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It was described by Churchill as “a great tide
of vessels”. But of the 861 little ships that took part in the evacuation, 243 were sunk by German bombers and gunfire.
They, and the men who crewed them, faced horrific dangers. Pudge, a Thames sailing barge which is still a familiar sight on
the Medway, was one of many which narrowly escaped. Built in Rochester and operated by the London and Rochester Trading Company,
Pudge was one of three barges being towed across by a tug. Their shallow draught and capacious holds made them ideal for getting
close to the beaches. But the tow tug hit a mine. Both it and two of the barges were sunk. Pudge survived. After pausing to
pick up survivors she carried on, taking 300 soldiers from the beaches before returning to Kent. Paddle steamer Medway Queen’s
contribution to the evacuation is legendary. She made seven trips across and brought back 7,000 survivors. One man who was
particularly glad to see her was John Howarth, who lived at Wainscott. John had already been rescued from the beach, but a
Stuka dive bomber attacked the rescue boat which was sunk beneath him. For two hours he floated in mid-Channel. “I was
surrounded by bodies and almost resigned to death,” he told reporters. “Then over the horizon came the most amazing
and uplifting sight.
“It was the Medway Queen, and she was chugging her way back across the Channel to England,
crammed with blackened and battle-weary troops. “Never was a sight more welcome. I was very lucky she stopped that day.”
Bob Viney, who lived at Lordswood, had gone to France as a driver with the Royal Artillery. After being cut off from his unit
in Belgium, he found his way to the beaches at La Panne, just down the coast from Dunkirk, arriving on May 29 – his
20th birthday. “We were bombed and shelled all the way,” he said. “The town itself was on fire. We were
sent into a wood just inland from the beach. There were thousands of people there. “I finally got away on June 1. We
paddled an oil drum raft out to the waiting boats. I was taken on board the destroyer HMS Worcester, and brought back to Dover.”
Vic Knight, who lived in Beechings Way, Gillingham, was a regular soldier in the Rifle Brigade, having joined up in
1938 at the age of 19. He was at Calais, part of a force sent to take pressure off the evacuation effort by stemming the German
advance.
Although his efforts helped others to escape, Vic ended up in captivity. “While we were at the quayside
two hospital trains arrived,” he said. “I went to help get the wounded on board. “Stuka dive bombers kept
up a continuous attack on the ships. I took up a position on the beach and engaged the enemy until my ammunition ran out.
“Then I buried the Bren breech block in the sand. Others buried their rifle bolts. The Germans came and took us prisoner.”
Altogether 338,226 British and French troops were rescued from the beaches. It was an action that came to define the British
spirit, and eventually turn the tide of the war.
The war was already eight months old when the Germans
finally launched the western offensive that would see Holland, Belgium and France subdued in little more than six weeks, and
thousands of the British Expeditionary Force snatched dramatically from the beaches of Dunkirk only hours ahead of the
German advance. The French and British had used the months of ‘phoney war’ to prepare for the
assault that
was sure to come. Defences stretched from the Maginot Line to the sea and most of the ten division British Expeditionary Force
(BEF) under the command of General Lord Gort had been on the Franco-Belgian border since October 1939. The Dutch and Belgians,
though retaining their Neutrality, had also mobilised their armies and were prepared. But the Allied defensive plans, which
looked back to the last German invasion in 1914 and relied heavily on assumptions about pace and movement, would prove woefully
inadequate in the face of the new German Blitzkrieg, or ‘lightning war’ tactics, with their innovative use of
tanks and mechanised and airborne troops.
In the weeks before France fell on June 22, 1940, the
remains of the English army on the mainland, called the British Expeditionary Force, were pushed back to the beaches of a
French seaport called Dunkirk. Many in London nearly gave up hope of saving that whole army, but miraculously, a veritable
armada of over eight hundred British boats, of all kinds and sizes, was able to ferry many of those troops across the English
Channel to safety. The Royal Air Force, or RAF, pilots, who’d also been fighting in mainland Europe, played a major
role in the Dunkirk evacuation, keeping the majority of Luftwaffe fighters and dive bombers away from the troops standing
exposed on the beaches and in the boats crossing the Channel. According to the RAF-maintained Battle of Britain Historical
Society, the British pilots shot down one hundred and fifty German planes, but at an irreplaceable loss of one hundred fighter
planes and eighty experienced combat pilots (Battle of Britain History Site). Though the Dunkirk evacuation couldn’t
be called a British victory, it did halt the steady Axis advance, and it was
the first time that the pilots of the Luftwaffe
had ever been beaten at their own game. However, even though Britain had managed to save many of her soldiers at Dunkirk,
the majority of her tanks, artillery, and other equipment had been left behind, and all branches of the military were exhausted,
ill-supplied, and near the breaking point after the pounding they’d received in continental Europe. William Shirer,
an American correspondent in Berlin in the 1930s, states that if the Nazi dictator had sent his forces across the Channel
right after Dunkirk, he probably could’ve conquered Britain. But instead of acting immediately, Hitler hesitated, and
this turned out to be a critical mistake for the Nazis.
Another puzzling question is why Hitler did not allow
his panzers to take Dunkirk? Before the Allies consolidated their retreating forces, the Wehrmacht could have extended its
drive to Dunkirk and the escape route would have been cut off. But Hitler ordered a stop at the Aa Canal on May 24, within
sight of Dunkirk, fearful that his onrushing columns were exposed on the flanks. With perfect hindsight this appears to be
a blunder; a more daring commander might have gone all the way to the coast to seal a complete victory. At the time, Dunkirk
had no significance and preserving the panzers to ensure the fall of Paris was the priority.
For the Allies, it
was the spirit of Dunkirk that had the longest and most profound effect. The seemingly invincible Germans could not crush
the spirit of a people fighting for their freedom. Ringing calls to rise to the occasion "like Dunkirk" buoyed spirits
throughout World War II and beyond.
The combined might of the French army, the British Expeditionary
Force (BEF) and the Belgian army had failed to halt the German advance across France and the Low Countries. One German battle
group raced through the Netherlands, another pushed through the defences in the Ardennes and swept across country in a curve
that would bring them to the coast of Northern France. The majority of the BEF was compressed into a shrinking semi-circle
of land around the port of Dunkirk, all hopes of defending France at an end.
The BEF was vital to the continuation
of the war, and in the short term for the defence of Britain itself. These were the trained professional soldiers who would
be best able to resist the expected invasion following the rout in France. They also had the best of the British materiel,
including armour and artillery.
What had been a 30km perimeter around Dunkirk shrank as the days went on, and the withdrawal
could be effected, until eventually only a strip of land 5km deep was defended.
Admiral Ramsay just a few miles
away in Dover hurriedly prepared and revised plans for the evacuation from Dunkirk. The navy secured the English Channel –
the German Navy, or at least the German surface ships made no incursions to hit the stranded forces from the sea, and to catch
the evacuation vessels in transit. This was left to the Luftwaffe, whose Stukas dive bombed the beaches ceaselessly.
The story of the Battle of Dunkirk is one of heroic
courage amidst untold tragedy. In the year 1940, at a time when World War II was in full rage, Hitler's army was winning
against France, despite help from more than 300,000 troops sent by Britain to help them out. The German army had surrounded
and trapped most of the allied forces in the northernmost corner of France. Despite severe causalities the British troops
could not retreat as their escape routes were all blocked.
The person in charge of troop evacuation, Vice Admiral
Bertram Ramsay, who was stationed in the reinforced tunnels, which lay beneath Dover Castle organized a rescue operation called
Operation Dynamo. However, the operation was riddled with innumerable major problems. The troops had to be rescued within
a week as the beaches they were crammed on were being mercilessly shelled. An exodus by sea was impossible because of the
difficulty in navigating the seas that were full of sunken ships and also because of the constant threat by U-boats. Nearer
the beach the water was too shallow for the transport ships and destroyers to get close to the shore. What's more the
British troops did not have enough vessels to transport the huge numbers of soldiers that were trapped on the beach.
Despite all the setbacks, meticulous preparations were made and Operation Dynamo was mobilized. Unfortunately they managed
to rescue less than 8,000 troops, at which rate rescuing all the troops who were trapped would take about 40 days.
In desperation Ramsay made a public call for help and
asked anyone who owned any kind of boat to assist in rescuing the troops. He got an overwhelming and instantaneous reaction
and managed to organize a temporary flotilla comprising 850 "Little Ships" which was made up of lifeboats, yachts
and fishing boats. Civilians joined British sailors in manning the boats across the 35 km crossing and a massive rescue mission
was launched, evacuating almost 2,000 troops per hours. Nine days later 338,226 trapped people had been rescued.
Churchill referred to this story of heroism and courage as the 'miracle of deliverance'. This 'Dunkirk spirit'
as it is often referred to quickly became a popular legend.
The evacuation of Dunkirk began when the Nazis lured
the Allied Forces of Britain and France into a gigantic troop: they attacked the small Dutch countries of Holland (the
Netherlands) and Belgium. The Allies rushed to defend them, and Hitler's army of tanks, infantry, and aircraft rumbled
to France.
The Allies were too slow and surprised to counter Germany's invasion. Still worse, there weren't
any French reserve troops to stop the Nazis. The Allies planned to evacuate troops by sea if they became trapped, but
the Nazis got there first. The Allies were cornered and attempted to make an evacuation. to Dunkirk, France in May 1940.
The British admiral, Bertrand Ramsay was to conduct the rescue operation. It was Ramsay who decided to use civilian
boats and freighters in the rescue operation, called Operation Dynamo because Ramsay set up headquarters in a place that had
housed a diesel-driven dynamo. For nine days the boats traveled to and from Dunkirk and each time British and French
soldiers watched out to meet them as they arrived. The Nazis dive-bombed and shelled the boats, but didn't attack
with tanks until the last day of Operation Dynamo, and no one knows why, because they could have prevented the rescue operation
from continuing.
161 ships were available on the first day of Dunkirk. On the first day, 27,936 soldiers
were saved. On May 27th only 7,669 soldiers were saved. After this day many people thought that Operation Dynamo was going
to be a failure. On May 28th, 17,804 soldiers were taken to Dunkirk. But sadly, two ships were sunk by German bombing. On
May 29th, in the morning, three battle ships were lost, which was bad, but 47,310 soldiers were taken to England. On May 30th,53,823
soldiers were taken to England. On this day there were over 800 small craft transporting soldiers. On May 31st, 68,014 soldiers
were taken to England from Dunkirk. On this day, winds were bad and blew ships onto the beach, and when the tide fell, lots
of ships were stranded on the beach. Despite winds, on this day the most soldiers were transported in one day.
On
June 1st, 64,429 soldiers were taken from Dunkirk to England. But sadly, 31 ships were sunk. On June 2nd, some French troops
did not come in a steady line and their boats had to leave with only a few soldiers. On this day, only 26,256 soldiers were
taken to England instead of 36,256. On June 3rd, the allies surrendered at 9:00 in the morning. Even though the Allies had
to surrender, 338,226 soldiers were taken to England.
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The Ramsgate life-boat reached Dunkirk at eight in the
evening. There the heavy black smoke from the burning oil-tanks hung low above the beaches and the sea. She went on another
two miles to Malo les Bains and lay alongside a Dutch coaster until it was night. The coxswain then sent off three of his
wherries, each with one life-boatman on board. The men rowed ashore, called into the darkness until they were answered, and
filled their boats with men. The coxswain now sent off three more of his wherries, with twelve of the naval men on board,
some to man them, others to be landed and to help in pushing the boats off the beach. They were to follow the three life-boatmen,
now pulling to the shore for the second time, but they must have missed them in the darkness and gone ashore elsewhere, for
they never returned. The coxswain then manned a seventh wherry with three more naval men, and the four wherries plied between
beach and life-boat, gathering men, putting them aboard the life-boat, returning for more.
Once, as they
came ashore, a voice called to them, "I cannot see who you are. Are you a naval party?" He was answered, "No,
sir, we are men of the crew of the Ramsgate life-boat." The voice called back, "Thank you, and thank God for such
men as you have this night proved yourselves to be. There is a party of fifty Highlanders coming next."
It was slow and hard work, even to life-boatmen well used to managing small boats on a beach. They would take the wherries
in stern first, and hold them in the surf until the soldiers came. There was no rush nor scramble. The soldiers moved into
the sea to their officers’ orders, wading out waist-deep. One man only could climb over the stern at a time. Eight were
a full load.
The life-boat herself could take on board, in a calm sea, 160 men close-packed. As the wherries
filled her, she in turn put off to a motor ship that lay further out So all night the work went on, and before day broke the
life-boat and her wherries had brought off some 800 men. By this time the motor ship herself was filled, and she made for
England, but, her engines had only two cylinders working and her master was doubtful if she would arrive. Two of the life-boat’s
crew had been helping on board, and they went with her. As soon as it was light the coxswain took the life-boat inshore to
look for his three missing wherries. He found only one, lying empty on the beach, one of many boats washed up and abandoned.
With the coming of day the shelling and bombing increased. Now, too, the wind had freshened. It had veered to
north-west and was blowing right onshore. A swell was making and boats were capsizing in the surf. But over the sand-dunes
the troops came in unbroken flow and the life-boatmen baled out their wherries and got to work again. The sea, like the beach,
was littered with wreckage and was thick with oil from bombed and broken motor-boats. With the rising wind and surf, with
the wreckage, with the oil that clogged their oars, the men found it impossible any longer to row the wherries. Instead the
life-boat, lying eighty yards off shore, dropped them down to it on ropes, each wherry with two men on board, and hauled them
out again. They came loaded, shipping water, the soldiers baling with their steel helmets to keep them afloat.
In a miraculous operation, about 900 vessels, every
civilian and military craft afloat in Britian, were sent to the Channel port of Dunkirk (or Dunkerque (Fr.) or Duinkerke (Dutch)),
opposite Dover in northern France, a few miles from the Belgian border. Planning had begun as early as 20 May, called Operation
DYNAMO by the Royal Navy. The civilian population of England worked along side the Royal Navy in a mass movement of large
and small craft that included America's Cup racing yachts as well as hard worn fishing boats. The Navy provided anti aircraft
cover and general coordination, as well as the available larger and faster vessels, while merchant ships, sloops, tugs, pleasure
boats, lifeboats, fishing boats, ferries and odd barks hard to classify made a life-bridge across the Channel. They were manned
by experienced salts as well as raw volunteers. They didn't need navigation skills -- you could see the fires or smoke
of the Dunkirk battle on the French coast and steer by dead reckoning. They did need guts. Boats collided in blacked out conditions,
German planes and subs made every attempt to attack, there were unmarked mines, and no one got any sleep, food, or even rest
for days on end.
At Dunkirk beach, over 1,300 nurses dressed the wounded
out in the open. Long lines of bedraggled soldiers waded into the water and were pulled on board the next available boat as
waves washed over them. Often the bloody, dirty and famished soldiers fell asleep as soon as they were in the boat. The listing,
overloaded craft carried the soldiers to the English shore where thousands waited to receive and care for them. The boat then
returned to France, a cycle that went on around the clock for nine days. Only personnel were evacuated -- equipment and supplies
were sacrificed to make maximum room for the men.
On the water, the Germans were held at bay by the Royal Navy
with an intense barrage of antiaircraft fire, anti-ship and anti-submarine tactics. On the beach, the RAF, naval shellfire
and a defensive perimeter kept the Wehrmacht at bay while over 338,000 men -- including 140,000 French and Belgians -- were
evacuated to England. On the beach and in the water the evacuation was under intense fire from artillery, dive bombers, and
infantry machine guns. Still, it was possible to maintain order and conduct operations day by day until the swarming beaches
were cleared.
The pocket around Dunkirk gradually shrank to nothing.
On 4 June the Germans entered the city and began to round up French soldiers left at the docks. A few hidden stragglers managed
to escape in the next few days until the Germans gained complete control. About 5,000 Allied troops were killed or captured
at Dunkirk. The captured were marched to the east to be POWs for the entire war.
The evacuation of Dunkirk has
assumed almost mythical status and deservedly so. The Germans thought the Allies were trapped and expected to annihilate them.
The successful rescue baffled the Germans and heartened the Allies, preserving vital manpower for battles to come.
Dunkirk was also a key demonstration of Luftwaffe fallibility. Although Reichmarschall Hermann Göring assured Hitler
that the Luftwaffe could turn the British evacuation effort into another Warsaw or Rotterdam, the Royal Air Force inflicted
such heavy losses that the Luftwaffe ceased operations against Dunkirk by 2 June. Valuable intelligence from this experience
was used against the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain a few months later.
Why the German Panzers were held back at the outset
of the evacuation is not known. They had brushed aside the allied armour as they sped through the French and Belgian countryside,
technically superior vehicles with greater firepower than the allies could muster, the Panzers were a formidable weapon. Some
think that the blitzkrieg had almost exhausted fuel and other supplies. Others that Hitler wanted to save them for completing
the occupation of France. A third theory is that Hitler was saving his strength in the belief that having been swatted aside
so easily, Britain would sue for peace, and that a slaughter of the BEF would make it impossible for British honour to accept
peace.
The initial evacuation was through the port of Dunkirk, using ferries to take the troops to England or to
larger naval vessels offshore. Passenger ferries from as far away as Glasgow were commandeered for the effort. It was not
until May 31 that things had become so desperate that the famous ‘little ships’ were seen in action.
Troops from five allied countries were rescued from Dunkirk in what was code-named, with a certain irony, Operation Dynamo:
Britain, Belgium, France, Poland, and even a few soldiers from the Netherlands. Their evacuation was covered by the 51st (Highland)
Division, fighting against overwhelming odds. There were many tales of heroic resistance in this rearguard action, as well
as some of cowardly officers abandoning their men to seek evacuation for themselves.
On May 27 almost 8,000 men
were taken from Dunkirk to safety in Britain, the first of what would eventually be more than a third of a million fighting
men rescued to fight another day.
In desperation Ramsay made a public call for help and
asked anyone who owned any kind of boat to assist in rescuing the troops. He got an overwhelming and instantaneous reaction
and managed to organize a temporary flotilla comprising 850 "Little Ships" which was made up of lifeboats, yachts
and fishing boats. Civilians joined British sailors in manning the boats across the 35 km crossing and a massive rescue mission
was launched, evacuating almost 2,000 troops per hours. Nine days later 338,226 trapped people had been rescued.
Churchill referred to this story of heroism and courage as the 'miracle of deliverance'. This 'Dunkirk spirit'
as it is often referred to quickly became a popular legend.
Minefields and shelling from German batteries on the
French coast forced evacuation convoys to take longer routes to Dunkirk. The first convoy, after sustaining heavy air attacks,
found the port of Dunkirk and its oil tanks ablaze and only the passenger ferries ‘Royal Daffodil’ and later the
‘Canterbury’ succeeded in berthing. By the end of the first day only 7,500 troops had been rescued and it
was clearly impossible to use the port. Captain Tennant, in charge of the naval shore party at Dunkirk, signalled for the
rescue ships to be diverted to the beaches east of the town. But here shallow waters prevented the large ships getting within
a mile of the shore and troops had to be ferried in smaller craft from the beaches to the ships. There was an alternative,
a spindly concrete pier with a wooden walkway, never designed to have ships docking against it but it was found that it could
be used. Differences in loading speeds were dramatic HMS ‘Sabre’ took 2 hours to load 100 troops from the beach,
but from the pier it took only 35 minutes to board 500 troops.
In London the Admiralty’s Small Vessels Pool had
been collecting all available seaworthy pleasure craft. With volunteer crews, many of whom had never sailed out of sight of
land before, they were checked at Sheerness Dockyard and then sent to Ramsgate to await final sailing orders. The pleasure
craft were joined by lifeboats, trawlers, Thames sailing barges, tugs and other small craft. The first convoy of ‘little
ships’ sailed from Ramsgate at 10pm on 29 May and by the next day they were streaming across the Channel in seemingly
unending lines. The dangers were great, ships, both large and small, were targets for German fighters, bombers, submarines
and coastal batteries plus the random danger of mines. Fortunately, throughout the evacuation, the seas remained abnormally
calm. Most of the small craft headed for the beaches to act as tenders, while some of the larger trawlers and drifters loaded
troops directly in Dunkirk Harbour. On the evening of 2 June, with the German forces closing in, Ramsay despatched a large
force of ships, including 13 passenger ships, 14 minesweepers and 11 destroyers. At 11:30 pm Captain Tennant sent the historic
signal from Dunkirk “BEF evacuated.” By now, the German forces were nearly in the outskirts of the town. Only
one more night evacuation was possible. On the night of 3 June a final effort was made using British, French, Belgian and
Dutch ships to bring out as many of the French rearguard as possible and over 26,000 were saved. Between 26th May and 4th
June 338,000 troops were rescued from Dunkirk, over 200,000 of them passing through Dover. During the nine day period the
Southern Railway laid on a total of 327 special trains, which cleared 180,982 troops from Dover. 4,500 casualties were treated
at the town's Buckland Hospital and all but 50 of these seriously ill men were saved.
At 2am on the morning of the 3rd of June 1940, General
Harold Alexander searched along the quayside, holding onto his megaphone and called “Is anyone there? Is anyone there?”
before turning his boat back towards England.
Tradition tells us that the dramatic events of the evacuation of
Dunkirk, in which 300,000 BEF servicemen escaped the Nazis, was a victory gained from the jaws of defeat. For the first time,
rather than telling the tale of the 300,000 who escaped, Sean Longden reveals the story of the 40,000 men sacrificed in the
rearguard battles.
On the beaches and sand dunes, besides the roads and amidst the ruins lay the corpses of hundreds
who had not reached the boats. Elsewhere, hospitals full of the sick and wounded who had been left behind to receive treatment
from the enemy’s doctors. And further afield – still fighting hard alongside their French allies - was the entire
51st Highland Division, whose war had not finished as the last boats slipped away.
Also scattered across the countryside
were hundreds of lost and lonely soldiers. These ‘evaders’ had also missed the boats and were now desperately
trying to make their own way home, either by walking across France or rowing across the channel. The majority, however, were
now prisoners of war who were forced to walk on the death marches all the way to the camps in Germany and Poland, where they
were forgotten until 1945.
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