| United Kingdom Royal Army Scottish 51st Highlanders and French prisoners of war are led up from the beach at Veules-les-Roses. The soldier with the bandaged eye is Lieutenant Colin Douglas Hunter (???? – March 25, 1975), intelligence officer of the 4th Cameron Highlanders; and at right, mostly obscured, is Captain Derek Lang (October 7, 1913 – April 7, 2001), adjutant of the 4th Cameron Highlanders. This image was published in the German magazine Signal. After the close of the Dunkirk evacuation on June 4, there were sizable units of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) left behind in the French interior. As relations between the defeatist French contingent and the British government deteriorated, the 51st Highlanders under Major General Sir Victor M. Fortune (August 21, 1883 – January 2, 1949) began to feel that they would be sacrificed in the name of inter-allied cooperation. The 51st Highlanders were equipped with mechanized transportation, but the French units of the IX Corps they were fighting with were horse drawn and could only march 15 miles per day. While the Royal Navy held Dieppe open, that information was not communicated to either the 51st or High Command in London, so the Division was directed to Le Havre. Unfortunately for the Highlanders, the German 7th Panzer Division under General Erwin Rommel (November 15, 1891 – October 14, 1944) could outmaneuver the Highlanders, since Fortune insisted on remaining with the horse-drawn French units. He cut off the Highlanders and their French allies and forced them into a siege at the port of St. Valery. After a combined assault by artillery and aircraft, Fortune surrendered the bulk of the Highlanders at 0815 Hours on June 12. A smaller number were able to escape from the beach at Veules-les-Roses. A total of 3,200 men from the 51st Highland Division were rescued from the beach of Veules les Roses on the same morning of June 12, along with 300 French troops, but the remainder suffered the same fate as their comrades at St. Valery. A French warship was sunk with heavy loss of life. The arrival of good weather, daylight, a low tide and further incursions by the Germans meant that nothing could approach the beach without being met with heavy fire. There were other evacuations from Brest, Saint Nazaire, Nantes, St. Malo, and Cherbourg during June 15-17. These operations took off the 52nd Lowland Division, the 1st Armored Division, Polish, Czech, and Belgian soldiers, over 190,000 men. The SS Lancastria was sunk with 3,500 dead. Captain Lang recounted his capture: “We had hoped that we were going to be pulled off at St. Valery, in orderly fashion, by the navy. But by this time, St. Valery was an inferno of fire from incendiary shells. The whole place was really in the most dreadful state. As a battalion, we pulled away out of the perimeter fences down the little lanes, down to St. Valery, where complete chaos reigned. We pulled back into the middle of all this. Later in the evening, we were instructed to destroy our vehicles.We were still hoping to be evacuated into the wide open arms of the Royal Navy. But things went wrong. The weather was against us. The tide was against us. They simply couldn’t get in to take us off. “That night was terrifying and come the dawn it was a question of seeing what we could possibly do to break away on our own. 1 or 2 of us looked around to see which direction in which to go. We saw a couple of ships 5 miles away to the east, opposite a little place called Veules-les-Roses. So myself and a number of Jocks made our way along the beach towards these ships. It was a terrifying sight, because there were a number of bodies lying at the foot of the cliffs. We were being fired at by cannon and machine gun as we went – not aimed specifically at us, but aimed along the beach. When we got to Veules-les-Roses, there were a large number of British troops already there, and quite a lot of French too. “There was a British boat there, a large trawler type fishing boat, aground on the sand. We climbed aboard-and it was a seething mass of human beings all waiting for the tide to come in and float the boat. Then the Germans began to close in on us along the top of the cliffs. My last moments before captured were spent firing a Lewis Gun-which was fixed to the side of this boat-at these tanks. Quite a forlorn hope of course. “Then they began to fire their own guns down at us, and they made enough holes in the boat that even if it had floated, it would have sunk again straight away. I was mildly wounded in the face by shrapnel-and that was the end of it. Soon afterwards, the Germans came to the beach and captured us all. The Germans were very arrogant, very excitable and quite delighted to have caught us all.” Lang, and Hunter, his wound turned septic, were separated. Hunter was sent several prisoner of war camps before beings sent to the hospital at Doullens. His wound needed better care, so he was transferred to a French hospital for treatment on June 19. He was transferred again on July 10 to the Jeanne d’Arc school to make way for German wounded expected to arrive after the forthcoming invasion of England. Hunter was able to place an advertisement in a French newspaper to let people know he was alive and in the hospital in the town of Doullens. A Frenchwoman brought him food, medicine, books and clothing, and within a few weeks introduced him to an American. They were English-born French citizen Catherine “Kitty” Bonnefous (August 5, 1886 – ????) and American widow Etta Shiber (January 20, 1878 – December 23, 1948). On August 28, 1940, Shiber took Hunter into the trunk of her car and drove him from Doullens to Paris, where he stayed in Shiber and Bonnefous’s apartment. There he received funds from the American Embassy and was able to contact his family. Bonnefous’s husband, Henri, established a route that Hunter used to travel to Libourne on September 26, and then to Marseilles in the unoccupied zone. With other British soldiers, Hunter reported to the American consulate on September 30, and stayed in various French homes for 3 weeks. Captain Lang arrived with some other British soldiers through the same route. Staying through November, Madame Bonnefous arrived on a fundraising tour, hoping wealthy French in the unoccupied zone would fund her escape route. While she was in Marseilles she heard that Shiber had been arrested by the Gestapo. Bonnefous and Shiber were arrested, detained, and sentenced to death. Shiber was traded to the United States for Johanna Hoffman, who was part of the Rumrich spy network, and arrested and sentenced to 4 years in the United States. Bonnefous’s death sentence was commuted to 4 years; she was survived Ravensbrück only to be sexually assaulted by Soviet Red Army soldiers who liberated the camp. Lang and Hunter were sent before a French medical board which decertified them for further military service. They were allowed to leave Marseilles by train to Madrid, and then to Gibraltar, where they sailed for England aboard HMS Derbyshire, arriving on January 18, 1941. Hunter received the Military Cross on September 16, 1941, for his actions in reconnoitering the perimeter in France when the telephone line was cut by artillery. Lang was made a temporary Lieutenant Colonel and General Officer Commanding 5th Battalion, 4th Cameron highlanders. After leading them through the Battle of Falaise, Lang and the 4th Cameron Highlanders were given the honor of liberating St. Valery. After the war, Lang rose to Lieutenant General, and commanded the Highland Division in 1962. He was General Officer Commanding Scottish Command in 1966. | |
| Image Filename | wwii0374.jpg |
| Image Size | 949.26 KB |
| Image Dimensions | 2242 x 2874 |
| Photographer | Heinz Boesig |
| Photographer Title | Kriegsberichter |
| Caption Author | Written or Adapted by Jason McDonald |
| Date Photographed | June 12, 1940 |
| Location | |
| City | Veules-les-Roses |
| State or Province | Normandy |
| Country | France |
| Archive | National Archives and Records Administration |
| Record Number | NWDNS-242-EB-7(35) |
| Status | Caption ©2026 MFA Productions LLC Please Do Not Duplicate or Distribute Without Permission; Image in the Public Domain |
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