Battle for the Escaut, 1940: The France and Flanders Campaign

By Jerry Murland

On 10 May 1940 the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), under the command of Lord Gort, moved forward from the Franco-Belgian border and took up positions along a 20-mile sector off the River Dyle, to await the arrival of the German Army Group B. Their expected stay was considerably shorter than planned as the German Army Group A pushed its way through the Ardennes and crossed the Meuse at Sedan, scattering the French before them. Little did the men of the BEF realise that the orders to retire would result in their evacuation from Dunkirk and other channel ports.The line of the River Escaut was seen as the last real opportunity for the Allied armies to halt the advancing German Army, but the jigsaw of defence was tenuous and the allied hold on the river was undone by the weight of opposing German forces and the speed of the armoured Blitzkrieg thrust further south. As far as the BEF were concerned, the Battle for the Escaut took place on a 30-mile sector from Oudenaarde to Blharies and involved units in a sometimes desperate defence, during which two Victoria Crosses were awarded. This book takes the battlefield tourist from Oudenaarde to Hollain in a series of tours that retrace the footsteps of the BEF. With the help of local historians, the author has pinpointed crucial actions and answered some of the myriad questions associated with this important phase of the France and Flanders campaign of 1940.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Nov 30, 2016
• ISBN: 9781473852624

Book preview

Contents

List of Maps

Introduction by the Series Editor

Author’s Introduction

Acknowledgements

Chapter One  First Steps to War

Chapter Two  III Corps on the Escaut

Chapter Three  II Corps on the Escaut

Chapter Four  I Corps on the Escaut

Chapter Five  Artillery on the Escaut

Chapter Six  The Tours

Car Tour 1 Oudenaarde to Elsegem

Car Tour 2 Kaster to Escanaffles

Car Tour 3 Helkijn to Tournai

Car Tour 4 Chercq to Warnaffles Farm

Walk 1 Pecq and Poplar Ridge

Walk 2 Hollain

Appendix

Selected Bibliography

List of Maps

The Escaut – 16-22 May 1940.

A map depicting the positions of the 1/5 and 1/6 Queens on the Escaut. Taken from The History of The Queen’s Royal Regiment Vol VIII 1924-1948.

A map of the East Surrey deployment on the Escaut taken from the History of the East Surrey Regiment Vol IV.

A map from the History of the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry 1939-1945 depicting the sector from Brugge to Escanaffles showing the location of the Rijtgracht.

A map taken from The Grenadier Guards in the War of 1939-1945 depicting the positions of the Grenadier and Coldstream Guards around Pecq.

A map taken from The History of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment showing the location of the three Royal Warwickshire battalions.

A sketch map drawn by Captain Eric Jones depicting the 2/Gloucester’s deployment at Bruyelle.

Walk 1 – map of the ground south of Pecq.

Walk 2 – map of Hollain.

A map depicting the line of attack followed by the 1/Ox and Bucks Light Infantry on 21 May. Taken from Lieutenant Colonel Whitfeld’s account of May 1940.

Introduction by Series Editor

It is a great pleasure to write the introduction to this welcome book by Jerry Murland, the first in a series on the BEF’s May-June 1940 campaign that, effectively, culminated in the evacuation from the beaches at Dunkirk and along the coast to the southwest. The campaign of 1940 has been rather neglected over the years, overwhelmed by the amount of literature produced, including a range of guides in the Battleground Europe series, on the fighting in France and the Low Countries after the D Day landings of June 1944. What has been produced on Britain’s contribution in that late spring of 1940 has tended to concentrate on the final days of the Expeditionary Force before its evacuation.

This first book handles the BEF’s defence of the Escaut, confronted as its commander, Viscount Gort, was by the devastating onslaught launched by the Germans against a quiescent allied front that had been most notable for its lack of aggressive activity since the declaration of war in September 1939.

A short but very helpful introductory chapter sets the scene for the descriptions of the fighting (that effectively only lasted a couple of days from 19 May) that developed along the Escaut – a defence provided by a mixture of regular and territorial troops who were generally inadequately equipped for the task, despite the fact that the war had been in progress for over eight months. Hitler’s infamous Halt Order of 24 May, shortly after the withdrawal from the Escaut, to allow Kleist’s armoured corps to consolidate came to the rescue of the BEF, almost certainly saving it from utter destruction.

What makes this book stand out is the large (over fifty percent of the book) section devoted to touring the Escaut area, supplementing the full narrative of this short-lived defensive action. It is to be hoped that the books in the series will provoke greater interest in the often heroic actions of the various units in the startlingly short (when compared to the impasse of the Great War) campaign and bring a new generation to visit the scenes of these confused actions, inevitable when a front was giving way as this was before von Runstedt’s Army Group A. Changes in the course of the Escaut, as well as post war reconstruction and subsequent development since that fateful May of 1940, make following the action on the ground potentially difficult, but it is a hazard that Jerry masterfully overcomes.

As well as taking the battlefield tourer to the ground he also provides a guide to the burial places of the fallen, be it in stand alone CWGC cemeteries or in small groups in the various churchyards and communal cemeteries; men who one can legitimately suspect rarely get visited. I, for one, will make sure that I spend some time in honouring their memory.

Nigel Cave, Ratcliffe College

August 2016

The British sector ran for some thirty miles from Eine, just north of Oudenaarde, through Tournai to Bléharies in the south. The deployment of the British divisions are shown to the west of the river while the attacking German divisions are abbreviated to their divisional numeral followed by ID – Infantry Division.

Author’s Introduction

The Escaut is the French name for the River Scheldt, which flows for 270 miles (438 kilometers) from Gouy in the Department of the Aisne across northern France and western Belgium to its estuary in Holland. Contemporary accounts and regimental histories often use the term canal when describing the river, despite the fact that in May 1940 it was more of a meandering river than the canalized waterway we see today. From 19-23 May 1940 the British Expeditionary Force – having retreated from the line of the River Dyle – was defending a thirty mile section of this river from Oudenaarde to Bléharies and was sandwiched in between the Belgian Army to the north and the French First Army to the south. At the time it was perhaps seen as the last real opportunity for the Allied armies to halt the advancing German Army Group B as it raced through Belgium; but in reality the Allied armies were already outflanked, as the Panzer divisions of Army Group A had broken through the Meuse front and were advancing rapidly across France.

For a few days in May 1940 the Escaut provided a temporary military check on the German advance across Belgium. However, although the river line was defended by seven divisions – roughly equating to each battalion defending one mile of winding river bank – there were still gaps in the line as battalions were allocated differing lengths of the river to defend. Added to this was the fall in the level of water in the river, partly due to the opening of the sluices at Valenciennes and aggravated by the lack of rainfall, which inevitably reduced the effectiveness of the Escaut as a barrier. Indeed, as every soldier knows from his training, unless every yard of an obstacle – in this case the river bank and its bridges – is kept under constant surveillance there are inevitably going to be opportunities for enemy forces to cross under cover of darkness or even during the periods of early morning mist; which is exactly what happened in the 44th Divisional sector to the south of Oudenaarde.

For the most part the Escaut was some twenty yards wide and ten feet in depth, with the tow paths in some places ten feet above the water, which in effect obscured any meaningful observation of the last three hundred yards on the opposite bank. Except where the river runs through urban areas, it is bordered by low lying pastures punctuated by small woods and coppices. On the western – British – side of the river there is some higher ground between Anzegem and Knok; but on the eastern side two steep hills – Mont St Aubert and the Mont de l’Enclus – enabled German observers to overlook the ground almost as far back as the French frontier. Much later in the war these hills were used to discharge Vweapons against England.

However, for the battlefield visitor, the post-war realignment and widening of the river has exacerbated the difficulty in pinpointing exactly where some units were located. This was not assisted by the development and modernization of industrial areas, particularly south of Tournai, which has made some sectors almost unrecognizable from the river frontage that the BEF defended in May 1940. As a consequence some bridging points that are referred to in regimental histories and war diaries of the period are often no longer in existence, while other sectors, such as that at Oudenaarde, are difficult to equate with contemporary descriptions provided by soldiers who fought on the Escaut. It is this factor, together with the short span of time that British units spent defending the western bank, that has made a detailed examination of the Battle on the Escaut more akin to piecing together a jig-saw puzzle.

When describing the fighting I have often referred to modern day road numbering in order to give the reader using current maps of the area a more precise location. While some of the abbreviations in the text are self explanatory, others require a modicum of explanation. I have used a form of abbreviation when describing battalion formations, thus after its first mention in the text the 2nd Battalion Royal Norfolk Regiment becomes the 2/Norfolks or, more simply, the Norfolks.

German army units are a little more complex. Within the infantry regiment there were three battalions – each one approximately the size of a British battalion – and as with their British counterparts the battalion was broken down into four companies of riflemen who were given an Arabic numeral, for example, 3 Kompanie. Again, I have abbreviated when describing these units, thus Infantry Regiment 162 becomes IR162, while the second battalion within that regiment is abbreviated to II/IR162. In the same way, German infantry divisions are often referred to in their abbreviated form, hence ID31 refers to the 31st Infantry Division.

The Battle of Oudenaarde 1708

May 1940 was not the first occasion British troops had fought in this area. 250 years previously one of the key engagements of the Spanish Wars of Succession was fought just to the north of Oudenaarde, with British, Dutch, Austrians, Hanoverians, Prussians and Danes pitted against the French and Bavarians. British forces were commanded by John Churchill, the Duke of Marlborough, who fought against the Duke of Burgundy and Marshal Vendôme. Marlborough’s army numbered 80,000 men while the French army numbered around 95,000 men. As the opposing armies manoeuvred across Flanders, the French captured Ghent and Bruges and, in late June 1708, moved against the British held Oudenaarde. Beaten on the field of battle the French retired to Ghent, leaving Marlborough the victor. It is thought that the French army lost 15,000 men while the Allies forces are said to have lost fewer than 3000 officers and men. The next morning British and Prussian cavalry resumed the pursuit of the French army and crossed the border into France, reaching the outskirts of Arras. Many of the regiments that fought on the Escaut in 1940 were also present as part of Marlborough’s army, notably the Grenadier and Coldstream Guards, the East Kent Regiment (the Buffs), the Gloucesters and Royal Hampshires.

The First World War

The German advance in 1914 saw the Western Front trench lines being established west of the Escaut and, up until late 1918, the area remained in German hands. The American 37th ‘Buckeye’ Division from Ohio crossed the Escaut at Eine and Huevel on 2 November 1918 and the American 91st Division liberated Oudenaarde during the ‘advance to victory’ just days before the Armistice was declared, ending the ‘war to end all wars’. Further south, Tournai, which had been very badly damaged by air and artillery attacks, was liberated by the 47th (London) and 74th (Yeomanry) Divisions on 8 November 1918.

After Dunkirk and the 1940 campaign, advancing Allied troops were back on the Escaut in September 1944; Oudenaarde was liberated by the British on 5 September – you will find a memorial to the British 7th Division in the Tacambaroplein – and the American First Army arrived at Tournai two days earlier, on 3 September 1944.

Language

Flemish is spoken by some three and a half million people. The population of Belgium is roughly eight million, made up of Flemish speakers in the north, French speaking Walloons in the south and a smaller group in central Belgium who are bi-lingual. The frontier between the Flemish and French speaking populations has not changed since the fifth century and runs from Mousson, just south of Ypres, to Visé, just north of Liège, passing south of Brussels, through the village of Waterloo. Thus, the area covered by this guidebook falls in both French and Flemish speaking areas and battlefield tourists will often find place names on maps written in both Flemish and French. To avoid confusion I have used the Flemish spelling of place names where appropriate but have retained the French name for the river – the Escaut -which is used consistently in The British Official History, The War in France and Flanders by Major Lionel Ellis, and by regimental historians and war diarists.

Acknowledgements

Writing a book of this nature not only takes time but involves a considerable amount of walking the ground in order to – as far as possible – provide an accurate summary of what took place in May 1940. Fortunately there are still local individuals who remember the rather fleeting British defence along the Escaut in 1940 and to them I must extend my thanks for their patience in answering my seemingly endless questions. I have also relied on the knowledge and records available to Charles Deligne, the curator of the Tournai Military History Museum and Stijn Lybeet, at the Oudenaarde Museum, to correct my errors and

Reviews for Battle for the Escaut, 1940

[robpalmer-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A quaint little book, this publication is part of the series Battleground Dunkirk. They are intended as guides for people wishing to explore the battlefield of the 1940 campaign involving the British Expeditionary Force in France and Flanders.Chapter One is an twelve page introduction called ‘The First Steps to War’. It is brief, and states wrongly that the Munich Agreement was in 1936, when it was in fact in 1938. There is a brief overview of the higher formations and their commanders. Chapters Two, Three and Four cover the actions of the three corps level formations on the Escaut Line, with Chapter Five about the role of artillery. Chapter Six provides details of four car tours and two walking tours of the area. The four chapters on the historical actions in May 1940 are interesting and informative, and obviously focus on just the actions on the Escaut Line.The car tours and walking routes are very useful if you intend to visit the area. They provide much detailed information, which should make visiting the area relaxing and logical. Directions are included, and places to stop for a specific event or reason. The book contains several useful, interesting and relevant photographs, which assist in understanding the nature of the area and what a visitor will see some seventy-six years after the event.In conclusion, if you are considering visiting this area to view the battlefields of May 1940, I consider this book to be essential reading. If not, the details of this battle are valuable, although readers may find other accounts more comprehensive. My last observation is whether this format of publication is better on the internet, as changes may affect the tours that cannot be reflected in the book, and the internet is more dynamic.