British soldiers fighting a rearguard action paid a heavy price to help their comrades escape. Steve Snelling recounts their last stand, which ended in a Nazi war crime.
The end was not far off. A fretful night lit by a flurry of flares and mortar bursts had given way to a fearful dawn streaked with menace. Captain Nick Hallett was under no illusions about the threat to his embattled force. Even before first light he’d heard the tell-tale clatter of German tanks moving ever nearer.
There was barely time to throw up a feeble road block before they were upon them: about a dozen of what he called “huge fellows” spitting fire and shells as they cut a deadly path into the heart of his position. It was about 5am on May 27, 1940 and for hundreds of men of the 2nd Royal Norfolks and the 1st Royal Scots occupying a scattering of ditches and farm buildings north of La Bassée Canal in northern France, the crisis point of a forlorn rearguard action had been reached.
