Captain Nick Hallett
Captain Nick Hallett 2nd Battalion The Royal Norfolk Regiment
Captain Hallett was another officer who was involved in the defence of Le Paradis. Here we look at the pivotal part he played in the action and beyond:
10th May 1940: Invasion
On 5th May, 1940, Nick Hallett was listed as follows in Captain Charles Long’s ‘Register of Officers’
HQ Coy (Headquarters Company)
A/Captain Hallett MTO (Motor Transport Officer)
When the enemy crossed the border on 10th May, 1940, so ending the ‘Phoney War’, Captain Nick Hallett, the Motor Transport Officer, was with the Battalion at Orchies which soon found itself under attack from the Luftwaffe Bombers.
Hallett remarked that it was his ‘first experience of this sort of thing, and decidedly unpleasant as about 200 yards is much too close for comfort’. Just after midnight as the Battalion marched to Valenciennes before journeying to the Dyle, Captain Hallett wrote that he ‘felt excited as this was what we had been waiting for since the beginning of the war. Action was imminent’.
Captain Nick Hallett proved to be more than a capable officer and when on 24th May, 1940, Major Ryder, the Commanding Officer was ordered by Brigade to organise a reconnaissance of the La Bassée Canal, Major Ryder had no hesitation in leaving Nick Hallett temporarily in charge of the Battalion.
On 26th May, 1940, Capt. Charles Long’s War Diaries recorded a ‘Redistribution of Officers’ in which Captain Hallett was moved from Motor Transport Officer to command the remnants of ‘B’ Company.
This move further demonstrated the quality of officer, not only serving in 2nd Battalion the Royal Norfolks, but also in the British Army.
The Defence of Le Cornet Malo
At Le Cornet Malo, Captain Hallett immediately took the fight to the enemy by leading a patrol from his fragmented ‘B’ Company to the southern part of the village. With rifle and Bren gun they prevented the enemy advance from the canal with effective firepower even though, as Hallett recalled, ‘It was a pity we had no mortars or we could have bombed them beautifully.’
As they moved forward, a few surviving Germans gave themselves up. On questioning one of the wounded German prisoners, Hallett was told ‘there was about a Division against us across the canal, as I had expected, instead of the odd hundred or so I’d been told’ * (*Editor Note – in the British Army a Division could contain between 8.000 to 25,000 soldiers depending on the composition of Brigades forming it).
As the fighting wore on along the front there became a shortage of spares and ammunition.
On 27th May, 1940, around 0500 hrs tanks appeared in the ‘B’ Company’s area around Le Cornet Malo. ‘Huge fellows’ wrote Hallett, ‘and about a dozen. I phoned Battalion HQ. Then they cut the line. That was the last message I got to the Battalion’.
Signaller Bob Brown was on the switchboard at Battalion HQ and confirmed ‘B’ Company were the first to go out of communication. Only moments before, there had been a poignant exchange of words between Bob Brown and his friend Alf Blake the ‘B’ Company signalman. ‘I’m afraid we are in for it’ Blake told him. ‘Don’t forget me. We have had some good times together. I don’t know whether I will ever see you again.’ That was the last Bob Brown heard of his friend.
Despite Captain Hallett’s forward section falling back and leaving guns and anti-tank rifles behind, the remnants of ‘B’ Company defiantly faced the Panzers.
With sudden inspiration, Hallett recalled ‘Eventually we had a brainwave, and ran out below the tanks’ angle of fire, and put Mills grenades in the tracks. This did not do the tanks much harm, but frightened the drivers, and they ditched them. We got four that way. Then gradually some form of order was restored.'
This action allowed Hallett time to get a LMG (light machine gun) back in position and the A/T (anti- tank) rifles mounted.
The Totenkopf infantry had now caught up with the Panzers advancing shoulder to shoulder and suffered at the hands of Hallett’s Bren guns and riflemen. ‘B’ company, however, suffered heavily and Hallett was finally left in a barn with only a rifleman who, when killed, left Hallett on his own and wounded. In trying to escape, Captain Hallett was taken prisoner.
Bethune Civil Hospital
When Pooley and O’Callaghan were handed over to the Wehrmacht without risk to themselves or to the Creton family who had looked after them, they were taken to Bethune Civil Hospital. Here, by clever work of ‘admissions’, their entry into the hospital was dated 27th May, 1940 – thereby eliminating them from being at the scene of the massacre.
In all there were about ten Royal Norfolks in the hospital including CSM Cockaday (click on link) and one of the officers. O’Callaghan said it was the Transport Officer which implied Captain Nick Hallett, who had been in charge of transport until 26th May when he was placed, by Major Ryder, in charge of the remnants of ‘B’ Company defending Le Cornet Malo.
Captain Hallett’s presence in the hospital gave O’Callaghan the opportunity to report the atrocity at Le Paradis and he decided to do so. This meeting is now described by author Cyril Jolly:
"The officer made no bones of his belief and told O’Callaghan there and then that he did not believe that the Germans would do such a thing. O’Callaghan was naturally pretty sore at this open disbelief and told the officer that he could please himself whether he believed it or not, but that he did not make such things up and there would be no point in doing so. The officer went down soon after to see Pooley. His arm was in a sling. He sat down on Pooley’s bed and demanded, ‘What’s this cock and bull story O’Callaghan has been telling us about the Germans shooting ninety of our men?’
Pooley was not in a fit state for much interrogation, but he answered ‘It’s not a cock and bull story. It’s the truth. All the survivors of the battalion were taken out of Headquarters and machine-gunned.’
‘What happened to the Commanding Officer?’
‘He got it as well’ replied the wounded man.
But the officer, unconvinced, said, ‘The Germans would not do such a thing’ and unwilling to worry Pooley further, turned away.
It was a stroke of luck that Captain Hallett did not believe the story or progress with an investigation via, for example, the Red Cross, as the lives of the two witnesses to the massacre, O’Callaghan and Pooley would have been in jeopardy.
The 1970 Pilgrimage to Le Paradis
In May 1970 a Pilgrimage to Le Paradis was undertaken by members of the Norfolk and Norwich Branch of the Dunkirk Veterans Association led by their President, Major General Wade, where a memorial plaque on the barn wall where the massacre occurred, was unveiled by Bill O’Callaghan and Madam Creton.
During an ITV interview, reporter John Swinfield introduced the now Colonel Nick Hallett as ‘the first officer O’Callaghan spoke to about the incident’. Colonel Nick Hallett’s response was as follows; -
“After this event took place I was in fact in hospital at Bethune where I was taken after I was wounded…and one of the people who escaped the massacre came into the hospital and actually reported to me what had happened. This I found, at that stage, totally incredible. I, and others like me, had been captured by units of the same formation but not, indeed, by the people who carried out this massacre, and our treatment had been extremely good.
"The fact of a massacre of this sort was something totally foreign to our experience and not a thing we had expected from the German Army of those days. Of course, a further aspect of it was that, if this story was true, the knowledge of it was a very dangerous thing. There was nothing that we in hospital in an occupied country could do about it and if the Germans had known that somebody had escaped that massacre the future for him might have been very grim.
"I eventually was moved to a prison camp in Germany and it wasn’t until after the war when the whole story was published and Pooley and O’Callaghan were completely vindicated in the accuracy of their story when one realised what in fact had actually happened."
The 1978 unveiling of the Dunkirk Veterans Memoria at Le Paradis
In 1978 when the Dunkirk Veterans' Memorial in the centre of Le Paradis was commissioned there was an emotional encounter when Dennis O’Callaghan, the son of Bill O’Callaghan one of the two survivors of the atrocity, was introduced by Stan Priest, a member of the Dunkirk Veterans Association, to Colonel Nick Hallett, at the barn where the massacre took place. Here Colonel Hallett apologised to Dennis for not believing his father when they met at Bethune Civil Hospital. Dennis duly thanked him but there was a recognition of the circumstances which Colonel Hallett was under at that time and he was certainly not the only person to disbelieve the story.
After being repatriated in 1943, Bert Pooley reported the incident to the authorities whilst at Richmond Convalescent Camp. Soon after, he was interrogated by two officers whose unbelieving attitude to his story was deeply upsetting to Pooley. He would not disclose Bill O’Callaghan’s name as he had little faith in their security. Even when Bill O’Callaghan was released in 1945 and reported the atrocity – nothing more was heard as his affidavit disappeared into the system. It was only when the Americans and Lt. Col. A. P. Scotland of the London Cage (Kensington Interrogation Centre) became involved did the truth of the story unravel.
Captain Nick Hallett’s vital role
Notwithstanding his doubts over the massacre story which can be easily explained, Captain Nick Hallett’s incredible bravery implementing the final order of ‘last man last round’ and by leading by example at Le Cornet Malo demonstrated the vital role he too played in delaying the enemy advance to ensure the corridors to Dunkirk remained open for a successful evacuation.
NOTES AND THANKS
Our gratitude for this article is extended to:
Captain Hallett was another officer who was involved in the defence of Le Paradis. Here we look at the pivotal part he played in the action and beyond:
10th May 1940: Invasion
On 5th May, 1940, Nick Hallett was listed as follows in Captain Charles Long’s ‘Register of Officers’
HQ Coy (Headquarters Company)
A/Captain Hallett MTO (Motor Transport Officer)
When the enemy crossed the border on 10th May, 1940, so ending the ‘Phoney War’, Captain Nick Hallett, the Motor Transport Officer, was with the Battalion at Orchies which soon found itself under attack from the Luftwaffe Bombers.
Hallett remarked that it was his ‘first experience of this sort of thing, and decidedly unpleasant as about 200 yards is much too close for comfort’. Just after midnight as the Battalion marched to Valenciennes before journeying to the Dyle, Captain Hallett wrote that he ‘felt excited as this was what we had been waiting for since the beginning of the war. Action was imminent’.
Captain Nick Hallett proved to be more than a capable officer and when on 24th May, 1940, Major Ryder, the Commanding Officer was ordered by Brigade to organise a reconnaissance of the La Bassée Canal, Major Ryder had no hesitation in leaving Nick Hallett temporarily in charge of the Battalion.
On 26th May, 1940, Capt. Charles Long’s War Diaries recorded a ‘Redistribution of Officers’ in which Captain Hallett was moved from Motor Transport Officer to command the remnants of ‘B’ Company.
This move further demonstrated the quality of officer, not only serving in 2nd Battalion the Royal Norfolks, but also in the British Army.
The Defence of Le Cornet Malo
At Le Cornet Malo, Captain Hallett immediately took the fight to the enemy by leading a patrol from his fragmented ‘B’ Company to the southern part of the village. With rifle and Bren gun they prevented the enemy advance from the canal with effective firepower even though, as Hallett recalled, ‘It was a pity we had no mortars or we could have bombed them beautifully.’
As they moved forward, a few surviving Germans gave themselves up. On questioning one of the wounded German prisoners, Hallett was told ‘there was about a Division against us across the canal, as I had expected, instead of the odd hundred or so I’d been told’ * (*Editor Note – in the British Army a Division could contain between 8.000 to 25,000 soldiers depending on the composition of Brigades forming it).
As the fighting wore on along the front there became a shortage of spares and ammunition.
On 27th May, 1940, around 0500 hrs tanks appeared in the ‘B’ Company’s area around Le Cornet Malo. ‘Huge fellows’ wrote Hallett, ‘and about a dozen. I phoned Battalion HQ. Then they cut the line. That was the last message I got to the Battalion’.
Signaller Bob Brown was on the switchboard at Battalion HQ and confirmed ‘B’ Company were the first to go out of communication. Only moments before, there had been a poignant exchange of words between Bob Brown and his friend Alf Blake the ‘B’ Company signalman. ‘I’m afraid we are in for it’ Blake told him. ‘Don’t forget me. We have had some good times together. I don’t know whether I will ever see you again.’ That was the last Bob Brown heard of his friend.
Despite Captain Hallett’s forward section falling back and leaving guns and anti-tank rifles behind, the remnants of ‘B’ Company defiantly faced the Panzers.
With sudden inspiration, Hallett recalled ‘Eventually we had a brainwave, and ran out below the tanks’ angle of fire, and put Mills grenades in the tracks. This did not do the tanks much harm, but frightened the drivers, and they ditched them. We got four that way. Then gradually some form of order was restored.'
This action allowed Hallett time to get a LMG (light machine gun) back in position and the A/T (anti- tank) rifles mounted.
The Totenkopf infantry had now caught up with the Panzers advancing shoulder to shoulder and suffered at the hands of Hallett’s Bren guns and riflemen. ‘B’ company, however, suffered heavily and Hallett was finally left in a barn with only a rifleman who, when killed, left Hallett on his own and wounded. In trying to escape, Captain Hallett was taken prisoner.
Bethune Civil Hospital
When Pooley and O’Callaghan were handed over to the Wehrmacht without risk to themselves or to the Creton family who had looked after them, they were taken to Bethune Civil Hospital. Here, by clever work of ‘admissions’, their entry into the hospital was dated 27th May, 1940 – thereby eliminating them from being at the scene of the massacre.
In all there were about ten Royal Norfolks in the hospital including CSM Cockaday (click on link) and one of the officers. O’Callaghan said it was the Transport Officer which implied Captain Nick Hallett, who had been in charge of transport until 26th May when he was placed, by Major Ryder, in charge of the remnants of ‘B’ Company defending Le Cornet Malo.
Captain Hallett’s presence in the hospital gave O’Callaghan the opportunity to report the atrocity at Le Paradis and he decided to do so. This meeting is now described by author Cyril Jolly:
"The officer made no bones of his belief and told O’Callaghan there and then that he did not believe that the Germans would do such a thing. O’Callaghan was naturally pretty sore at this open disbelief and told the officer that he could please himself whether he believed it or not, but that he did not make such things up and there would be no point in doing so. The officer went down soon after to see Pooley. His arm was in a sling. He sat down on Pooley’s bed and demanded, ‘What’s this cock and bull story O’Callaghan has been telling us about the Germans shooting ninety of our men?’
Pooley was not in a fit state for much interrogation, but he answered ‘It’s not a cock and bull story. It’s the truth. All the survivors of the battalion were taken out of Headquarters and machine-gunned.’
‘What happened to the Commanding Officer?’
‘He got it as well’ replied the wounded man.
But the officer, unconvinced, said, ‘The Germans would not do such a thing’ and unwilling to worry Pooley further, turned away.
It was a stroke of luck that Captain Hallett did not believe the story or progress with an investigation via, for example, the Red Cross, as the lives of the two witnesses to the massacre, O’Callaghan and Pooley would have been in jeopardy.
The 1970 Pilgrimage to Le Paradis
In May 1970 a Pilgrimage to Le Paradis was undertaken by members of the Norfolk and Norwich Branch of the Dunkirk Veterans Association led by their President, Major General Wade, where a memorial plaque on the barn wall where the massacre occurred, was unveiled by Bill O’Callaghan and Madam Creton.
During an ITV interview, reporter John Swinfield introduced the now Colonel Nick Hallett as ‘the first officer O’Callaghan spoke to about the incident’. Colonel Nick Hallett’s response was as follows; -
“After this event took place I was in fact in hospital at Bethune where I was taken after I was wounded…and one of the people who escaped the massacre came into the hospital and actually reported to me what had happened. This I found, at that stage, totally incredible. I, and others like me, had been captured by units of the same formation but not, indeed, by the people who carried out this massacre, and our treatment had been extremely good.
"The fact of a massacre of this sort was something totally foreign to our experience and not a thing we had expected from the German Army of those days. Of course, a further aspect of it was that, if this story was true, the knowledge of it was a very dangerous thing. There was nothing that we in hospital in an occupied country could do about it and if the Germans had known that somebody had escaped that massacre the future for him might have been very grim.
"I eventually was moved to a prison camp in Germany and it wasn’t until after the war when the whole story was published and Pooley and O’Callaghan were completely vindicated in the accuracy of their story when one realised what in fact had actually happened."
The 1978 unveiling of the Dunkirk Veterans Memoria at Le Paradis
In 1978 when the Dunkirk Veterans' Memorial in the centre of Le Paradis was commissioned there was an emotional encounter when Dennis O’Callaghan, the son of Bill O’Callaghan one of the two survivors of the atrocity, was introduced by Stan Priest, a member of the Dunkirk Veterans Association, to Colonel Nick Hallett, at the barn where the massacre took place. Here Colonel Hallett apologised to Dennis for not believing his father when they met at Bethune Civil Hospital. Dennis duly thanked him but there was a recognition of the circumstances which Colonel Hallett was under at that time and he was certainly not the only person to disbelieve the story.
After being repatriated in 1943, Bert Pooley reported the incident to the authorities whilst at Richmond Convalescent Camp. Soon after, he was interrogated by two officers whose unbelieving attitude to his story was deeply upsetting to Pooley. He would not disclose Bill O’Callaghan’s name as he had little faith in their security. Even when Bill O’Callaghan was released in 1945 and reported the atrocity – nothing more was heard as his affidavit disappeared into the system. It was only when the Americans and Lt. Col. A. P. Scotland of the London Cage (Kensington Interrogation Centre) became involved did the truth of the story unravel.
Captain Nick Hallett’s vital role
Notwithstanding his doubts over the massacre story which can be easily explained, Captain Nick Hallett’s incredible bravery implementing the final order of ‘last man last round’ and by leading by example at Le Cornet Malo demonstrated the vital role he too played in delaying the enemy advance to ensure the corridors to Dunkirk remained open for a successful evacuation.
NOTES AND THANKS
Our gratitude for this article is extended to:
- Mrs Debbi Lane, widow of the author Richard Lane, who has kindly allowed us to use the research information contained in his book ‘Last Stand at Le Paradis’ in memory of him.
- The family of Cyril Jolly author of ‘The Vengeance of Private Pooley’ who have allowed us to use material from his book in memory of him.
- The Long family for the use of Capt. Charles Long’s War Diary.
- Journalist Steve Snelling for supplying the photograph.
- East Anglian Film Archives.