HEROIC MARINES
EPIC FIGHT IN BESIEGED CALAIS. TWENTY-ONE RETURN OUT OF EIGHTY-FIVE. The story has now been told of how 85 Royal Marines, under Captain George Courtice, hurriedly left Chatham for besieged Calais on May 24, 1940, and only 21 came back. Brigadier Claude Nicholson’s troops had already fallen back on the inner perimeter of the Calais defences, and confused fighting wa/ in progress in the streets.
The party of Royal Marines reached the citadel at 7 a.m. on May 25, where the machine-gun section took up posts in the upper storey of a barrack building within the Citadel at windows which were not sandbagged. They carried on under deadly enemy fire until, at 4.15 p.m., they were ordered, with one platoon of Marines, to reinforce the troops in the front line.
The machine-gun section was not seen again.
About 6.30 p.m., when the Citadel was under heavy bombing and shell fire, Captain Courtice ordered the Marines to return to the harbour, three-quarters of a mile distant. The town was then on fire, and the roads were blocked with wrecked buildings. Captain Courticc and some Marines reached the edge of the seawater basin behind the railway station, where they were subjected to divebombing attacks throughout the night. Captain Courtice, during the night, ordered Sergeant Mitchell to search the neighbourhood for other Marines. Sergeant Mitchell returned at daylight on May 26 with a few 'men, but found no one where he had left Captain Courtice.
Shell fire eventually forced Sergeant Mitchell and his party to take refuge in a nearby fort.
It was discovered later that Captain Courtice and his men were overpowered near this fort after suffering heavy losses.
Sergeant Mitchell and his party were obliged to abandon the fort, and spent the rest of the day discovering and helping wounded, until a motor torpedo-boat took off these few survivors of the original gallant 85 Marines.
Captain Courtice is now a prisoner of war, and Sergeant Mitchell is serving in a British warship.
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Wairarapa Times-Age, 8 December 1941, Page 5
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333HEROIC MARINES Wairarapa Times-Age, 8 December 1941, Page 5
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