Operation Dynamo: Why the Dunkirk miracle was not just down to luck

OPERATION Dynamo, the Dunkirk evacuation, began in earnest 80 years ago today, with the first removal of soldiers from the small French port whose name is now a byword for defiance.

Nazi Germany’s forces had smashed through Belgium and northern France in a pincer-movement blitzkrieg to trap the British Expeditionary Force in the only remaining viable port.

It was soon clear that only an evacuation across the Channel could save the British and French forces trapped in Dunkirk and on the extensive beaches around it, At 7pm on Sunday, May 26, 1940, Prime Minister Winston Churchill gave the order for Operation Dynamo to proceed. Its aim was to repatriate perhaps 45-50,000 men.

The Royal Navy had been preparing for the rescue operation for days and Vice-Admiral Bertram Ramsay was in charge from his secret bunker under Dover Castle.

At first light on May 27, the Navy went in, but less than 8000 men – just 2% of those said to be ashore – were taken off in that first day. A miracle was needed.

WE ALL KNOW WHAT HAPPENED NEXT, DON’T WE?

YES. There really was an amazing effort by the Navy and a civilian armada – the “little ships” – to ferry back to safety tens of thousands of soldiers. The little ships didn’t just turn up, however. Admiral Ramsay and his team realised that smaller boats would be needed to ferry soldiers, mostly wading off the shallow beaches, to bigger transports sitting offshore.

By May 31, hundreds of small vessels had either been requisitioned or the owners had volunteered.

The Mole breakwater was the only solid point of embarkation, while overhead the Luftwaffe pounded the beaches and the ships, and it became a myth that the RAF was posted missing.

But its was not – its planes attacked the German fighters and bombers over France or out to sea. Despite losing many aircraft and pilots, they forced the Luftwaffe to hang back so that Operation Dynamo could continue. It wasn’t luck that worked the “miracle”

– it was courage, good planning and organisation. The little ships took nearly 100,000 men home, with the Navy evacuating another 240,000 from the Mole by the Navy. The only “luck” was that Adolf Hitler was so busy exulting in what he called the greatest victory in military history that he forgot to finish the job and halted the attacks to concentrate instead on conquering the rest of France.

Some 338,000 soldiers were returned to Britain, including some of the Army’s best and most experienced troops, who would form the basis for the Army for the rest of the war.

British troops arrived home to a heroes’ welcome

WHAT HAPPENED TO THOSE LEFT BEHIND IN FRANCE?

THIS is always controversial. As The National has reported, the 51st Highland Division had been ordered by Churchill and the chiefs of staff to go deep into France to support the French army, and had been cut off by the swiftness of the German advance. They were not deliberately sacrificed – they were just too far from Dunkirk, and under the command of the French, when Dynamo began.

The 51st and other divisions fought on as other evacuations took place off the west coast of France, but eventually had to surrender. Some 10,000 men were captured and marched as prisoners of war towards the stalags from their last stand at Saint Valery-en-Caux. But they had bought time for rescue Operations Cycle and Ariel to proceed and from June 10 to 25, another 200,000 soldiers and civilians were able to be evacuated through Le Havre and other ports on the Channel and Bay of Biscay. What could have been a catastrophe was at least ameliorated.

Meanwhile, German troops committed atrocities against those captured British infantry. On this date in 1940, at least 97 defenceless men of the Royal Norfolk regiment were massacred at Le Paradis while 20 surrendered men of the Royal Scots are believed to have been murdered nearby.

WHAT DID CHURCHILL SAY TO TURN THE MOOD?

IT is worth recalling that when he rose to address the House of Commons on June 4, Churchill said he had feared “it would be my hard lot to announce the greatest military disaster in our long history”.

He went on: “I thought, and some good judges agreed with me, that perhaps 20,000 or 30,000 men might be re-embarked … the whole root and core and brain of the British Army, on which and around which we were to build, and are to build, the great British armies in the later years of the war, seemed about to perish upon the field or to be led into an ignominious and starving captivity.”

He added: “We must be very careful not to assign to this deliverance the attributes of a victory. Wars are not won by evacuations.”

Then came perhaps his most famous words, ending with a clear call to the USA to enter the war: “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, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.”

Allegedly, in the immediate aftermath of his speech, Churchill whispered to a colleague: “And we’ll fight them with the butt ends of broken beer bottles because that’s bloody well all we’ve got!”