Dunkirk Quotes

“Towards the end of the evening, British soldiers had dragged a man to see Tennant, explaining that he was a spy who had tried to smuggle himself into Dunkirk, and should be shot. Tennant was soon clear that the man was exactly who he claimed to be, an RAF officer who had been shot down over German-held territory, had found a bike and had cycled to Dunkirk. On way, he said, he had heard a noise and hidden behind a hedge while the tanks went by. It was then that he realised the panzers were going the wrong way – for some reason, they were driving away from Dunkirk. It was the first indication for Tennant that there might still be a lull in the German advance long enough to collect the bulk of the BEF after all. The problem was that the BEF had not yet reached Dunkirk in force, and it was the other flank protecting their retreat, the one looking east, that was now under threat. The Belgian army was now down to its last auxiliary troops, using First World War artillery from the training college. They told Gort at 10pm that they had agreed to an armistice with Germany, starting in just one hour. It left a 25 kilometre gap that would need to be filled to protect them against the other side of the advancing enemy army.”
― David Boyle, Dunkirk: A Miracle of Deliverance

“From experience in Boulogne and Calais, Tennant had a good idea of the chaos he might encounter of an army – possibly even two armies – in full retreat. He and Ramsay hoped that the distinctive blue of a naval uniform would be able to assert some authority, when army officers and men were all dressed in khaki battledress. On the way across, his sailors were issued with revolvers, much to their surprise, and were told they were to shoot anyone who tried to jump the queues.  Tennant’s officers were sceptical and told him he needed some additional nomenclature. They decided he should have the letters SNO, for ‘Senior Naval Officer’, on his white helmet. There was no paint available, so he cut out the letters from the silver paper from a cigarette packet, and stuck them on with the pea soup he had just been served for lunch.”
― David Boyle, Dunkirk: A Miracle of Deliverance

“In London that evening, Captain O. M. Watts, proprietor of the School of Sailsmanship in Albemarle Street, heard through the grapevine about the desperate need to navigators and others who knew how to handle boats. He sent messages to all his pupils that there would be no classes the following week, and urged them to report instead to the navy’s London headquarters, based at the Port of London Authority next to the Tower of London. As many as 73 of his 75 pupils did so and were allocated to ship’s lifeboats, some of them still in their city suits and bowler hats.”
― David Boyle, Dunkirk: A Miracle of Deliverance

“While the first ships were arriving in Dunkirk, Churchill and the war cabinet were meeting for the third time that day, and his own struggle with his Foreign Secretary was now joined: they disagreed about whether Hitler’s terms, offered through the Italians, would be outrageous or not. Churchill said they would be worthless. He didn’t feel strong enough to oppose him outright, and tried to delay a decision until they knew what was happening in Dunkirk.”
― David Boyle, Dunkirk: A Miracle of Deliverance

“Ramsay had dubbed it Operation Dynamo, partly after the machine which hummed away in his cave providing him with electricity. But it was a well-chosen name, because somehow the nation would have to generate unprecedented energy if they were going to escape. He could look down from the Igloo that morning at Dover Harbour, packed with former cross-Channel ferries, begged, borrowed and stolen from other departments and commands, and mainly manned by civilian crews. There were navy destroyers, cargo ships, minesweepers and MTBs, plus a shabbier collection of Dutch and Belgian coasters and British fishing boats, plus ammunition and stores ships tied up ready for unloading, and four powerful tugs, Simla, Gondia, Roman and Lady Brassey fussing around the harbour mouth, ready to guide the big ships on their way.  Operation Dynamo was given the go-ahead a few minutes before 7pm, though Ramsay had been anticipating the order for some hours.”
― David Boyle, Dunkirk: A Miracle of Deliverance

“Sunday 26 May King George VI and Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands, carrying their gas masks, went to a special service in Westminster Abbey. Churchill also arrived, explaining that he could only stay for ten minutes. The government had, in their very English way, managed to avoid an official day of prayer, in case it smacked of desperation, but still knew that the churches around the nation could be relied on to pray pretty fervently. “The English are loath to expose their feelings,” wrote Churchill later, “but in my stall in the choir I could feel the pent up, passionate emotion, and also the fear of the congregation, not of death or wounds or material loss, but of defeat and the final ruin of Britain.”
― David Boyle, Dunkirk: A Miracle of Deliverance

“After the debacle of the combined allied counterattack on 21/22 May, Gort had concluded that his French allies were unravelling and he therefore had no choice but to disobey direct orders from his French commanders, and the implicit orders from London. He ordered the BEF to make all speed for Dunkirk, and he asked the commander of III Corps, Lieutenant-General Sir Ronald Adam, to make arrangements for a defensive line around the beaches. It was a critical and historic decision. On the face of it, Gort was right. His decision to withdraw made the Dunkirk evacuation possible and meant that Britain could fight on, and that the war would eventually be won. But it relied on an extreme series of strokes of luck and good weather, and there is another view – because Gort’s decision also destroyed Weygand’s plan for an Anglo-French offensive.”
― David Boyle, Dunkirk: A Miracle of Deliverance

“As well as the fears about fifth columnists and German refugees that obsessed the nation – largely without foundation, as it turned out – there was some accurate and unnerving reporting from France. “The threat to this island grows nearer and nearer,” said the Daily Express. “While the people of Britain wait anxiously for news of their soldiers over the Channel, they must prepare for the onslaught which may come upon their own soil.”
― David Boyle, Dunkirk: A Miracle of Deliverance

“The evacuation of Boulogne as the panzers rolled in threw the weight of attention onto the fate of Calais, the next port in the way of the advancing tanks, moving along the coast from west to east. If Dunkirk was going to be held to take off even part of the BEF, then Calais would have to be held for most of that time. Orders were given to the troops fighting there that it must be held to the last round of ammunition. It was a brutal decision.  In fact, Guderian had already swept past Calais on his way to Dunkirk, leaving the defenders surrounded. Then the unexpected happened. General Ewald von Kleist ordered him to stop at the line of the canal outside Dunkirk.”
― David Boyle, Dunkirk: A Miracle of Deliverance

“What had happened was that the German army had deep misgivings about the western offensive, afraid that success would go to Hitler’s head, as indeed it did, and the failed British offensive had made them nervous. Hitler in particular was worried about whether his tanks would manage to get through the marshy ground to the west of Dunkirk. He was also nervous at the prospect of Gamelin’s inevitable counterattack from the south east. But his senior military advisers were divided about what to do. There were angry meetings at Hitler’s military OKH headquarters, the operational command of the army.  There is some evidence to suggest that Hitler was reluctant to destroy the British, believing that the British empire – like the Roman Catholic church – was one of the pillars which held up the world (his favourite film was Lives of a Bengal Lancer). The controversial stop order was to have enormous implications, preventing Guderian from winning the war that week – it could be said to have been Hitler’s fatal strategic error.”
― David Boyle, Dunkirk: A Miracle of Deliverance

“To make matters worse, the British sighted French tanks, thought they were German and attacked them. The German commander charged with the task of resisting was a man who would soon be the most famous German general of them all, then known as Major-General Erwin Rommel. By 6pm, Rommel had prevailed, the attack was over and the remaining British tanks – and most of the commanders had been killed – were in retreat”
― David Boyle, Dunkirk: A Miracle of Deliverance

“Someone at the Admiralty mentioned that the Dutch barges known as schuyts, which had flat bottoms and crews of three, might be very suitable for taking people off beaches. As many as forty of them had arrived in the previous weeks from the Netherlands and were in the Thames estuary. Ramsay gave orders to have them requisitioned and manned by crews from the naval reserve.  He also took what turned out to be a critical decision. He ordered 80,000 cans of drinking water and sent them to Dunkirk to special dumps, and set guards on them. It turned out to have a vital significance in keeping the army alive.”
― David Boyle, Dunkirk: A Miracle of Deliverance

“Because of that, just days after taking office as prime minister, Churchill was preparing for the ultimate emergency – the potential loss of most of the British army. The War Minister Anthony Eden had already announced the formation of the Home Guard, and asked able-bodied men to come forward. A huge number did so. Later that same evening (14 May), the BBC had broadcast this announcement: “The Admiralty have made an order directing the owners of self-propelled pleasure craft between thirty and one hundred feet in length to send all particulars to the Admiralty within fourteen days from today, if they have not already been offered or requisitioned. By this day, five days later, retired Rear Admiral Alfred Taylor had been given powers to collect and pay crews of small craft which might be used by navy, and was gathering them at Sheerness in the Thames estuary. The man in charge of finding the ships, H. C. Riggs, was now sleeping at the offices of the Ministry of Shipping in Berkeley Square, one of the administrative heroes of Dunkirk, and was collecting information on small ships that might be available and holding them in port. The clerks at the Admiralty were printing copies of form T124, which signed people up for 90 days short service in the navy.”
― David Boyle, Dunkirk: A Miracle of Deliverance

“Then, in April 1940, Hitler invaded Norway and everything changed. Most of Ramsay’s ships were withdrawn from his command, leaving only five working corvettes and seven motor torpedo boats (MTBs). The allied failures in Norway also led to a political crisis which toppled Chamberlain from power on the day that Hitler launched his offensive in the West. When Winston Churchill became prime minister, at this crucial moment in the nation’s history, he feared the worst. “I hope it’s not too late,” he said to his bodyguard after seeing the King. “I very much fear that it is.” Ramsay had been at the heart of operational planning since that day, 10 May, because he was responsible for keeping Lord Gort, the BEF’s commander-in-chief, and his men supplied in Belgium”
― David Boyle, Dunkirk: A Miracle of Deliverance

“It was a tall order. “We have no stationary, books, typists or machines, no chairs, and few tables, maddening communications,” Ramsay wrote home to his wife, Margaret. “I pray that war, if it has to come, will be averted for a few days.” But Ramsay’s prayers were answered. As it turned out, the Munich meeting ended in a controversial agreement which allowed Hitler to take the Sudetenland, the largely German speaking region of Czechoslovakia. There was “peace in our time”, Chamberlain told the crowds as that welcomed him home at Croydon Airport. So Ramsay and his small staff were stood down again.”
― David Boyle, Dunkirk: A Miracle of Deliverance

“Although they did not know it at the time, the Royal Navy was so complacent about its ability to crack codes that it was unaware that its own naval codes were being read every day by the German navy, and had been since 1936.  What brought Ramsay back from retirement in the Scottish borders was the war scare in September 1938, when the nation came so close to going to war over Czechoslovakia. In the week of what became the Munich Crisis, the navy awoke to the fact that war was imminent and they had not really prepared for it. They searched their lists, including the Retired List, for any officers with the right expertise. Ramsay was known as an effective leader and had made his name as part of the Dover Patrol in the First World War, and the Admiralty needed a flag officer to take charge of the front line port of Dover who was capable of blocking the English Channel to enemy shipping and submarines”
― David Boyle, Dunkirk: A Miracle of Deliverance