The Miracle of Dunkirk

by Walter Lord

THERE SEEMED TO BE NO ESCAPE. On May 24, 1940, some 400,000 Allied troops lay pinned against the coast of Flanders near the French port of Dunkirk. Hitler’s advancing tanks were only ten miles away. There was virtually nothing in between. Yet the trapped army was saved. By June 4—just eleven days later—over 338,000 men had been evacuated safely to England in one of the great rescues of all time. It was a crucial turning point in World War II.

To the British, Dunkirk symbolizes a generosity of spirit, a willingness to sacrifice for the common good. To Americans, it has come to mean Mrs. Miniver, little ships, The Snow Goose, escape by sea.

It is customary to look on Dunkirk as a series of days. Actually, it should be regarded as a series of crises. Each crisis was solved, only to be replaced by another, with the pattern repeated again and again. It was the collective refusal of men to be discouraged by this relentless sequence that is important. Seen in this light, Dunkirk remains, above all, a stirring reminder of man’s ability to rise to the occasion, to improvise, to overcome obstacles. It is, in short, a lasting monument to the unquenchable resilience of the human spirit.

It seemed incredible. Since 1918 the French Army had been generally regarded as the finest in the world. With the rearmament of Germany under Adolf Hitler, there was obviously a new military power in Europe, but still, her leaders were untested and her weapons smacked of gimmickry. When the Third Reich swallowed one Central European country after another, this was attributed to bluff and bluster. When war finally did break out in 1939 and Poland fell in three weeks, this was written off as something that could happen to Poles—but not to the West. When Denmark and Norway went in April 1940, this seemed just an underhanded trick; it could be rectified later. Then after eight months of quiet—“the phony war”—on the 10th of May, Hitler suddenly struck at Holland, Belgium, and Luxembourg. Convinced that the attack was a replay of 1914, the Supreme Allied Commander, General Maurice Gamelin, rushed his northern armies—including the British Expeditionary Force—to the rescue.

Here the Prime Minister met for the first time Maxime Weygand. Like everyone else, Churchill was impressed by the new commander’s energy and bounce (like an India rubber ball, Ismay decided). Best of all, his military thinking seemed to parallel Churchill’s own.

London and Paris dreamed on. After the meeting with Churchill, Weygand issued a stirring “Operation Order No. 1.” In it he called on the northern armies to keep the Germans from reaching the sea—ignoring the fact that they were already there. On May 24 he announced that a newly formed French Seventh Army was advancing north and had already retaken Péronne, Albert, and Amiens. It was all imaginary.

on May 22 the Admiralty designated the evacuation now being planned as “Operation Dynamo.”

The crucial question was whether more than a smattering of men could get to Dunkirk at all. Hitler’s “halt order” had been lifted; the German armor was rolling again; thousands of Allied soldiers were still deep in France and Belgium. Could the escape corridor be kept open long enough for these troops to scramble to the coast? What could be done to help the units holding the corridor? How to buy the time that was needed? 4

TO WINSTON CHURCHILL, CALAIS was the key. The ancient French port, 24 miles west of Dunkirk, was besieged but still in British hands. The Prime Minister decided that it must be held to the last man.

LIEUTENANT IAN COX, FIRST Lieutenant of the destroyer Malcolm, could hardly believe his eyes. There, coming over the horizon toward him, was a mass of dots that filled the sea. The Malcolm was bringing her third load of troops back to Dover. The dots were all heading the other way—toward Dunkirk. It was Thursday evening, the 30th of May. As he watched, the dots materialized into vessels. Here and there were respectable steamers, like the Portsmouth-Isle of Wight car ferry, but mostly they were little ships of every conceivable type—fishing smacks … drifters … excursion boats … glittering white yachts … mud-spattered hoppers … open motor launches … tugs towing ship’s lifeboats … Thames sailing barges with their distinctive brown sails … cabin cruisers, their bright work gleaming … dredges, trawlers, and rust-streaked scows … the Admiral Superintendent’s barge from Portsmouth with its fancy tassels and rope-work.

The efforts of the Small Vessels Pool and the Ministry of Shipping were at last paying off. The trickle of little ships that began in Tough’s boatyard was turning into a deluge. There was still no public announcement of the evacuation, but England is a small place. In one way or another, the word reached those who were needed.

The “provost jetty,” as it came to be called, was finished during the afternoon of May 30 and proved a huge success. All evening, and all the next day, a steady stream of men used it to board the growing fleet of small boats and launches engaged in ferry work.

Actually, there were several miracles. First, the weather. The English Channel is usually rough, rarely behaves for very long. Yet a calm sea was essential to the evacuation, and during the nine days of Dunkirk the Channel was a millpond. Old-timers still say they have never seen it so smooth.

Another miracle was Adolf Hitler’s order of May 24, halting his tanks just as they were closing in for the kill.

Above all, they pulled it off. When the evacuation began, Churchill thought 30,000 might be saved; Ramsay guessed 45,000. In the end, over 338,000 were landed in England, with another 4,000 lifted to Cherbourg and other French ports still in Allied hands.