This is Ballachulish in the Scottish Highlands.
Three men from here so ripped the pish out of the German army
that Hitler himself had to take action...
and today I m going to tell you
about their incredible adventure.
...so if you re interested in
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In the meantime, let me tell you a story
On 28th January 1940
the 51st Highland Division
had landed at Le Havre
as part of the British Expeditionary Force
By April, separated from the rest of the expeditionary force and under French command,
they were deployed against German invasion.
in front of one of the
fortresses of the Maginot Line
When the invasion came it was
through the low countries,
and the rest of the British Expeditionary Force
moved into Belgium to meet the advance...,
The problems for the 51st Highland
Division would come later.
When 300 000 British troops
were rescued from Dunkirk,
the 51st Highland weren t so lucky.
The Germans turned south,
where the 51st had been given
the job of holding a line
four times longer than would be
expected of a single division.
..... William Kemp
one of our three Ballachullish men of the Argyll and Southerland Highlanders,
later wrote an account of what happened.
In fact, there were many column inches written,
and I was given special access to the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders archives
at their regimental museum in Stirling Castle to see some of the material.
They ve got an incredible scrapbook, including letters received after the war from French folks
who d helped them along the way.
On 3rd June Private William
Kemp, Corporal Sandy MacDonald
and Lance Corporal James Ginger Wilson
were part of the company of Argylls who were given the job of defending a chateau
and its grounds east of Abbeville.
Facing overwhelming odds and numerical
superiority, trench mortars, field guns...
everything the Germans could
throw at them rained down...
and day by day they were pushed back to a
smaller and smaller defensive ring around the chateau...,
till 7th June,
holding the last line in the chateau itself...,
running out of ammunition as the German troops reached grenade throwing distance...
they were forced to surrender.
They were marched to a field
then loaded onto trucks
and taken to a location where they
met men from The Black Watch,
Seaforths, Gordon Highlanders as
well as French and Senegalese.
Another march and sparse food
supplemented from time to time
by French women who d come out of
houses with bread and cigarettes.
As he marched William Kemp fell in
with Corporal Sandy MacDonald.
Both had set their mind on escape...
so rather than eat the bread so kindly given they hid it for more needy times to come.
As they started the next march they came across another Highlander called
Lance Corporal Ginger Wilson.
There were now three Ballachulish Musketeers.
In the next village a French woman came out with a pail of water to fill the prisoner s bottles.
As comrades scrambled, our musketeers avoided the melee and used the chaos to
jump into the back garden.
There, against the wall, they patiently,
silently, apprehensively...
clung to the hope that they hadn t been noticed
as they waited for the sound of jack boots to subside.
When the coast seemed clear they ventured out.
They asked a little boy to help them.
He disappeared and came back with three sets of clothes to replace their army uniforms...
and they set off across country.
Passing by the Canadian war memorial
at Vimy Ridge they decided to lay low in a nearby forest till nightfall.
It was midnight when they set off,
but they lost their bearings in the
dark and lay down to wait for dawn.
When light came it revealed that they
d stopped right across the road from a German cavalry camp.
Maybe night travel
wasn t as sensible as it had seemed.
They crawled three hundred yards through a field of corn before crossing a railway line
and tramping through more fields all morning...
till they reached a bridge over a canal
that was patrolled by German soldiers.
They had to cross the bridge.
French civilians seemed to pass unmolested, but three able bodied men
who spoke French with an accent?
A short conference confirmed
there was only one option.
Brass neck it.
Saunter across as if you were supposed to be there.
As they walked with purpose the German sentries said:
Bonjour
The Highlanders responded with the same and
walked on suppressing their creeping fears.
Needless to say, there were
nights under the stars,
other nights in abandoned houses.
There were locals who willingly provided
food and others who showed suspicion.
A French woman, convinced of who
they were when Willie showed her a picture of him kilted back home,
told them that the war was over, and France had surrendered.
Their plan to head east and rejoin the French army had to change.
Now their destiny was south.
They d have to walk the length
of France and make it to Spain.
One night they chose a barn
as their accommodation.
They had just settled down for the night
when they heard horses hooves outside.
The three Highlanders looked at each other,
then they looked towards the door...
but it was their ears that caught the
sound of jack boots approaching.
As those jackboots came through the door they
gleamed with the shining spurs of cavalrymen.
The Germans looked at the Ballachullish men,
and the Ballachulish men looked back.
Huh, refugees said the senior German.
Oui replied the Scotsmen.
The Nazis turned on their heels and the
pounding heartbeat of the refugees
reduced to pulsing blood flow.
The next day, as they walked the road, a German convoy passed by.
One of the trucks slowed to a stop and the driver called them.
They nervously obeyed.
Where are you going?
...sheepishly they answered St Quentin.
Jump in the truck offered the German...
and they got a ride to St Quentin and cigarettes at the end.
They looked like refugees
At the next stop they found a wheelchair
and loaded it up with stuff.
It goes without saying that
would slow them down,
but dragging this made the refugee
disguise so much more effective.
Our intrepid heroes had other encounters
with German troops along the way, who shrugged and moved on.
The refugee schtick was working,
However, at a place called Aumal a
different option presented itself.
A bombed-out bicycle shop lay open,
and three bikes each looked up at them, with one soulful headlamp.
It was as if they were saying: Please take us with you.
Lead us on to the open road where we were made to roam and set us free.
From now on our escaped POWs
would cycle the roads of France in style.
All they were missing was the onion strings around their necks.
These guys were on a winning streak that makes you want to know their lottery numbers...
...but their luck was just about to run out.
One afternoon they were
stopped by a German sentry.
He told them to help some other Frenchmen
unloading unused military equipment.
When the carrying was done, the French
were ordered into four German trucks,
and a sentry, pointed at the Scotsmen s
bikes and motioned for them to follow.
When they came to a stop, they
were relieved of their bikes and put on one of the lorries with the French.
They were prisoners again in a camp with around five thousand French and Senegalese.
It was obvious to the Germans that these three didn t fit.
That was a long night.
In the morning they were brought
in front of the German commander,
who pointed his revolver at
each of their heads in turn.
Everyone knew what this meant.
Ve haff veys of making you talk.
Now if I have it right this video will go up
when I m on the other side of the Atlantic
I m taking my comedy show Stories of Scotland
across Canada, starting in Toronto on 27th April,
but I ll also be in
I ll then do one last performance of Stories of Scotland in September...
eleven miles from my house, in Dunblane.
So click the link top right, or in the description
below for tickets and details of all these shows.
So our guys clearly weren t French,
but they had been speaking French,
so a French interpreter asked
them to state their nationality.
Chan eil fios agam replied one...
it s Gaelic,
" D ou etes vous? Asked the interpreter.
Ardnamurchan." Came the reply
The German commander and the
interpreter looked at each other.
A string of interpreters, eight
in all were brought in to question them in seven other languages
Dutch, Spanish Norwegian, Polish,
German, Italian, and Flemish.
Our men answered only in Gaelic.
An atlas was placed in front of them.
The interpreter pointed at each
European country in turn.
This was going to be a make-or-break decision.
As the interpreter s finger fell on each
Chan e,
chan e,
chan e...
until
they POINTED to the Ukraine
S e.
? Kiev?" asked the German commander. ....
our man shook his head and pointed to the Caspians
Cossacks,'`
S e S e Cossack a tha annam
he nodded.
Russia wasn t at war with Germany
The commander left the room...
only to return with three more
senior officers than himself.
The four consulted
and then after a few minutes the commander said
" allez ,
and he opened the door for them to walk to freedom once more.
Now I don t have time to tell you all their adventures,
and surely, it ll be made into a film someday anyway,
but they d walked, cycled hitchhiked, ferried and fooled their way the entire length of France
when, in a small town outside Bayonne they approached the local mayor to ask for help.
The mayor s response
was to call for German soldiers to arrest them.
When the Germans didn t seem that interested, he called for French gendarmes
and shortly they found themselves imprisoned, and under interrogation once again.
This time they claimed to be Irish Americans.
The Americans hadn t joined the war
eitherbut that just got them locked up.
Irritated by this they spent the whole night
disturbing everyone else in the place
by singing Gaelic songs at the top
of their lungs from dusk till dawn.
At 6 am they were given coffee
and told to sod off...
but when you do get to the American consul,
if you d just keep the whole locking up overnight thing to yourself....
The next task was to cross into neutral Spain.
Not as easy as you might think.
The first time a false guide took them to the authorities, and they
were driven back across the border.
The second time
they were surprised by a military officer who s troops sent them packing back to France again.
It wasn t till their fourth attempt, nights in the rain and near drowning in a fast-flowing river
that they found themselves outside the British Consulate at 10 o clock in the morning
waiting for it to open.
Even then their adventure wasn t over.
On the boat that took them outside Spanish waters, one manned the Lewis gun, whilst another took
charge of anti-aircraft and submarine defence,
but eventually, along with a French
friend they d picked up on their back and forthing across the Spanish border
they were transferred to a British warship.
They were on their way home...,
Of course the war had barely begun.
After the mixed feelings of the Dunkirk
evacuations the story of the Ballachullish three
was used as a morale fillip back in Britain.
Ultimately home was here in Ballachullish where they met up later.
In the Argyll and Sutherland Highlander museum in Stirling Castle they re
still remembered in the prisoner of war section.
Rod the curator showed me a picture of
Sandy MacDonald and Willie Kemp receiving their military medals.
They were war heroes now.
As Rod showed me the Glengarry
cap worn by Willie Kemp
it struck me that this must
ve been one of the few times
the Gaelic language was celebrated in London...
more thought provoking still that these Ballachulish men of Glencoe
proudly wore this cap of the Argylls.
It s a long way from that
massacre in winter 1692.
And not only is there a picture from the medal
ceremony, but Willie Kemp s medals themselves.
When news got back
Hitler himself ordered that Highland soldiers were to be singled out for particular scrutiny.
These three Musketeers from Ballachullish certainly made an impact.
Now I ve got a video about some very different Highlanders from exactly
this period in the Second World War
gand it s got a few surprises.
You really should watch it. Just click the video coming up on screen now.
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