The Miracle of Dunkirk

by Walter Lord

Creeping along at seven knots, assisted by a tug, she made an ideal target and was twice attacked by the Heinkels. Each time, Commander Hadow waited until the first bombs fell, then lit smoke floats inside various hatches to simulate hits. The ruse worked: both times the planes flew off, apparently convinced that the destroyer was finished.

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. That day Guderian’s panzers had reached Bourbourg, only ten miles southwest of Dunkirk. Nothing stood between them and the port. The bulk of the BEF still lay near Lille, 43 miles to the south. By the time the tanks began rolling again in the predawn hours of May 27, the escape corridor had been established, the BEF was pouring into Dunkirk and Ramsay’s rescue fleet was hard at work.

Still another miracle was provided by the Luftwaffe itself. Perhaps Göring could never have stopped the evacuation, but he could have caused far more mischief. The German planes rarely strafed the crowded beaches; they never used fragmentation bombs; they never attacked tempting targets like Dover or Ramsgate. None of this was through lack of desire; it was through lack of doctrine. The Stuka pilots had been trained for ground support, not for interdiction. The fighters were expected to stay upstairs, covering the bombers, not to come down and mix it up. Whatever the reasons, these lapses allowed additional thousands of men to come home.

“Had the BEF not returned to this country,” General Brookelater wrote, “it is hard to see how the Army could have recovered from the blow.” That was the practical significance of Dunkirk. Britain could replace the 2,472 lost guns, the 63,879 abandoned vehicles; but the 224,686 rescued troops were irreplaceable. In the summer of 1940 they were the only trained troops Britain had left. Later, they would be the nucleus of the great Allied armies that won back the Continent. The leaders—Brooke, Alexander, and Montgomery, to name only three—all cut their teeth at Dunkirk.

Another ingredient was the sense of national participation that Dunkirk aroused. Modern war is so impersonal, it’s a rare moment when the ordinary citizen feels that he’s making a direct contribution. At Dunkirk ordinary Englishmen really did go over in little boats and rescue soldiers. Ordinary housewives really did succor the exhausted troops reeling back. History is full of occasions when armies have rushed to the aid of an embattled people; here was a case where the people rushed to the aid of an embattled army.

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. “Wars are not won by evacuations,” but, for the first time, at least Adolf Hitler didn’t have everything his own way. That in itself was cause for celebration.

Hilton and Shaw ultimately delivered Ryegate II to her boatyard and walked to the tube, where they parted company. After rowing together, side by side, for seventeen hours, it would be reasonable to suppose they remained lifelong friends. As a matter of fact, they never met again.