The Miracle of Dunkirk (26 May - 4 June 1940)

Today is the 82nd anniversary of the successful conclusion of Operation Dynamo, the 'Miracle of Dunkirk'. The BEF and the French Allies that were successfully evacuated amounted to 338,226 effectives, including approximately 120,000 French. They would live to fight another day and would return in force, to beaches called Gold, Sword, and Juno, a bit south and west, almost exactly four years later.

From the AP, 31 May 1940

Allies evacuate troops from Dunkirk

By The Associated Press

Thousands of Britain's smashed army of Flanders, staggering with fatigue from the bloody 20-day failure across the Channel, landed on home soil tonight. But many were lost on the narrow stretch of water that was turned into a raging strip of fire.

From crowded liners to tiny boats with only a few men aboard, a great armada brought them home, poured them onto troop trains, and went back, under the fire of German guns and bombers, for more.

Tonight the total of the British, French, and Belgians brought over the tortured Channel ferry routes of war was somewhere near 100,000. But one of them said: "Thousands more were massed at the Dunkirk wharves early this morning waiting for ships."

On the narrow station platforms along the way to London stood the anxious wives and wide-eyed children of the B.E.F. [British Expeditionary Force], straining at the windows for the troop-filled trains. They were waiting, too, with dread, for the casualty lists that have not come.

In London, when they opened one compartment door, they found a British officer dead, his pistol beside him. On one platform, a 6-year-old girl sprang into the arms of a grimy soldier. It was her brother, unheard from for six weeks. One soldier held a bottle of beer to the lips of a sailor who had both arms swathed with bandages. Many of the men limped until they saw a sympathetic eye upon them; then they straightened fiercely. Padres straight from the front and women of the auxiliary territorial services came back with the fighters.

Across the Channel the sun gleamed on the white shoreline of France and the green fields beyond. The black plume of smoke from a huge fire near Dunkerque mounted in the sky.

"It's an inferno over there; a hell made by man," said one artilleryman. "The Germans asked for a truce to bury their dead after a 36-hour barrage had held up their advance. We replied: "There's no truce.' And we gave them another seven hours of barrage."

With those who returned were many French infantrymen. There were men who told in awe of the might of the German army and air force and of the cheapness with which life was held in the Nazi columns. Their trip across the Channel had been scarcely less punishing than the 20 days spent in ravaged Flanders.

One soldier thus described the embarkations: "When we were hit (by bombs), we swam ashore; but when the ship didn't go down, we swam back to her again to take her out of the harbor. Then she turned turtle and we had to swim again. Some of us were in the water for hours before we were picked up by a British warship."

Telling of suffering continuous air attacks from the very beginning of the Flanders campaign, they all declared it was the great swarms of German planes and the great weight of German numbers that finally sent them reeling in retreat. Hospital ships as well as troopships, they declared, were targets for Nazi bombs.

"Our flyers are magnificent," said one, "but it's volume that we need."

Another, telling of the Channel trip, philosophically described his troubles with a ship that had been hit:

"I was very thankful when, after swimming seven or eight miles, I was able to get hold of a table. Another fellow and I sat on it until we were picked up. All of us were almost naked, and we have had no food since yesterday and no sleep for three days. But it's back again now to help the army.

"It's not only British troops we're bringing over," he explained, "but French and Belgians too. The Belgians don't want to give up fighting. If only they would give us more planes, we could tell the Germans a different story. As it is, they have got as much as they have given, and we have not been bombing and machine-gunning men in the water."

The withdrawals from Flanders, which already have cost the British three destroyers and a number of auxiliary craft, went on tonight while those remaining on the French side were fighting a great rear-guard action to hold Dunkirk until the retreat is complete.

Over and over these returning men, many blood-stained and black with powder, emphasized the need for planes and more planes. They told of Germans attacking in waves of 50 planes time after time, literally filling the air overhead. They accused the Nazi flyers of mass murder of refugees, flying 200 feet off the ground and sparing nobody.

"They mowed them down with machine-gun fire like grass under a mower," said one.

A private who had been shot in the foot declared he wanted to go back as soon as his wound healed, adding: "I can't forget the way those Huns treated the refugees."

A sergeant major asserted: "Although we come back wounded, we have given them plenty to remember us by. At times, the slaughter was wholesale. Column after column (of Germans) was mowed down by our Bren guns. The morale of our men was superb. When they were embarking, bombers raided the ships and one (ship's) gun crew was put out of action. Wounded men went to take a share in feeding the guns."

One trooper carried a cloth doll as a present for his young daughter; it had been blown out of a toyshop window in a Belgian town by a bomb.

One seaman said that, when the boats of his rescue ship were sent ashore to look for the British troops, the men came out wading up to their necks in the water. Shortly afterward, German planes swooped down and the rescue work was carried out in a hail of bombs.

"On our way home, however, we got some revenge," he said. "Our gunners brought down five Dornier Flying Pencils."

Another Tommy exclaimed: "I never believed anything like the wall of fire our ships put up to screen troops was possible. Shells fell in a mathematically straight line behind our positions, while beyond the line British planes dropped bombs like hail. Jerry never had a chance to get at us."

Still another: "From a long line of British warships poured an unending stream of shells to form a barrage beyond our line, while squad after squad of bombers poured tons of explosives on German troop concentrations."

An army officer said: "Our losses in the last few days have been far less than might be expected,

but the slaughter among the Germans has been incredible."

Loaded down with full equipment, shipload after shipload arrived. Police and military guards kept from the piers crowds pressing for a glimpse of loved ones. But coast dwellers got near enough to the disembarking warriors to give them a great cheer.

The soldiers were singing, shouting, and waving as they took places in trains and motor buses. But they slumped into their seats, too tired and worn to do much of this. Typical was a heavy fellow with several days' growth of beard. He gave a tired grin and said:

"We've had a terrible time this 'ere last fortnight... swimming canals... nights without sleep... bombings. Fifty or more Jerry planes would sail over and drop their bombs. Just as we were getting over that, here would come 50 or so more, and so on, in relays."

All ranks said the Germans took a terrific pounding in spite of their temporary gain of territory. The Tommies said, too, that the Royal Air Force showed "marked superiority" over German flyers, man for man and plane for plane, despite its far inferior numbers.

One group reported that German planes bombed them steadily before embarkation and told of raids by bombers on their steamer after they had left port.

A veteran of the last war said that German advance was accomplished "by sheer weight of numbers."

"The British put up a barrage a mile long to stem the advance," he added. "I fought in the last war, but I have never seen anything like it. The Germans advanced right into it, disregarding danger. Their casualties must have been tremendous."

Another soldier said fleeing refugees hampered movements of the Allied troops throughout. He added: "The Germans drove tanks right over them, caring nothing for men, women, or children. It was mass murder in the first degree."

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If you can watch the newsreel below or read the poem without tears in your eyes, you've not a drop of English blood!

Here is a short animated film about it:

And footage from British Pathe from the actual evacuation and its aftermath. 

Besides the Royal Navy and Merchant Navy vessels involved in the evacuation, there were about 850 'small ships', private boats from ketches to yachts, that helped bring the soldiers off the beach. The poem below catches the 'Spirit of Dunkirk''.

Dunkirk

By Robert Nathan (2 January 1894 – 25 May 1985)

Will came back from school that day,
And he had little to say.
But he stood a long time looking down
To where the gray-green Channel water
Slapped at the foot of the little town,
And to where his boat, the Sarah P,
Bobbed at the tide on an even keel,
With her one old sail, patched at the leech,
Furled like a slattern down at heel.

He stood for a while above the beach,
He saw how the wind and current caught her;
He looked a long time out to sea.
There was steady wind, and the sky was pale,
And a daze in the east that looked like smoke.

Will went back to the house to dress.
He was half way through, when his sister Bess
Who was near fourteen, and younger than he
By just two years, came home from play.
She asked him, “Where are you going, Will?”
He said, “For a good long sail.”
“Can I come along?”
“No, Bess,” he spoke.
“I may be gone for a night and a day.”
Bess looked at him. She kept very still.
She had heard the news of the Flanders rout,
How the English were trapped above Dunkirk,
And the fleet had gone to get them out
But everyone thought that it wouldn’t work.
There was too much fear, there was too much doubt.

She looked at him, and he looked at her.
They were English children, born and bred.
He frowned her down, but she wouldn’t stir.
She shook her proud young head.
“You’ll need a crew,” she said.

They raised the sail on the Sarah P,
Like a penoncel on a young knight’s lance,
And headed the Sarah out to sea,
To bring their soldiers home from France.

There was no command, there was no set plan,
But six hundred boats went out with them
On the gray-green waters, sailing fast,
River excursion and fisherman,
Tug and schooner and racing M,
And the little boats came following last.
From every harbor and town they went
Who had sailed their craft in the sun and rain,
From the South Downs, from the cliffs of Kent,
From the village street, from the country lane.

There are twenty miles of rolling sea
From coast to coast, by the seagull’s flight,
But the tides were fair and the wind was free,
And they raised Dunkirk by fall of night.

They raised Dunkirk with its harbor torn
By the blasted stern and the sunken prow;
They had reached for fun on an English tide,
They were English children bred and born,
And whether they lived, or whether they died,
They raced for England now.

Bess was as white as the Sarah’s sail,
She set her teeth and smiled at Will.
He held his course for the smoky veil
Where the harbor narrowed thin and long.
The British ships were firing strong.

He took the Sarah into his hands,
He drove her in through fire and death
To the wet men waiting on the sands.
He got his load and he got his breath,
And she came about, and the wind fought her.

He shut his eyes and he tried to pray.
He saw his England were she lay,
The wind’s green home, the sea’s proud daughter,
Still in the moonlight, dreaming deep,
The English cliffs and the English loam
He had fourteen men to get away,
And the moon was clear, and the night like day
For planes to see where the white sails creep
Over the black water.

He closed his eyes and prayed for her;
He prayed to the men who had made her great,
Who had built her land of forest and park,
Who had made the seas an English lake;
He prayed for a fog to bring the dark;
He prayed to get home for England’s sake.
And the fog came down on the rolling sea,
And covered the ships with English mist.
The diving planes were baffled and blind.

For Nelson was there in the Victory,
With his one good eye, and his sullen twist,
And guns were out on The Golden Hind,
Their shot flashed over the Sarah P.
He could hear them cheer as he came about.

By burning wharves, by battered slips,
Galleon, frigate, and brigantine,
The old dead Captains fought their ships,
And the great dead Admirals led the line.
it was England’s night, it was England’s sea.

The fog rolled over the harbour key.
Bess held to the stays, and conned him out.

And all through the dark, while the Sarah’s wake
Hissed behind him, and vanished in foam,
There at his side sat Francis Drake,
And held him true, and steered him home.  

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They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old;
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them. 

Lest we forget. Lest we forget!

An article from the 80th anniversary in 2020, Evacuation of Dunkirk, from Historic UK.