eyed superintendent to whom I mentioned the fact that there were no signs of weariness. or strain anywhere amongst both women and men workers toiling long hours without rest days.
“The hell of it is,” said the superintendent, “I have spent 40 years of my life fighting for shorter hours and freer working conditions, and here I am now trying to catch one person slacking. I haven’t got one yet. I’m not earning my keep. Here, come along with me a minute and I’ll show you something.”
He led me aside through raving machines and unwearied workers who barely glanced up from their tasks, to a room labelled rest room, where in shifts workers relaxed for 20 minutes and had a cup of tea. As the door opened, above the roar of machinery, music sounded. At the far end of the room two men, one with a banjo and the other with a concertina, were banging out those ribald music hall songs which the English love. The room was filled with workers, sitting relaxing and drinking tea and singing.
“The bloke with the banjo had his sight injured in this factory seven years ago and is on pension. The other bloke usually hangs around music hall doors,” said the superintendent. “Try giving them a couple of pennies and you’d get your head knocked off.”
This did not strike me as humorous, but the superintendent assured me it was. “Comic, that’s what it is,” he said and we withdrew from the recreation room back into the roar of the factory with sundry rude remarks hurled between boss and workers.
And as we talked with dozens of workers through the factory, humor was the principal thought in their minds. “Look at Bill there,” said one driller. “Working like a ruddy horse after swinging the lead for 30 years.”
Through the darkest hours of the past weeks, amidst the universal mass of all Britain this jibing ironic jesting humor of the British has never left them, though they have gone through not merely revolution of their own ways and manners, but a mental and spiritual crisis unparalleled in their history. An English lady, whose daughter married a Canadian officer in the last war and whose grandchildren are grown Canadians, lives within less than a mile of a great airdrome near London. Naturally her children feel anxiety and have tried to persuade her by letter to move to a safer zone. I called on her and found her deep amidst her flowers in a huge garden filled with bloom, much of it planted since the great blow fell, all of it tended hour by hour throughout the falling skies. She reassured me. “Tell Katie I have put the china all away. I have taken every precaution. Look, let me show you.”
And from the garden table where we sat at tea, she led me into her living room and pointed to empty china cabinets and racks and then pointed under the piano.
“See, there is the china all safe under the piano.”
And as I looked in mute astonishment into the eyes of this English lady I saw there dancing glints of that incredible, that obliging and oblique quality of humor which will in the end be the victory.
Editor’s Note: This story was written while Greg was covering the war as a correspondent. The comics that accompanied it were from Britain. It was written just after the defeat of France, the evacuation from Dunkirk, and only a few days after Greg sent this story to the Toronto Star, when things looked pretty grim for Britain:
GREG CLARK TELLS OF 48TH’S EPIC 14 HOURS’ JOURNEY INTO FRANCE DASHED BY SUDDEN TURNING BACK
Troops Who Crossed Singing Return in Gloom – Only Shots at Enemy Come When Plane Tries to Bottle Them in Harbor
TORONTO HIGHLAND REGIMENT BOMBED FOR ALMOST ALL 28-HOUR TRAIN TRIP
London, June 18.- One brigade of the Canadian first division landed in France, went 14 hours by train towards the crumbling battleline and then were turned about and rode 14 hours back to the French seaport and were evacuated. Thus has Canada shared in miniature the tragedy of the British expeditionary force.
The remainder of the division were actually embarked in England, and were at anchor awaiting the long expected signal to proceed when the news of France’s government collapse brought their ship to the quays and disembarked them, actually in tears of fury.
It was my unhappy privilege to accompany the first ship with Canadian infantry aboard – one of the regiments was the 48th Highlanders – and to land in France with them. I was not permitted to accompany their train, but through a series of fated mishaps was there to greet them on their return 28 hours later.
FIRE AT ENEMY PLANES
To say that they made their extraordinary in and out expedition without firing a shot is not true, because as we lay awaiting a convoy back to England, in ships as crowded as any I saw coming home from Dunkirk, enemy planes came and tried to stop up our harbor.
Every Bren gun the Canadians had blazed through the night from the decks, and it is claimed that one machine was brought down, perhaps by our fire, amidst the anti-aircraft blaze of the port. It was pitifully little, but it was something. At least the Canadians have seen an enemy.
The whole division was on the move for France, and the one brigade was lucky enough – seeing what comes of luck to us these days – to get about 75 miles inland.
CROSS UNDER FRENCH CONVOY
On densely packed French ships, with French warships convoying us, we set forth at dusk Thursday and at dawn were entering a French port.
It was a glorious sunny morning, the harbor was alive with traffic and the little white city up the hills seemed vital with promise. Without delay we were run alongside and the Highlanders threw their bonnets ashore to claim the glory of the first landing.
Off the regiments swarmed and were marched a short distance to the trains that were to carry them to a point near the fighting zone, where their transport waited for them, having come the day before. The first Canadians in France were the Army Service Corps, transport and artillery units, and the gun carriers of the infantry regiments. It was the front line troops I came with. That meeting never took place.
GOT SUDDEN CALL TO TURN BACK
With never a thought but one of pride and confidence I saw the battalions vanish into the blue. That night I was the sole Canadian aboard one of the three French transports, with our French convoy, returning to England for the next load of the division.
In mid-sea we received a radio message to return to the French port. It was incomprehensible until we arrived back and found that no more Canadians were coming, that the second load had actually got out at anchor in the roadstead of the British port and had been tugged back ashore to disembark in tragic distress.
I went ashore at the French port and witnessed the return of two of the battalions I had such a little while ago seen depart inland. Of their mood of anger and despair I need not write. They who had sung and shouted and laughed their way across two nights before, with card games raging and all guns mounted and that Achilles air of high adventure beginning, went aboard British ships this time.
HIGHLANDERS COME BACK UNDER FIRE
The Highland battalion, having been in the first train, was the last to come and when our ships left there were thoughts of them having been cut off, but we are happy to know that they got back safely, after meeting enemy bombers for many miles of the railway journey both ways.
Of the brigade it is the Highlanders who got nearest to the war, with the exception of the artillery of the brigade and the transport units who were harder to turn about by the authorities than the two following trains.
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