A little after midnight, the torpedo boat Siroco leaves Dunkirk with 930 men on board, including 750 infantrymen from the 92e infantry regiment.
So far the Siroco and its captain, Guillaume de Toulouse-Lautrec, were lucky. In three weeks in the Pas-de-Calais Strait, this ship sank several German submarines. On May 11, off the coast of the Netherlands, he was hit by a Stuka bomb, but it did not detonate. He also escaped attack from a German speedboat on May 21.
But this time, off Nieuport, the Siroco is attacked by two German stars. After having avoided the first two torpedoes, the ship was hit. The propellers are out of use.
Immobilized, the Siroco is then bombed by a German plane. The ammunition holds are affected. The French torpedo boat explodes. Two British ships and a Polish torpedo boat, the Blyskawica, come to the aid of survivors who swim in a thick sheet of fuel oil.
Of the 930 crew and soldiers aboard the Siroco, only 270 survived, including its captain.
Record number of evacuations
From 7:30 am, the Camp des Dunes is moved to the Sanatorium of Zuydcoote to be closer to Dunkirk. 70,000 French soldiers are gathered there. The British now embark on the beaches east of the Sanatorium, the French on the beaches to the west.
Marc Bloch, staff officer, is looking for a ship to embark for England. It crosses Dunkirk: “I keep a sharp memory of the city in rubble, with its hollow facades, on which floated fumaroles waves and, scattered among its streets, less corpses than human remains. I still have in my ears the incredible crash which, like the end at the end of an opera, came to populate with its sounds our last minutes, on the banks of Flanders: bombs, bombs, shells, tac- machine gun tacks, anti-aircraft fire“.
In the evening, Marc Bloch leaves the pier at the port of Dunkirk aboard an English boat, the Royal daffodil : “An admirable summer evening displayed its prestige on the sea. The sky of pure gold, the calm mirror of the waters, the black and tawny smoke, which escaped from the burning refinery, drew, above the low coast, arabesques so beautiful that we forgot their tragic origin… everything in the atmosphere of these first minutes of travel, seemed to conspire to make fuller the selfish and irresistible joy of a soldier escaped from captivity“.
Marc Bloch will arrive safely in England to leave for Cherbourg. For him, the fight can continue. After the armistice, he joined the resistance. In June 1944 he was assassinated by the Gestapo.
This May 31, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill is in Paris for a Supreme Allied Council. He decrees this Friday “French Day“, asking the Royal Navy to embark more French soldiers.
At the Zuydcoote Sanatorium, transformed into a huge field hospital, the wounded who can walk are gathered for an evacuation.
Among them Private Jean Beauvalot, from Craywick: “Here in the middle of the plain there was a huge Red Cross cloth to show German planes that it was a military hospital. German pilots sometimes passed over us – I don’t know if it was to taunt us – flapping their wings or waving at us. On Friday May 31, there were maybe 150 ambulances here. “
Jean Beauvalot, veteran, testifies in the documentary “Dunkirk 1940” directed by Bernard Claeys and broadcast on May 28, 1978 in the program “Hexagonal, Histoire de France” (FR3). –
“We were ordered – all the French wounded who could move by themselves without any help – to assemble to embark at Dunkirk. We managed to embark along the West pier, on two ships. were trunks, boats which usually made Boulogne-Folkestone or Calais-Dover. Quite long ships which were at the very end of the East pier. And I embarked on the Lady of Mann “.
Despite heavy casualties at sea, 68,000 troops will be shipped to England on May 31. A record that will not be matched by the end of Operation Dynamo.
May 31 is also the day the Royal Air Force and DCA shoot down the most German planes over Dunkirk: 77 in one day.
In Paris, Churchill also assures his allies that the British will defend the perimeter of Dunkirk as long as the French: “Arm up, arm down“But at the same time in Dunkirk, British General Gort went to French HQ in Bastion 32 to announce his departure. He was replaced at the head of the British forces by General Alexander who ordered the immediate embarkation of all the forces British.
At midnight, the British defenders of the Dunkirk pocket left the De Panne and Bergues sector to retreat to the beaches.
To cope with the departure of the British, General Janssen retreats his men to Uxem, behind the flooded marshes.
The pocket of Dunkirk shrinks a little more. General Janssen settles in the Fort des Dunes in Leffrinckoucke. To defend the east of Dunkirk, he has 12e SUN, the 27e GRPI and infantry elements of the Fortified Sector of Flanders, that is 8000 French soldiers against 72,000 Germans according to the historian Dominique Lormier.
The Germans attack Bergues after heavy bombing that destroys the wooden frame of the Belfry.
In the ramparts, Tunisian skirmishers and French infantrymen hold their ground and repel the assaults.
Cease-fire in Lille
In Lille, the situation becomes impossible for the French surrounded. The Germans advance in heavy street fighting. At 5 p.m., the Canteleu district in Lambersart is taken. The French destroy their weapons before surrendering.
In Loos, soldiers of the 9e Regiment of Dragons counterattacks one last time with a tank and two caterpillars. They will bring back 11 German prisoners. But at 6 p.m., the last defenders of Loos must lay down their arms, running out of ammunition. In Haubourdin too, the French draw on their last resources.
At 8:30 p.m., General Jean-Baptiste Molinié meets German General Kurt Waeger in a house on rue de la Rache in Haubourdin, a few dozen meters from the Moulin Rouge bridge for which the skirmishers of the 5e North African Division have been fighting for three days.
The two generals agree on the terms of the surrender. The French can keep their weapons and their positions overnight. The cease-fire is ordered at 10 p.m.
► The rest of our series tomorrow with the day of 1er June 1940. You can re-read the previous episodes in the summary below:
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