Dunkirk Evacuation Quotes

It was a heavenly summer, the summer in which France fell and the British Expeditionary Force was evacuated from Dunkirk. Leaves were never such an intense and iridescent green; sunlight glinted on flower-studded meadows as the Germans encircled the Maginot Line and overran not only France but Belgium and Holland. Birdsong filled the air in the lull between bursts of gunfire and accompanied the fleeing refugees who blocked the roads. It was as though the weather was preparing a glorious requiem for the death of Europe.

Dunkirk was to hold out until the day on which all the Allied troops in the pocket who could embark to Britain had done so. Ramsay and the British Government initially assumed that no more than 45,000 troops could be saved, but over the nine days between dawn on Sunday, 26 May and 03.30 on Tuesday, 4 June, no fewer than 338,226 Allied soldiers were rescued from death or capture, 118,000 of whom were French, Belgian and Dutch. Operation Dynamo – so named because Ramsay’s bunker at Dover had housed electrical equipment during the Great War – was the largest military evacuation in history so far, and a fine logistical achievement, especially as daylight sailings had to be suspended on 1 June due to heavy Luftwaffe attacks.

The prospect of one day being hauled out of the canal by yet another old enemy was hard for France to swallow, even more so when British and French defence specialists discussed their exit strategy in case of an overwhelming Soviet attack, and the Brits proposed a massive evacuation via Dunkirk.

The allied troops were forced farther and farther towards the English Channel, until more than 330,000 had their backs to the sea near the small town of Dunkirk. What was known as “the miracle of Dunkirk” began at the end of May in 1940, when hundreds of boats of every description crossed the channel to evacuate the soldiers waiting on the beaches of France. Many brave men were lost as they battled the enemy during the evacuation, but the

Asking him about how I was expected to do all of this, he told me that “Maine turns out good seaman and they needed another Harbor Pilot at the Liberian Port.” At first I didn’t understand his reasoning for this, however he explained that Farrell Lines, being one of three American companies that constituted the “Port of Monrovia Company,” had the responsibility to operate the marine part of it. Liam Janssens, the chief pilot, was leaving for Belgium and would be on leave for the next few months. He explained that the junior pilot was skilled and anything but junior. Captain Wethersfield came from England and had been involved in coordinating the difficult evacuation from Dunkirk. He would have taken over for Liam, but having been wounded hampered his ability to climb the ladder from the tug to the ship! He also let it be known that he felt that he had the promotion coming and told Captain Hickey as much. Hickey was caught between a rock and a hard place as he told me “You know the harbor as well as anyone, so the job is yours; that is if you want it.” His purpose for doing it this way was first to avoid hiring Wethersfield who in effect, challenged Captain Hickey authority and secondly he had confidence that I could handle it. Besides “You know that everything pretty much runs itself and it would be a nice way to earn an extra few bucks!” He was saying that this would allow me to run the MV Cestos and still be able to fill in as a harbor pilot…. It was a job I wasn’t licensed for or had ever done. To me it was just another violation of the norms accepted in the rest of the world. Legally I would be covered with Liberian endorsements and besides, who would know the difference just as long as everything went smoothly during the weeks ahead? Personally I didn’t think that he took into account the immense liability involved but this was West Africa where most things were fudged anyway, and besides, since this hadn’t been planned for, he didn’t have much choice! I couldn't help but wonder about international licensing laws, possible insurance consequences, not to mention his own rules.

eight hundred small boats had loaded 338,000 men into larger ships during the legendary evacuation of Allied troops from Dunkirk, including 500 French officers and 18,000 French sailors, to prevent them from being captured or killed by the Germans.

Cornelia Corwin, 1907–1944,’ ” she read aloud. “ ‘Well done, thou good and faithful servant.’ You’d think she was some wealthy family’s chambermaid, wouldn’t you—or perhaps a nanny? But she wasn’t. She was one of us. Without Cornelia Corwin there would have been no successful evacuation of Dunkirk. Three hundred thousand men would have perished in vain.” She bent over and gently brushed

In the meantime, the Germans established numerous bridgeheads on the south bank of the Somme, to be used when the southward advance began. Panzers invested Boulogne on May 22nd, and on May 23rd, the British evacuated their troops at midnight. The French garrison surrendered at noon two days later on May 25th, recognizing their utterly hopeless position. The British government ordered an evacuation of Dunkirk on May 26th, but the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) and the French forces accompanying them could not escape that easily, however. Near catastrophe struck on May 28th when the Belgians surrendered to Germany, opening a colossal gap in the Allied lines. King Leopold III, showing consistency of character at least if not moral courage, informed the British and French of his planned capitulation only hours prior to the actual surrender, leaving them with practically no time to prepare for its disastrous military consequences. The action earned Leopold III such sobriquets as “King Rat” and “the Traitor King,” nicknames he did little to disprove when he evinced more willingness to negotiate with Hitler for restoration of Belgian independence than he had shown in dealing with France and Britain, which sought to defend Belgium's freedom in the first place. British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill blasted the Belgian monarch's abrupt surrender in a detailed speech summarizing the repercussions: “The surrender of the Belgian Army compelled the British at the shortest notice to cover a flank to the sea more than 30 miles in length. Otherwise all would have been cut off, and all would have shared the fate to which King Leopold had condemned the finest army his country had ever formed. So in doing this and in exposing this flank, as anyone who followed the operations on the map will see, contact was lost between the British and two out of the three corps forming the First French Army.” (Churchill, 2013, 174).

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.

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.

If a repetition of the debacle into which the Lausanne exchange had descended, in which the Anatolian Greeks “mostly carried out a ‘Dunkirk evacuation’ at Smyrna,” was to be avoided, both the areas to be cleared and those into which the expellees were to be sent would need to be under the direct control of an international agency.

We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender. AFTER THE EVACUATION FROM DUNKIRK, 1940