Evacuation From Dunkirk

The year 2024 marks the 84th anniversary of the Dunkirk evacuation. It began on May 26, 1940.

Hitler ordered the invasion of France in early May of 1940. The Allies had seriously underestimated the strength of the German forces, and within two weeks, the Germans had advanced through France to the English Channel, driving the allied forces to the harbor and onto the beaches at Dunkirk where their annihilation seemed inevitable.

To evacuate at least some of the troops, Prime Minister Winston Churchill ordered the start of Operation Dynamo. Destroyers and transport ships were sent to evacuate the troops, but it was expected that only about 30,000 of them would be rescued.

However, in one of the war’s most widely debated decisions, Hitler ordered his generals to halt their advance for three days, giving the Allies time to organize the evacuation. As a result, more than 330,000 Allied troops were evacuated despite heavy fire from German aircraft.

The evacuation was not at all easy, however. Because of the shallow water, the large ships were not able to closely approach the beaches, so smaller ships and boats were needed to ferry the troops from the beaches to the larger ships. Some 700 smaller ships such as fishing boats and privately-owned motorboats were ferried across the Channel, sometimes by their civilian owners, to carry the evacuating troops from the beaches to the larger ships.

By June 4, 1940, some 338,000 people were brought to Britain. Heavy equipment such as pieces of artillery, tanks, and motor vehicles were abandoned and left in France.

One of my favorite motion pictures is ’Mrs. Miniver’. Released in 1942 and starring Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon, it is the story of a British housewife and her family in rural England just prior to the start of World War II. In one segment of the film, Clem Miniver (Pidgeon), along with other boat owners, volunteers to take his boat, the Starling, to assist in the evacuation of Dunkirk. It’s a remarkable display of British ingenuity, determination, and patriotism during a time of crisis. Had the evacuation not been accomplished successfully, it is a distinct possibility that we would all be speaking German today.

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