Yet there were others who risked their lives over and over again - men who drove ammunition trucks up to the front line, racing the gauntlet of dive-bombers and shell-fire - and men like Harry Hunt, who seemed not to know the meaning of fear.
Freddie's makeshift ambulance delivered fifty-four wounded men to the beach that day - before the Stuka got them. They were strafed by machine-gun fire and when that failed to stop them, the Stuka climbed high and swept back with the last of his bombs. The car leaped into the air, bucked, turned over and landed on its side. Freddie pulled Harry Hunt to the safety of a stone wall seconds before the wreckage was engulfed by fire.
Both men were shaken, bruised, blackened by smoke - but alive. They remained propped by that wall for at least an hour, smoking the last of Freddie's cigarettes. Neither said much. It was hardly peaceful. A few miles away the artillery pounded incessantly, while Stukas wheeled and screamed down over the harbour like a swarm of angry wasps.
Eventually Harry Hunt roused himself. "You know Yank," he said, "if you had turned left, that pilot would have missed us completely."
Freddie managed a tired smile. "That's right, I did it on purpose. Do you think we can go now? Sit on the beach with the others? The idea of a sea cruise is very appealing."
In ordinary times they would have made an odd sight, but in that place on that day they were just another pair of defeated soldiers. Even Freddie was a soldier from the waist up, wearing a steel helmet and a torn battledress blouse. He fashioned a crutch from the timbers of a gutted barn, took one of Hunt's arms over his shoulder, and together they staggered towards the beaches of Dunkirk.
To talk meant shouting over the barrage, and what with the strain of walking, hopping in Hunt's case, they lacked the breath. Freddie prayed he could get Hunt onto a ship, prayed without hope. The beaches were thick with thousands of men. The big ships were too far out. The small boats could never work fast enough. The Germans were closing. It was only a matter of time.
Freddie feared death, but not capture. After all, his American passport was still in his pocket. And even if Paris fell, surely the American Embassy would still function? Besides, there were men in Berlin who would vouch for him - men who would verify he was a neutral observer, a foreign correspondent. Harry Hunt, on the other hand, would get different treatment.
It took them six hours to reach the waterfront. Hunt was exhausted. Freddie left him being doctored at a field station and went to survey the situation on the beaches. His heart sank. Medical men were working waist deep, hoisting stretchers high over their heads as they struggled to reach the lifeboats. Endless lines of soldiers stretched far out into the water, some of them chest deep, waiting and hoping their turn would come soon. And behind them were the men on the beaches - thousands of men, in long queues as far as the eye could see ...
By nightfall Freddie and Harry Hunt were dug into the sand dunes. They had not eaten for twenty-four hours, nor had a drink, nor washed their stubbled faces. Freddie had managed to trade his watch for some cigarettes, but had failed to find even a crumb of food.
"You did splendidly," Hunt said. "I'd rather smoke than eat anyway."
They talked the night away. When the thunderous roar of the guns made talking impossible, they just smoked and watched the night sky. Freddie felt amazingly calm. He thanked Hunt for that, Hunt had so much courage that somehow it rubbed off. Even so, it was the longest night of Freddie's life. He found himself talking about Margaret and his hope to marry her after the war, and about life in London, life at Craven Street with young Sean Connors.
"Irish?" Hunt queried. "Another neutral?"
"Okay, I know, nobody should be neutral about Hitler. Some people just need more time ..." His words were drowned by a massive explosion. Fifty yards behind them a warehouse gutted by fire finally collapsed.
"Time is running out," Hunt observed grimly.
And it was. As dawn lit the eastern sky Stukas streaked in to meet it, flying low from the west, howling down to attack the ships crowding the coastline. Within minutes the lightening sky was thick with aircraft. Water spouts shot out of the sea. Men flattened themselves into foxholes.
But Freddie's hopes rose as he counted the ships. More had arrived than ever before. At the east end of the harbour, no fewer than eleven ships had edged in close enough for men to board from a long wooden gangway.
Harry Hunt was shouting and pointing the other way - six more ships were taking on men to the west of the harbour. Within the harbour itself, the inshore waters swarmed with destroyers, their guns blazing defiance at the dive-bombers... and even closer to the shore, all sorts of craft were plying furiously back and forth with their human cargoes. The battle, it seemed, was not over yet.
The evacuation went on all day. The harbour was an inferno. Sand quaked with the force of the bombing. Men smothered in foxholes were dug out by friends. Offshore vast columns of water geysered 100 feet high as more bombs screamed down from the Stukas. The destroyer Grenade was hit, one bomb falling directly down her funnel, and sailors floundered across decks greasy with blood. Quickly a trawler took the stricken ship in tow, pulling her clear of the harbour entrance before her magazine ignited. A thousand rounds of ammunition went sky high with such violence that nobody could hear the explosions of falling bombs.
Harry Hunt found a new mode of transport. Carried on a stretcher he went up and down the dunes, rallying some men and calming others.
When an hysterical sergeant overturned the stretcher, Freddie Mallon came from nowhere to knock the man cold.
Harry found a soldier from his own unit and after a shouted exchange , the man whipped a bugle to his lips and began to play "Land of Hope and Glory".
Stukas screamed low over the beaches, strafing columns of men everywhere with murderous machine-gun fire. Soldiers blazed back with the only weapons they had, their rifles. Other men threw themselves flat on the ground. But most of them simply kept marching, slowly but surely down to the sea. Miraculously Harry Hunt found four more bandsmen. Now the sounds of "Land of Hope and Glory" thundered across the sand dunes, drowned now and then by the staccato chatter of anti-aircraft fire from the destroyers, overwhelmed completely at times by shuddering explosions ... before, triumphantly, the music soared forth again.
Freddie watched in amazement as Harry Hunt swung round on his stretcher and started to sing, waving his arms like a demented conductor. Above them the sky was black with aircraft. Behind them, German artillery were shelling the town. Harry Hunt was at least three miles up the beach from his one slender chance of rescue, the ships on the east pier - yet he was roaring out "Land of Hope and Glory" as if he were at the Royal Albert Hall. Bombs were falling like rain. Freddie, who now expected to die, found himself singing at the top of his voice, and, amidst the smoke and noise of that hell on earth, "Land of Hope and Glory" rang out more defiantly than ever before.
Even as Freddie sang and clung forlornly to the hope of a miracle, the miracle had started. For two whole days boats had been assembling in the small fishing port of Ramsgate. They came from Exeter and Portsmouth, Dover and Colchester, they came down the tidal waters of the Thames and the Test, they came from boatyards all along the south coast - and they were on their way.
"Steer for the sound of the guns," was the order - and they did.
It was the most incredible armada of small boats the world had ever seen - barges, motor-launches, salt-stained trawlers, sleek cabin cruisers, tugs and lifeboats - a massive fleet of a thousand tiny craft. Distant gunfire reverberated over the waves with the thunder of a kettle-drum, as the small boats ploughed through the water with desperate speed.
In the cockpit of Samantha Margaret Hamilton shouted with pride as she recognised boats belonging to friends. "Look," she screamed at Sean, "there's Tommy Watkins in Flying Fish ... and look there, that's Betty Marshall's father, that one, The Hornet, can you see?"
There were boats on every quarter. Margaret shouted a commentary as she recognised Tom Sopwith's famou
s racing yacht Endeavour, then pointed to the old Isle of Wight car ferry, the Wootton, wallowing through the water behind them.
Still the boats streamed across the Channel. Tubby Reynolds waved from his motor-launch, while Sean tried in vain to spot Peter Nicholls aboard his yacht Newsflash.
Margaret checked her wheel and took up station between the fishing trawler Jacinta, reeking of cod, and the good launch Count Dracula which had once belonged to a German admiral.
So they sailed into Dunkirk. Had Sean imagined anything a tenth as terrible nothing would have induced him to involve Margaret Hamilton. Flames leaped ten thousand feet high and a mile wide from the blitzed oil terminus. Air reeked of cordite and smoke and rancid oil. Terrible sounds floated out of the fog and smoke; klaxons blasted, men screamed and shouted, the guns thundered incessantly, and once, incongruously, Sean thought he heard a snatch of men singing "Land of Hope and Glory" from a point far down the sands.
"Follow me, Samantha," bellowed a naval rating from a passing launch.
Margaret swung the wheel. Sean glimpsed her face, white and determined under the oilskin pulled down over her head. No time left for talking. They were going in - towards the long piers jutting out into the chill grey water. Sean gasped. Those piers were not piers at all, they were men, thousands of men, standing chest deep in the sea, waiting for the boats.
He lost all sense of time after that. He forgot his vow to protect Margaret, forgot Freddie, forgot everything. He became a machine. As the boat edged in his hand grasped the first soldier and hauled, dragging him in, groaning at the weight of sodden greatcoat and equipment. Other hands gripped the gunnels. Sean heaved them aboard, shouting at them to help their mates still in the water. He pulled another man in, then another and another after him. His arms were almost wrenched loose from their sockets. Then Margaret was turning the boat, gathering speed, and slowing down again as they came alongside one of the ships.
Up the men went, clutching ladders, ropes and hands thrust down from the rails - with Sean pushing from behind. Then the boat was turning back for the shore and Sean was gathering his strength to start all over again.
He saw faces, fear, wounds, uniforms, rifles - everything was a blur. Only on each journey back, as his chest heaved and he massaged aching muscles, did he risk a quick glance at the miles of beaches, all crawling with men, winding back like serpents over the sand hills and into the mist.
The noise was colossal - the screaming of bombs, crashing antiaircraft fire from the destroyers, klaxons blaring on ships around them, men in the water shouting for help.
After about four hours the navy launch returned - "Everything all right, Samantha?" In a reflex action Sean grabbed the man's arms to pull him aboard - it was instinctive, see a face, hear a shout, lean out and pull. The sailor struggled free, "You're exhausted. Take half an hour out." He turned, shouting and pointing at Margaret, "Skipper, pull over by the Thanet Rose. Come back as soon as you can."
They rested because they had to. Margaret, dog-tired by hours of concentration, was drained. They made a hot drink in the galley, shared a bar of chocolate, smoked a cigarette, smiled wanly - and started back. No effort was made to shout above the booming artillery. What was there to say anyway? Neither of them had seen Freddie. Both were frightened, and sickened by the sights they had seen.
Samantha curved away from the Thanet Rose. They passed a pinnace manned by teenage Sea Scouts. Behind that, barely visible in the swirling mist, came a Thames barge with russet sails and massive oars. Both boats were low in the water, overladen with their human cargo. Margaret slid expertly past and followed an oyster-dredger from Whitstable back to the beaches of Dunkirk.,
Men ashore were trying to help. Sappers in 30 cwt trucks careened down the beach and into the sea until waves washed over the leading vehicles. Other men worked desperately, lashing planks to the truck roofs to fashion jetties twenty yards long. Soon troops were marching three abreast along the rickety gangways in yet another effort to reach the small boats.
Night fell but darkness changed nothing. Men still crowded the jetties and waded deep into the sea. Small boats plied frantically back and forth.
Harry Hunt had restored a sense of discipline to the fifty men clustered around him. By sending out scavenging parties he had even found food and a field cooker. At midnight he and Freddie ate a sausage and tomato served hot into their hands. Further down the beach men were slaughtering French cavalry horses for food.
Predictably, at dawn, the Stukas returned in a last desperate bid to drive the boats from the shore. The crescendo of noise tore eardrums apart. Great plumes of water rose all over the harbour. Skippers aboard small boats fought their wheels to stay on course. Six dive-bombers pounded the old destroyer Worcester until she staggered from the harbour in flames. Yet she limped out into the channel to meet a glorious, unbelievable sight. Swarming over the water towards her came more of England's small boats - barges and yachts, lifeboats and tugs, a powerful cabin cruiser with six dinghies in tow. The impossible rescue was set to continue!
Sean Connors and Margaret Hamilton rested at three-hour intervals, pulling out of the chain for fifteen-minute breaks. Both were on the verge of collapse. Like people in shock, too tired for shouted conversation, too tired to think or to plan. At mid-morning Margaret burst into tears. Samantha was almost out of fuel. The tanks held barely enough to continue, let alone get back across the Channel. Sean comforted her while trying to coax a solution from his numbed mind. His head throbbed, his body ached all over.
The Navy provided a tow. Samantha went back to the beaches roped behind a launch ... and returned to the ships ... and went back to the beaches ... while all the time Stukas rained death from the skies.
At noon Harry Hunt was on one of the piers constructed by the Sappers. He had lost his crutch and was supported by Freddie Mallon on one side and a Sergeant Major on the other. Freddie could not believe their turn had come - not even when he and Harry fell into a flat-bottomed coal barge with fifty men on top of them. It was not until ten minutes later, when rescued French soldiers heaved Freddie aboard a battle-scarred minesweeper, that Freddie regained his faith in miracles. For the first time in twenty-four hours he dared to think of Margaret Hamilton in London.
Back came the Stukas. The sky was dark with two hundred German planes.
Samantha was sinking. Strafed from stem to stern, she listed sluggishly to starboard, threatening to capsize at every second. Sean, hugging a wounded man upright, fought his way along the crowded deck to where Margaret was jammed tight against the cockpit. Ahead the skipper of the towing launch glanced anxiously over his shoulder as he raced to reach the nearest ship before Samantha sank.
"Sean!" Margaret screamed as the deck slid from under her.
He reached her as the sea came to claim them.
"Sean!"
They hit the water together, the wounded man slipping from Sean's grasp.
"Sean!" Margaret spluttered, spitting oily salt water.
The minesweeper Otter loomed mountainous above them. Rescued men leapt from the rails to rescue others. Ropes snaked down from fore and aft. Ladders dangled at midships.
Sean got Margaret to a ladder. She had lost her hat. Long hair clung to her skull like a helmet. Hands reached down to grip her wrists.
"Bloody hell, it's a woman," someone shouted.
Still in the water, Sean turned to search for the wounded soldier. Margaret continued to scream, "Sean! Where are you, Sean!" A man spluttered to the surface and propelled Sean to the rope ladder - "We've got the other one," he shouted. Sean clung to the sodden rope, hoping "other one" meant the wounded man, but too weary to protest.
Harry Hunt said, "My God, they've pulled a woman out of the water."
They craned their necks, but the ships' superstructure blocked their view. Men crammed tight on all sides restricted their movement.
As the Otter swung laboriously towards the Channel, the entire panorama of the devastated harbour was put on
display. Tongues of orange flame leaped from the warehouses, forking up into the pall of smoke which hung in clouds over the sand dunes. Even above the minesweeper the air reeked of cordite and putrid horseflesh.
The Otter turned out to sea, skirting the forest of sunken masts and superstructures at the harbour entrance. Alongside them sailed other vessels - a tug, almost invisible under hoards of men who clung to every inch of her like ants on a jam jar - a yacht, designed for a crew of five and carrying forty - a narrow canal barge which had never before seen the sea - and beyond those were other boats - boats and boats and boats.
So they journeyed back to England, inching into Dover late that afternoon to discover a ships' graveyard. Crippled vessels littered the entire waterfront. But the atmosphere was not that of a graveyard. A frantic army of craftsmen - engineers, carpenters, riveters - worked feverishly in the fading light to repair the damage. And even as the Otter came in, another minesweeper sailed out, patches of rough metal showing all over her, battered, unbowed, and seaworthy once more.
An Embarkation officer hailed the Captain of the Otter from the quay - "How many aboard?"
Back went the reply, amplified by a megaphone - "Five hundred and nine men - and one woman!"
The ripple of astonishment gave way to laughter, and laughter gave way to cheers.
They were home.
Margaret clung to Sean's hand. It seemed unbelievable to be home in one piece, to have come out of that murderous inferno. Yet even as the cheers rang out she could think only of Freddie.
Then she saw him, down on the Quay. She was hallucinating surely? The strain, shock ... The man turned at the bottom of the gangway, helping another man, a man with one leg. Freddie? With a face as black as hers and dressed in rags?
Ian St James Compendium - Volume 1 Page 125