WW2 100 – 27 May-2 June 1940 – ‘With no known grave’: Signalman Joseph Harry V. Dale (1921-40) Royal Corps of Signals

 

Continued from 17 April 1940:  

‘God bless him’ wrote his mother: Lance Corporal Milne Vickery Meads, Royal Army Ordnance Corps (1917-1940) 

https://budleighpastandpresent.blogspot.com/2020/11/ww2-75-17-april-1940-god-bless-him.html

 

 

 

 

Littleham village: Some of its picturesque cottages have survived   Image credit: www.eastdevonopc.co.uk

At first glance, Signalman Dale would not appear to be a local man, judging by the details given by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission: he is recorded as the son of Joseph and Ada Amelia Dale, of Littleham.   

 

 

But Littleham is only a few miles south-west of Budleigh Salterton, and above, you can see Joseph’s name listed on the town’s War Memorial. In fact the Devon Heritage website states that he was born in Budleigh in the March Quarter of 1921. Joseph is not listed on Exmouth’s War Memorial and Littleham’s bears only two names of war dead from WW1.

It would be good to include more details about Joseph and his family, and perhaps they will emerge in time. Meanwhile, those details remain as unclear as the date of his death. For, whereas the previous post related to the death of Lance Corporal Milne Vickery Meads on 17 April, during the period of the ‘Phoney War’, Joseph Dale lost his life during what has been described as the chaotic withdrawal of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) from France. He was only 19.  

 

 

Badge of the Royal Corps of Signals. It features Mercury, the winged messenger of the Gods. All members of the corps wear a blue and white tactical recognition flash on the right arm   

Joseph had volunteered to join the Royal Corps of Signals at the outbreak of war in September 1939. He would have attended the Signals Training Centre at Catterick Camp before being sent to France with the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), as part of the 1st Division of the Corps. His Service Number was 2325762.

The Royal Corps of Signals was created in 1920, following the issue of a Royal Warrant supported by Winston Churchill, Secretary of State for War. During WW2, the Corps had over 150,000 members.  

It was dangerous work, often requiring extreme courage. ‘First in, last out’ was the Corps’ proud boast. The website of the Royal Signals Museum at Blandford Camp in Dorset notes that Royal Signals’ soldiers arrived in Poland on the day war broke out and so became the first British unit to see action in the Second World War. They had been given false passports and improbable occupations – including a Captain described as a ‘musician’ who could not play a note! Signallers needed technical and tactical skills to provide and operate Field Headquarters, and to ensure commanders had battle-winning information by installing, operating, maintaining and running the communications equipment that was essential to all military operations.  World War Two saw a total of 4,362 members of the Royal Signals give their lives.

A significant number of awards of the Military Cross and Military Medal (the latter mostly to linemen – signallers who specialised in cable-laying - and dispatch riders) were awarded for gallantry in May and June 1940. Examination of all that material is not yet complete but 40 awards of the Military Medal were for this period.

General Heinz Guderian, commander of the German armoured units which were closing in on Dunkirk. He is pictured with an Enigma encoding machine in a half-track being used as a mobile command centre during the Battle of France, 1940. Image credit Wikipedia

On 10 May 1940, the German Army launched their invasion of the Low Countries, thus ending the ‘Phoney War’. The German invasion was swift and successful, the Allied forces in Belgium having to retreat to the Scheldt River. By 24 May, the Germans had captured the port of Boulogne and surrounded Calais. Only one British battalion barred the way to Dunkirk. The German High Command had ordered the Panzer units to halt, concerned that the marshy ground around Dunkirk would prove unsuitable for tanks.

Air Marshal Hermann Göring successfully urged Hitler to let the Luftwaffe defeat the trapped Allied forces and stop their escape. On 26 May, Hitler ordered the Panzer groups to continue their advance, but most units took another 16 hours to attack, and the delay gave the Allies time to prepare defences vital for the evacuation.

Fierce fighting continued until the order was given for the BEF to withdraw to Dunkirk in northern France. What followed from 27 May to 6 June is known as Operation Dynamo and it was the remarkable evacuation of more than 330,000 British and Allied troops back to the UK, with their tanks and other equipment abandoned.

 

 

Allied soldiers were strafed and bombed by German aircraft while awaiting transport. Photo of 31 May. Collection of Australian War Memorial

It is indeed remarkable that the Germans did not follow up their success by taking Dunkirk, but attacks by the Luftwaffe continued. 

A flight of German Ju 87 Bs Stuka dive bombers over Poland in 1939. These were among the aircraft which targeted Allied troops on the beach at Dunkirk. Image credit: Heinrich Hoffmann/Wikimedia

Veteran Albert Henry Powell, a member of the Royal Corps of Signals like Joseph, described, in a BBC interview recorded on 12 November 2003, how he and his comrades huddled together in the sand dunes for protection from the constant bombing and machine gunning from the air. ‘The bombing was ineffectual, just blowing up loads of sand,’ he recalled, ‘but the machine gunning was another matter’.

 

British troops were lined up on the beach while awaiting evacuation, 26–29 May 1940. Collection of the Imperial War Museums

Chaotic the withdrawal may have been in many ways, but it was also a triumph of organisation, even in the most brutal details. Albert Henry Powell explained how troops were marshalled in groups of 50 under the command of an officer or senior non-commissioned officer (NCO), and marched down to the water’s edge. Discipline was maintained by a beachmaster, who called each group in turn. Powell recalled seeing one group run out of line, and witnessing the beachmaster promptly shooting the person in charge of the group.

The story is backed up in another BBC interview of 20 February 2004, in which George Murray, another Dunkirk veteran from the Royal Corps of Signals was asked how he could stand in a long queue to get on a small boat.  His answer was simple: ‘Officers patrolled the lines and shot anyone who broke ranks and panicked.’ 

British soldiers wade out to a waiting destroyer off Dunkirk during Operation Dynamo. From the collection of the Imperial War Museums

We do not know whether Joseph made it as far as a ship, or even to the water’s edge. His death was recorded on Casualty List No.828. The original source records him as ‘Presumed Killed in Action’, with a Date of Casualty given as between 27 May 1940 and 2 June 1940. Previously, his death had been shown on Casualty List No.269 as ‘Missing, date not reported’.

It is worth recording that the Royal Corps of Signals lost over 200 men during the battles in Flanders and France in May 1940 and up to the final evacuation from St Jean de Luz on 25 June. Others died of their injuries in the United Kingdom or as prisoners of war. Ninety-six of these men have no known graves and are commemorated on the Dunkirk Memorial. Five others on the memorial died as prisoners of war.

 

 

Along with its listing on Budleigh Salterton’s War Memorial, Joseph Dale’s name appears on Column 30 of the Dunkirk Memorial, which was unveiled at Dunkirk Town Cemetery by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother on 29 June 1957. It commemorates over 4,500 casualties of the British Expeditionary Force who died in the actions in Flanders and France or, having been captured in the Battle of France, died in captivity and who have no known grave. The Dunkirk Memorial commemorates 101 soldiers of the Royal Corps of Signals. 

 

The next post is for LIEUTENANT HUBERT CHARLES COURTNEY TANNER (1913-40), Royal Navy, who died on 29 May 1940, while serving on HMS Grafton. You can read about him at 

https://budleighpastandpresent.blogspot.com/2021/02/ww2-75-29-may-1940-casualty-of.html

These ‘orphans’ are listed on Budleigh Salterton War 

Memorial, but have not been identified. Their first names, 

date of death and service numbers are not known. 

They are recorded on the Devon Heritage website as 

'Not yet confirmed’  

If you know anything which would help to identify them,

please contact Michael Downes on 01395 446407.

 

F.E. Newcombe

P. Pritchard

F.J. Watts