The siege of Calais (1940) was a battle for the port of Calais during the Battle of France. The siege was fought at the same time as the Battle of Boulogne, just before Operation Dynamo, the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) through Dunkirk. After the Franco-British counter-attack at the Battle of Arras (21 May), German units were held back to be ready to resist a resumption of the counter-attack on 22 May, despite the protests of General Heinz Guderian, the commander of the XIX Armee Korps, who wanted to rush north up the Channel coast to capture Boulogne, Calais and Dunkirk. An attack by part of the XIX Armee Korps was not authorised until 12:40 a.m. on the night of 21/22 May.
By the time the 10th Panzer Division was ready to attack Calais, the British 30th Infantry Brigade and 3rd Royal Tank Regiment (3rd RTR) had reinforced the French and British troops in the port. On 22 May, the British troops had established roadblocks outside the town and French rearguards skirmished with German armoured units, as they advanced towards Calais. British tanks and infantry had been ordered south to reinforce Boulogne but were too late. They then received orders to escort a food convoy to Dunkirk but found the road blocked by German troops. On 23 May, the British began to retire to the old Calais walls (built in the 1670s) and on 24 May, the siege began. The attacks by the 10th Panzer Division were mostly costly failures and by evening, the Germans reported that about half their tanks had been knocked out and a third of the infantry were casualties. The German attacks were supported by the Luftwaffe, while the Allied defenders were supported by their navies delivering supplies, evacuating wounded and bombarding German targets around the port.
On the night of 24/25 May, the defenders were forced to withdraw from the southern enceinte, to a line covering the Old Town and Citadel; attacks next day against this shorter line were repulsed. The Germans tried several times to persuade the garrison to surrender but orders had been received from London to hold out, because an evacuation had been forbidden by the French commander of the northern ports. More German attacks early on 26 May failed and the German commander was given an ultimatum that if Calais was not captured by 2:00 p.m., the attackers would be pulled back and the town levelled by the Luftwaffe. The Anglo-French defences began to collapse in the early afternoon and at 4:00 p.m. the order "every man for himself" was given to the defenders, as Le Tellier, the French commander surrendered. Next day, small naval craft entered the harbour and lifted about 400 men, while aircraft of the RAF and Fleet Air Arm dropped supplies and attacked German artillery emplacements.
In 1949, Churchill wrote that the defence of Calais delayed the German attack on Dunkirk, helping to save the 300,000 soldiers of the BEF, a claim that Guderian contradicted in 1951. In 1966, Lionel Ellis, the British official historian, wrote that three panzer divisions had been diverted by the defence of Boulogne and Calais, giving the Allies time to rush troops to close a gap west of Dunkirk. In 2006, Karl-Heinz Frieser wrote that the halt order issued to the German unit commanders because of the Anglo-French attack at the Battle of Arras had a greater effect than the siege. Hitler and the higher German commanders panicked because of their fears of flank attacks, when the real danger was of the Allies retreating to the coast before they could be cut off. Reinforcements sent from Britain to Boulogne and Calais arrived in time to forestall the Germans and hold them off when they advanced again on 22 May.
Background
Calais
The term Channel Ports refers to Calais, Boulogne and Dunkirk (and sometimes Ostend in Belgium). The ports are the nearest to Cap Gris Nez, the shortest crossing from England and are the most popular for passenger traffic. Calais is built on low ground with low sand dunes on either side and is enclosed by fortifications. There was a citadel in the old town surrounded by water and in 1940 on the east side, the moat was still wet but elsewhere had become a dry ditch. Surrounding the town was an enceinte, a defensive fortification, which originally consisted of twelve bastions linked by a curtain wall, with a perimeter of 8 mi (13 km), built by Vauban from 1667 to 1707.
In many places, the enceinte was overlooked by suburban buildings built in the nineteenth century. Two of the southern bastions and the wall linking them had been demolished to make way for railway lines, leading to railway sidings and quays of the Gare Maritime in the harbour. About 0.99 miles (1.6 km) outside the enceinte to the west was Fort Nieulay. Two other forts to the south and east were derelict or had disappeared. Outside the town, low ground to the east and south is cut by ditches, which limit the landward approach to roads raised above ground level. To the west and south-west, there is a ridge of higher ground between Calais and Boulogne, from which Calais is overlooked.
BEF
When plans for the deployment of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) were made, the British Imperial General Staff drew from experience in the First World War. The British Expeditionary Force had used the Channel Ports as their entrepôts for supplies, even though they were only 32 km (20 mi) from the Western Front. Had the German spring offensive of 1918 succeeded in breaking through the front and capturing or even threatening the ports, the BEF would have been in a desperate position. During the Phoney War (September 1939 – 10 May 1940), the 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 from the BEF began in December, Calais was used for communication and for troop movements, especially for men granted compassionate leave.
The Battle of France
On 10 May 1940, the Germans began Fall Gelb an offensive against France, Belgium and the Netherlands. Within a few days, Army Group A (Generaloberst Gerd von Rundstedt) broke through the French Ninth Army (General André Corap) in the centre of the French front near Sedan and drove westwards down the Somme river valley, led by Panzergruppe Kleist comprising XIX Armee Korps under Generalleutnant Heinz Guderian and the XLI Armee Korps (Generalleutnant Georg-Hans Reinhardt). On 20 May, the Germans captured Abbeville at the mouth of the Somme River, cutting off the Allied troops in Northern France and Belgium. The Battle of Arras, a Franco-British counter-attack on 21 May, led the Germans to continue to attack north towards the channel ports, rather than advance southwards over the Somme. Apprehension about another Franco-British counter-attack led to the "Arras halt order" being issued by the German higher commanders on 21 May. The neighbouring XV Korps (General Hermann Hoth) was held back in reserve and a division of the XLI Korps was moved eastwards, when the corps was only 31 miles (50 km) from Dunkirk.
Prelude
German preparations
Late on 21 May, Oberkommando des Heeres (OKH) rescinded the halt order; Panzergruppe Kleist was to resume the advance and move about 50 mi (80 km) north, to capture Boulogne and Calais. The next day, Guderian gave orders for the 2nd Panzer Division (Generalleutnant Rudolf Veiel) to advance to Boulogne on a line from Baincthun to Samer, with the 1st Panzer Division (Generallautnant Friedrich Kirchner) as a flank guard on the right, advancing to Desvres and Marquise in case of a counter-attack from Calais; the 1st Panzer Division reaching the vicinity of the port during the late afternoon. The 10th Panzer Division (Generalleutnant Ferdinand Schaal) was detached to guard against a possible counter-attack from the south. Parts of the 1st Panzer Division and 2nd Panzer Division were also held back to defend bridgeheads on the south bank of the Somme.
Allied preparations
Calais had been raided by Luftwaffe bombers several times, which caused disruption to military movements, confusion and traffic jams, with refugees making for Calais meeting refugees fleeing the port. The French army units in Calais were commanded by Commandant (Major) Raymond Le Tellier and the northernmost bastions and fortifications were manned by French naval reservists and volunteers commanded by the Commandant du Front de Mer (Capitaine de frégate Charles de Lambertye). Various army stragglers, including infantry and a machine-gun company had arrived in the town. On 19 May, Lieutenant-General Douglas Brownrigg, the Adjutant General of the BEF, appointed Colonel Rupert Holland to command the British troops in Calais and to arrange the evacuation of non-combatant personnel and wounded. The British contingent consisted of a platoon of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders (A&SH) who were guarding a radar site, the 2nd Anti-Aircraft Regiment RA, 58th (A&SH) Light Anti-Aircraft Regiment RA and the 1st Searchlight Regiment RA.
When the Germans captured Abbeville on 20 May, the War Office in Britain ordered troops to be despatched to the Channel Ports as a precaution. The 20th Guards Brigade was sent to Boulogne. The 3rd Royal Tank Regiment (3rd RTR, Lieutenant-Colonel R. Keller), the 1st Battalion Queen Victoria's Rifles (QVR, Lieutenant-Colonel J. A. M. Ellison-Macartney), the 229th Anti-Tank Battery RA and the new 30th Motor Brigade (Brigadier Claude Nicholson), were ordered to Calais. Most of the units dispatched to Calais were unprepared for action in some respects.
The 3rd RTR was part of the 1st Heavy Armoured Brigade (Brigadier John Crocker) and had been about to leave for Cherbourg, to join the 1st Armoured Division, which was assembling at Pacy-sur-Eure in Normandy. Their tanks had already been loaded aboard SS City of Christchurch in Southampton. Lieutenant-Colonel Keller received orders on the night of 21/22 May at Fordingbridge to move the 3rd RTR to Southampton but during the journey the personnel train was diverted to Dover. Keller was briefed at Dover to go to Calais and given sealed orders for the British port commander (although he was not told who this was). The personnel embarked aboard SS Maid of Orleans.
The QVR was a Territorial Army motor-cycle battalion, nominally the divisional cavalry for the 56th (London) Division. They had briefly been attached to the 30th Motor Brigade in April but then were returned to the 56th (London) Division for home defence, being deprived of their twenty-two scout cars. They were stationed near Ashford in Kent and late on 21 May, the QVR was ordered to proceed by train to Dover to embark for France; the motor-cycle combinations and other vehicles were to be left behind. After a confused move it was realised that there had been a staff error and that there was room for the motor-cycle combinations aboard the TSS Canterbury but they did not arrive before the ship sailed.
Maid of Orleans and City of Canterbury carrying the personnel of the 3rd RTR and the QVR departed Dover at 11:00 a.m. They arrived at Calais around 1:00 p.m., under a pall of smoke from buildings on fire in the town. The QVR landed without motorcycles, transport or 3-inch mortars and only smoke bombs for the 2-inch mortars. Many of the men were armed only with revolvers and had to scavenge for rifles from those dumped on the quay by personnel hastily departing for England.
While they waited for their vehicles to arrive, the men of the 3rd RTR were ordered to disperse in the sand dunes and were bombed soon after. Keller met Holland who told him to take orders from the BEF GHQ but at 5:00 p.m., Brownrigg arrived in Calais and ordered Keller to move the 3rd RTR south-west as soon as it had unloaded, to join the 20th Guards Brigade at Boulogne. After Brownrigg left, Major Ken Bailey turned up from GHQ with orders for the 3rd RTR to go to St Omer and Hazebrouck, 29 mi (47 km) east of Boulogne, to make contact with GHQ. Brownrigg had gone to Dover, unaware that his orders at Calais had been superseded. He met Nicholson and briefed him to relieve Boulogne with the 30th Infantry Brigade and the 3rd RTR.
SS City of Canterbury, with the 3rd RTR tanks, arrived from Southampton at 4:00 p.m. but unloading was very slow, as 7,000 imp gal (32,000 L) of petrol had been loaded on deck and had to be moved using only the ship's derricks, as a power cut had immobilised the cranes on the docks. A power cut and a strike by the ship's crew for 4+1⁄2 hours during the night of 22/23 May, added to the delay. The captain intended to leave the harbour without waiting, until he was held up at gunpoint by a 3rd RTR officer. The dock workers were exhausted, having been at work unloading rations for the BEF for many hours and it was not until the following morning that the vehicles had been unloaded and refuelled. The cruiser tanks had been loaded first and had to be unloaded last. More delay was caused by the tank guns having been coated in a preservative and loaded separately. The guns had to be cleaned before they could be remounted.
The 30th Motor Brigade had been formed on 24 April 1940, from the 1st Support Group, to take part in the Norwegian Campaign. After these orders were cancelled, the brigade was posted to East Anglia to meet a supposed threat of invasion. The main body of the brigade were the 1st Battalion, the Rifle Brigade (1st RB, Lieutenant Colonel Chandos Hoskyns) and the 2nd Battalion, King's Royal Rifle Corps (2nd KRRC, Lieutenant Colonel Euan Miller). These were both highly trained units, each about 750 strong. They were ordered late on 21 May to move by road to Southampton. They arrived on 22 May and were embarked in a rather chaotic fashion; the vehicles aboard SS Kohistan and SS City of Canterbury which proceeded directly to Calais, the KRRC aboard MV Royal Daffodil and the RB and brigade headquarters aboard SS Archangel. They sailed on 23 May, at first for Dover, where they were joined by an "Auto Carrier" containing the 229th Anti-Tank Battery RA, which had moved from Sheffield but had to leave four of the twelve anti-tank guns behind as there was no room for them on the ship. The 30th Brigade's personnel arrived at Calais in the afternoon of 23 May. They then had to wait, like the 3rd RTR, until the evening for the vehicle ships to arrive and be unloaded.
Battle
22 May
The 3rd RTR had been assembling its 21 Light Tank Mk VI and 27 cruiser tanks at Coquelles on the Calais–Boulogne road according to the orders received from Brownrigg and a patrol of light tanks was sent down the St. Omer road according to the orders received from GHQ via Bailey. The patrol found the town empty, under bombardment and illuminated by the fires of burning buildings, at which the patrol returned to Coquelles at about 8:00 a.m. in the morning of 23 May. (The patrol was fortunate to miss the 6th Panzer Division, which had laagered around Guînes, west of the St. Omer road for the night.)