Facts About The Evacuation of Dunkirk

It was a fateful decision that would ultimately transform a military defeat into a moral victory. As German forces continued their advance into France, General Viscount Gort, Commander of the British Expeditionary Force in France, could see that the German invaders were getting the upper hand. The French Army was in disarray while his own forces were fighting desperately. The French called upon Gort to move his troops south to join them in a defensive stand. The British commander realized the action was futile and could lead to the annihilation of his command. If any of his forces were to be saved for the future defense of Britain, they would have to evacuate France immediately. On the evening of May 23, 1940, Gort ordered his commanders to retreat to the near-by port of Dunkirk - an action that would save the British Army to fight another day.


Escape from France
At the time, however, the success of the mission seemed highly unlikely. The British Army, joined by some French and Belgian forces would have to fight their way to the small port of Dunkirk, defend the town from German attack and hope that they could hold on long enough for ships from England to come to pull them off the beach.

Another fateful decision, this time on the part of the Germans, now helped their rescue. On May 24, Hitler, for reasons that are still unclear, ordered his tanks to halt their pursuit of the retreating Allied forces. In England the call went out for ships - any ships - to help with the rescue. On May 26 an unbelievable armada set sail. Motorboats, sloops, fishing boats, yachts, ferries, barges and every other variety of boat imaginable poured out of the Thames River and the ports that lined the English Channel to make their way across the Channel to rescue the beleaguered troops.

Guided by the smoke and flame filling the sky above Dunkirk, the ragtag rescue fleet made its way through continuous German attack and treacherous waters to the stranded troops. The rescuers found the beaches clogged with men. Some clamored along piers to reach the rescue ships, others wadded out from shore to waters nearly over their heads for rescue. All the time the beach was under attack from German artillery, bombers and fighter planes.

The operation, code-named Dynamo, continued until June 4. At its beginning, the British thought they would be lucky to rescue 50,000. In the end, approximately 340,000 British, French and Belgians were snatched from the shore. 40,000 were left behind and killed or captured.

"The beach, black with men, illumined by the fires, seemed a perfect target."

Arthur D. Divine was one of those who manned the boats that made the rescue. We join his story as he sets sail from England:

"It was the queerest, most nondescript flotilla that ever was, and it was manned by every kind of Englishman, never more than two men, often only one, to each small boat. There were bankers and dentists, taxi drivers and yachtsmen, longshoremen, boys, engineers, fishermen and civil servants. . .

It was dark before we were well clear of the English coast. It wasn't rough, but there was a little chop on, sufficient to make it very wet, and we soaked the Admiral to the skin. Soon, in the dark, the big boats began to overtake us. We were in a sort of dark traffic lane, full of strange ghosts and weird, unaccountable waves from the wash of the larger vessels. When destroyers went by, full tilt, the wash was a serious matter to us little fellows. We could only spin the wheel to try to head into the waves, hang on, and hope for the best. . .
Even before it was fully dark we had picked up the glow of the Dunkirk flames, and now as we drew nearer the sailing got better, for we could steer by them and see silhouetted the shapes of other ships, of boats coming home already loaded, and of low dark shadows that might be enemy motor torpedo boats.

Then aircraft started dropping parachute flares. We saw them hanging all about us in the night, like young moons. The sound of the firing and the bombing was with us always, growing steadily louder as we got nearer and nearer. The flames grew, too. From a glow they rose up to enormous plumes of fire that roared high into the everlasting pall of smoke. As we approached Dunkirk there was an air attack on the destroyers and for a little the night was brilliant with bursting bombs and the fountain sprays of tracer bullets.

The beach, black with men, illumined by the fires, seemed a perfect target, but no doubt the thick clouds of smoke were a useful screen.

The picture will always remain sharp-etched in my memory - the lines of men wearily and sleepily staggering across the beach from the dunes to the shallows, falling into little boats, great columns of men thrust out into the water among bomb and shell splashes. The foremost ranks were shoulder deep, moving forward under the command of young subalterns, themselves with their heads just above the little waves that rode in to the sand. As the front ranks were dragged aboard the boats, the rear ranks moved up, from ankle deep to knee deep, from knee deep to waist deep, until they, too, came to shoulder depth and their turn.

The little boats that ferried from the beach to the big ships in deep water listed drunkenly with the weight of men. The big ships slowly took on lists of their own with the enormous numbers crowded aboard. And always down the dunes and across the beach came new hordes of men, new columns, new lines.

On the beach was a destroyer, bombed and burned. At the water's edge were ambulances, abandoned when their last load had been discharged.

There was always the red background, the red of Dunkirk burning. There was no water to check the fires and there were no men to be spared to fight them. Red, too, were the shell bursts, the flash of guns, the fountains of tracer bullets.

The din was infernal. The 5.9 batteries shelled ceaselessly and brilliantly. To the whistle of shells overhead was added the scream of falling bombs. Even the sky was full of noise - anti-aircraft shells, machine-gun fire, the snarl of falling planes, the angry hornet noise of dive bombers. One could not speak normally at any time against the roar of it and the noise of our own engines. We all developed 'Dunkirk throat,' a sore hoarseness that was the hallmark of those who had been there.

Yet through all the noise I will always remember the voices of the young subalterns as they sent their men aboard, and I will remember, too, the astonishing discipline of the men. They had fought through three weeks of retreat, always falling back without orders, often without support. Transport had failed. They had gone sleepless. They had been without food and water. Yet they kept ranks as they came down the beaches, and they obeyed commands. . .

We stayed there until everybody else had been sent back, and then went pottering about looking for stragglers. While we were doing that, a salvo of shells got one of our troopships alongside the mole [pier]. She was hit clean in the boilers and exploded in one terrific crash. There were then, I suppose, about 1000 Frenchmen on the mole. We had seen them crowding along its narrow crest, outlined against the flames. They had gone out under shellfire to board the boat, and now they had to go back again, still being shelled. It was quite the most tragic thing I ever have seen in my life. We could do nothing with our little park dinghy. . .

Going home, the Jerry dive bombers came over us five times, but somehow left us alone though three times they took up an attacking position. A little down the coast, towards Gravelines, we picked up a boatload of Frenchmen rowing off. We took them aboard. They were very much bothered as to where our 'ship' was, said quite flatly that it was impossible to go to England in a thing like ours. Too, too horribly dangerous."References:
This account appears in: Commager, Henry Steele, The Story of the Second World War (1945); Devine A.D. Dunkirk (1948); Wernick, Robert Blitzkrieg (1976).
http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/dunkirk.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Dunkirk

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