Battle for the port and town of Boulogne-sur-Mer during 1940
The Battle of Boulogne in 1940 was the defence of the port of Boulogne-sur-Mer by French, British and Belgian troops in the Battle of France during the Second World War. The battle was fought at the same time as the Siege of Calais, just before Operation Dynamo, the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) from Dunkirk. After the Franco-British counter-attack at the Battle of Arras on 21 May, German units were held ready to resist a resumption of the attack on 22 May. (Lieutenant-General) Heinz Guderian, the commander of XIX Corps, protested that he wanted to rush north up the Channel coast to capture Boulogne, Calais and Dunkirk. An attack by part of XIX Corps was not ordered until 12:40 p.m. on 22 May, by which time the Allied troops at Boulogne had been reinforced from England by most of the 20th Guards Brigade.
The Guards had time to dig in around the port before the 2nd Panzer Division, which had been delayed by French troops at Samer, attacked the perimeter held by the Irish Guards at around 5:00 p.m. and were driven off after an hour of fighting. The Welsh Guards front was attacked at 8:00 p.m. and again at dusk, cutting off a party of the Irish at 10:00 p.m. At dawn on 23 May, the German attacks resumed, eventually pushing the defenders back into the town. About eighty light bombers of the Royal Air Force (RAF) flew sorties in support of the defenders of the port.
Royal Navy ships shot their way into and out of the harbour; French and British destroyers bombarded German positions as wounded and non-combatants were embarked and a navy demolition party landed. During a lull in the afternoon of 23 May, the bombed the harbour, despite being intercepted by RAF fighters. At 6:30 p.m. the Guards Brigade was ordered to re-embark; the British destroyers ran the gauntlet of German tanks and artillery to dock. The French defenders above the lower town could not be contacted and only in the morning of 24 May did General Lanquetot realise that the British had gone.
The French and the remaining British troops held out until 25 May and then surrendered. Guderian wrote that the halt order and the retention of considerable forces to guard against Allied counter-attacks, forfeited an opportunity quickly to capture the Channel Ports and destroy the Allied forces in northern France and Belgium. An advance on Dunkirk began on 23 May but the next day was halted until 27 May; Dunkirk was not captured until 4 June, by when, most of the BEF and many French and Belgian troops had escaped.
Background.
Boulogne.
Boulogne-sur-Mer, Calais, Dunkirk and Dieppe, are Channel Ports on the French side at the narrowest part of the English Channel. Boulogne is at the mouth of the fast-flowing River Liane, which meanders through a valley. The harbour is on a level area of ground on either side of the river ; well built-up and with steep roads uphill to the old town ( or the Citadel). The rolling hills make for hidden approaches to the port and offer commanding high ground to an attacker, particularly the Mont St. Lambert ridge. During the Phoney War (September 1939 – 10 May 1940), the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) had been supplied through ports further to the west, such as Le Havre and Cherbourg but the Channel Ports came into use once mine barrages had been laid in the English Channel in late 1939, to reduce the demand for ships and escorts. When leave for BEF troops began in December, Boulogne came into use for communication and for troop movements.
Battle of France.
On 10 May 1940, the Germans began (Case Yellow) the offensive against France, Belgium and the Netherlands. Within a few days, the Germans achieved a breakthrough against the centre of the French front near Sedan and drove westwards down the valley of the River Somme. As the BEF withdrew through Belgium into northern France, fewer supply troops were needed as the lines of communication shortened. The British began to withdraw surplus manpower through Boulogne and Calais and on 17 May, Lieutenant-General Douglas Brownrigg, the Adjutant-General of the BEF, moved the Rear General Headquarters (GHQ) from Arras to Boulogne, without informing his French liaison officers. The Germans captured Abbeville at the mouth of the Somme on 21 May, cutting off the Allied troops in Northern France and Belgium from their bases further south.
The defence of Boulogne was the responsibility of the French Navy (), which had a garrison of 1,100 men in the 19th-century forts of the port, commanded by Dutfoy de Mont de Benque. Eight British 3.7-inch anti-aircraft guns of the 2nd Heavy Anti-Aircraft Regiment, eight machine-guns of the 58th Light Anti-Aircraft Regiment and a battery of the 2nd Searchlight Regiment had arrived from England on 20 May; the French had two 75 mm field guns, two 25 mm anti-tank guns and two tanks, one of which was unserviceable. On 20 May, the foremost elements of the German XIX Corps ( Heinz Guderian), reached Abbeville. The Channel Ports became the only means of supply and if necessary, evacuation, for the Allies. In the early hours of 21 May, Dutfoy ordered the naval garrison of 1,100 men to retire behind the thick medieval walls of the (Old Town or Citadel), east of the River Liane.
Dutfoy heard alarmist reports of the approach of a large German force, apparently from General Jean Pelissier de Féligonde, commander of the 137th Infantry Regiment, which had been attacked by German tanks at Hesdin, to the south-east of the port. Dutfoy ordered his men to disable the coastal artillery in the forts and to head for the harbour for evacuation; the orders were amplified by other officers. Dutfoy left for Dunkirk in the early hours and discipline broke down, a naval store was broken into and the looters drank the contents. Civilians still waiting for places on evacuation ships began to panic, until Poher, in charge of the sea front, threatened the crowd with a gun. Poher decamped at 10:00 a.m. and the spiking of the naval guns continued. Some of Dutfoy's men contacted Vice-Admiral Marcel Leclerc, the deputy commander of Dunkirk, who ordered the remaining guns to be preserved for the defence of the town. On a visit to Boulogne early on 22 May, Leclerc ordered the sailors to fight it out and wait for relief by the French and British armies. Admiral Jean Abrial the French commander at Dunkirk issued an order, "You are to die at your posts one by one rather than give in..."
Prelude.
Allied defensive preparations.
A detachment of Royal Marines arrived in Boulogne in the early morning of 21 May. The 20th Guards Brigade (Brigadier William Fox-Pitt), consisting of the 2nd Battalion, Welsh Guards and 2nd Battalion, Irish Guards, was training at Camberley on 21 May, when ordered to embark for France. With the brigade anti-tank company and a battery of the 69th Anti-Tank Regiment, Royal Artillery, the Guards arrived in Boulogne on the morning of 22 May on three merchant ships and the destroyer , escorted by the destroyers and . The French 21st Infantry Division ( [Brigadier-General] Pierre Louis Félix Lanquetot) was to hold a line between Samer and Desvres, about south of the town, where three battalions had already arrived. Further British reinforcements, including a regiment of cruiser tanks, were expected from Calais on the following day.
Fox-Pitt deployed his men on the high ground outside the town, liaising with Lanquetot who organised the French troops in the town. The Irish Guards held the right flank to the south-west from the river at St. Léonard to the sea at Le Portel and the Welsh Guards the left flank north-east of the river on the west slopes of Mont Lambert ridge and high ground through St. Martin Boulogne, which made a defensive perimeter of . Road blocks had been established by a party of about fifty men of the 7th Royal West Kents from Albert, about 100 men of the 262nd Field Company Royal Engineers and anti-aircraft crew held the right flank of the Welsh Guards, along the roads approaching from the south. Fox-Pitt had left a gap in the perimeter between the Welsh left flank and the coast for the reinforcements expected from Calais. There were 1,500 men of No 5 Group Auxiliary Military Pioneer Corps (AMPC), a mixture of recalled reservists and part-trained troops working as labourers, in the town awaiting evacuation, under Lieutenant Colonel Donald Dean VC. Under French command were the fort garrisons and some French and Belgian training units of limited military value. Lanquetot had told Fox-Pitt that the French forces in Boulogne were "folded up" which Fox-Pitt inferred meant that they were ready to give up.
German offensive preparations.
The Franco-British counter-attack at Arras led the Germans to continue to attack north towards the Channel Ports, rather than south over the Somme and late on 21 May, "Oberkommando des Heeres" (OKH) ordered "Panzergruppe Kleist" to advance about north, to capture Boulogne and Calais. Apprehension about another counter-attack led to the XV Corps being held back, a division of the XLI Corps being moved eastwards and the 10th Panzer Division of XIX Corps was detached to guard against a counter-attack from the south. Parts of the 1st Panzer Division (Lieutenant-General Friedrich Kirchner) and 2nd Panzer Division (Lieutenant-General Rudolf Veiel), both formations of XIX Corps, were also held back to defend bridgeheads over the Somme. The 2nd Panzer Division was ordered to advance to Boulogne on a line from Baincthun to Samer, with the 1st Panzer Division as a flank guard on the right, advancing to Desvres and Marquise in case of a counter-attack from Calais.
Battle.
22 May.
The 2nd Panzer Division formed two columns, one to circle round the town and attack from the north. The southern column made contact first in the early afternoon of 22 May, against the headquarters company of the French 48th Infantry Regiment, the only troops of the 21st Division who were between the Germans and Boulogne. The French clerks, drivers and signallers set up two 75 mm field guns and two 25 mm anti-tank guns to cover the cross-roads at Nesles, where they delayed the Germans for almost two hours, until they were outflanked. The column arrived at the outskirts of Boulogne in the evening and began shelling and probing the Irish Guards positions south of the town. The Irish knocked out the leading German tank and repulsed later attacks despite the Germans overrunning one of their forward platoons. In the early hours, the Germans attacked the Welsh Guards positions along the coast from the north-east as they began to envelop the town but were forced back each time. Brownrigg, with Fox-Pitt's only communication link with England, departed with his staff at 3:00 a.m. on the destroyer , without informing the Guards. Only a few troops of the 21st Infantry Division were able take up its blocking positions near Desvres before the German advance reached them. The French managed to delay the 1st Panzer Division here for much of 22 May before Fox-Pitt was told at 4:00 a.m. that the French had been forced back to Boulogne by German tanks. Most of the 21st Infantry Division, en route to Boulogne by train, was ambushed by German tanks and dispersed.
23 May.
An hour after dawn, Fort de la Crèche near Wimereux, north of Boulogne, was captured by German troops. The possibility of reinforcement from Calais was thwarted by the appearance of German armour at the northern perimeter. Fox-Pitt realised that he would have to defend the port with only the two Guards battalions and the assorted French and British troops already there. The AMPC was hastily combed for men with military experience and armed with rifles taken from the others. The 800 men of the AMPC force were rushed into the gap between the two Guards battalions and another 150 were sent to reinforce the Welsh Guards. The anti-aircraft gunners guarding the southern roads destroyed two German tanks with their 3.7-inch anti-aircraft guns and then retired.
The Germans began a pincer attack on the positions of the Welsh and Irish Guards and by 10:00 a.m., the southern pincer, backed up by artillery and air support, had made the open slopes around the town untenable;