Last weekend twelve Guild members gathered in the old
university city of Leuven in the Flemish Brabant area of Belgium for a weekend
organised by Chris Finn and John Cotterill. The idea behind the weekend (apart
from the normal fun and fellowship) was to look at the first half of the 1940
Fall of France campaign as it affected the British Expeditionary Force (BEF).
Most tours tend to focus on the second half of the campaign, perhaps from the
Ypres area to the mole and memorial at Dunkirk via Cassel, the massacre sites
at Wormhoudt or Le Paradis, the canal line, Irvine-Andrews VC site, Jimmy
Langley’s deliberate fratricide and the beach at Le Panne or Malo les Bains. This weekend was planned to look at events
before that, namely the RAF bombing of the bridges over the Albert Canal and
the BEF in battle on the Rivers Dyle and Escaut and the Ypres-Comines canal.
We gathered on the Friday night to listen to a strategic
scene setter in a conference room at the Novotel Leuven Centrum from Chris.
Members had arrived from all points of the compass with Chris and John having
come out on the Thursday to be joined on Friday by Jim and Elaine White from
Mainz , Francois Wicart and Margaret Pearson from Le Mans , Paul Oldfield from
Ypres and Gary Weight from Normandy. Only Scottie Scott, Steve Chambers, Dave
Grainger and Tim Halstead had come straight out from UK. On Saturday morning we hit the ground bright
and early and drove east towards Maastricht. At Eben Emael we climbed up onto
the roof of the largest fortification in France or Belgium to look at the
German glider coup de main operation on 10 May 1940. Having seen the damage
wreaked on armoured cupolas by shaped charge explosives we moved down to the
bridges at Veldwezelt and Vroenhoven which were bombed by the RAF on 12 May
leading to posthumous VCs for FO Donald Garland and Sgt Thomas Gray. We had
lunch at a new café with a spectacular view actually built within the latter
bridge.
On Saturday afternoon we moved west to line of the River Dyle,
at Gastuche, where the BEF met the oncoming Germans 14-16 May. We looked at the
action fought by 2 DLI which resulted in the first Army VC action of the
campaign – the award to Lt Richard Annand. We then drove down the line of the
Dyle into the outskirts of Leuven where we visited Heverlee CWGC Cemetery. As
well as the graves of Gray and Garland ( whose three brothers also died in the
RAF in 1942 , 43 and 45) , we saw the graves and heard the tales of the only
Manchester Bomber VC (aircraft type not the town) FO Leslie Manser and six ATS
girls from a mixed AA Regt killed in a tragic RTA. In the evening we walked
into the picturesque centre of Leuven and, pausing at the 15th
century university library, heard about the destruction of that building and
its irreplaceable contents by the Germans in August 1914 and May 1940 and the
general subject of German atrocities in Belgium, both real and imagined. We ate
at the Troubadour where service was slow that those who had not ordered a
starter came to regret that decision.
On Sunday we left Leuven and drove west to the River Escaut,
where the BEF stood and fought from 20 to 21 May, whilst their comrades
counter-attacked at Arras. We studied in particular the 3rd
Grenadier Guards action on Poplar Ridge, which resulted in the award of the VC
to L/Cpl Harry Nicholls. In Esquelmes CWGC Cemetery Steve Chambers took us to
the grave of 2Lt Arthur Boyd of the Grenadier Guards, who died trying to hold
the river line and showed us his photograph and medals. Then back to the line
of the Ypres-Comines attack where the BEF launched a series of counter attacks
on 27-28 May in order to hold open the “sack” and allow units to withdraw to
the Dunkirk perimeter ……. which is where the other tours start. We dispersed
after an interesting weekend on some of Belgium’s lesser known May 1940
battlefields during which our only disappointment was that the Stella Artois
brewery, only yards from our hotel in Leuven, only lays on tours for groups of
15 or more!
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