Retreat
Over the next 12 days, the unit made its way first west, and then southwest across France. Initially they kept in touch with the French 4th army, hoping to set up their hospital and carry out the humanitarian task which had brought them. But this was not to be. The pace of the French collapse quickened; they were never more than two nights in any one place. It was only at Châlons-sur-Marne that a party of six French orderlies and a French nurse was briefly detached to a hospital to help its overwhelmed medical staff. The roads were choked with refugees, petrol was hard to find and they went off the edge of their road maps. While queuing to refuel at the barracks in Gannat, between Moulins and Clermont-Ferrand, they heard that Marshal Philippe Pétain had asked the Germans for an armistice.
It was no longer a matter of retreat – more of escape. Their destination was Bordeaux, which had been the final seat of the French government before its ultimate collapse; they knew that Mary's husband, General Spears, had been here with the French government and they were sure he would help them find a way back to Britain. At Brives, their commanding officer, le Médecin Capitaine Jean Gosset, managed to send a telegram to warn the British Embassy at Bordeaux that the unit was splitting up, and that the 26 women would be continuing alone. All Lady Hadfield's medical equipment and stores were abandoned at the roadside. It is against Red Cross regulations for surgical or medical stores to be destroyed, but it is not known whether they were subsequently seized by the Germans. The women set off in six cars for Bordeaux.
The British military attaché in Bordeaux directed them to Arcachon where, at a villa outside the town, they met a British naval lieutenant, Ian Fleming, who arranged for them to be taken aboard HMS Galatea (71) for the short sea voyage to St Jean de Luz near the Spanish frontier. Here they were transhipped to a passenger vessel, the Etric, which already had on board a large number of British subjects (mainly well-to-do ladies and their staff) evacuated from their villas in France. Mary Spears and her party of 25 British nurses and MTC drivers docked in Plymouth on 26 June 1940 with nothing but their personal effects.
Read more about this topic: Hadfield-Spears Ambulance Unit
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