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    'They scavenged scraps': the Britons rounded up by the Nazis in occupied France

    Descendants of the 3,000 British internees and their families recount one of the war’s forgotten episodes
    by Jon Henley Jul 10, 2020 5 minutes
    Marc Campbell holds a photograph of his grandfather Donald Campbell, who was arrested by German forces in France in 1940. Photograph: Ed Alcock/The Guardian

    The soldiers and gendarmes came early – so early that some of the people they took were still in pyjamas. In the first days of July 1940, barely a week after the armistice, few had been expecting the first Nazi roundup of enemy aliens on French soil.

    Aided by lists dutifully drawn up by French mayors, the occupying Germans seized 1,648 men in the départements of the Nord and the Pas de Calais in those initial raids, and the total would go on rising to 3,000 civilians including women and children.

    A typewritten list of names begins with Abbott, Ambrose and ends with Young, John. In between are Alfred Boot, William Corbett, George Edwards, James Goodman, Harold Hartley, Percy Johnson, Horace Neville, Ralph Powell, and a lot of Smiths.

    “It’s just one forgotten episode in the sweep of the war,” said Frédéric Turner, whose grandfather, father and uncle – Frederick,

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