Dunkirk

by Joshua Levine

  Arthur Lobb experienced a tense anxiety, a feeling that he might not survive. George Purton wondered how the hell he was going to escape. Vic Viner, who was on the beaches longer than anybody else, admits to having been terrified every time a Stuka came over. Twenty years later, he says, it all came out in the form of a nervous breakdown. And Ordinary Seaman Stanley Allen, serving on HMS Windsor, who had a chance to observe the soldiers at close hand, began to suspect that Dunkirk marked the end of the British way of life.

  Given these feelings and the prevailing conditions, it is a testament to the optimism, fighting spirit, and determination of the soldiers that their discipline held so well. But this would all be for nothing if the boats and ships were not available to transport them to England.

  On Friday 31 May – the sixth day of Operation Dynamo – the British public first learned of the evacuation. Newspaper headlines were relentlessly optimistic. ‘Tens Of Thousands Safely Home Already – Many More Coming By Day And Night’, shouted the Daily Express. The Daily Mail’s editorial read:

  Today our hearts are lightened. Today our pride in British courage is mingled with rejoicing. We are proud of the way the men of our race have borne themselves in the gigantic battle across the Channel. We rejoice that a considerable part of the British Army has escaped what seemed like certain destruction.

  But were British hearts really lightened? An examination of Mass Observation sources reveals a more nuanced and interesting picture. The general morale report for 1 June reports that people were encouraged by news of the evacuation, but not overwhelmingly so:

  People are not quite clear what to make of the military situation, but think we must count this as a defeat. There is an undercurrent of feeling, however, that this will rouse us, and that we will really show the Germans what the British Nation is like.

  Here we can see that spontaneous creation of Dunkirk Spirit as a manifestation of people’s relief. It did not have to be imposed from above – and this is underlined by a note sent by Mass Observation to government ministers the following day, stating that the vast majority of the British people were wholeheartedly behind the war, and were anxious to be kept there. ‘But it will only be kept there by bold leadership, and a forceful, imaginative use of propaganda.’

  In other words, the British people were manufacturing their own spirit – and the government’s job became to foster, encourage and shape that spirit. It was against this background that Churchill made his speech and J. B. Priestley gave his wireless talk over the coming days.

  But it should not be thought that the country was feeling or acting uniformly. The 1 June morale report stresses that while news of the evacuation encouraged the public, reports were also causing anxiety. One Mass Observation diarist, a thirty-two-year-old woman in Birmingham, found herself unable to think, or talk, about anything but the evacuation. A friend had received a postcard from her brother, just arrived back from France, saying that he was going to tell her ‘how blasted Hitler blasted the B.E.F.’. The diarist writes that she was not usually one to cry, but she had been crying all the time since learning of the army’s fate. Nevertheless, she adds: ‘Everybody is cheerful, and in no way cast down. They have momentary spasms of doubt, but it doesn’t make them unhappy.’

  She was extremely fearful of a German invasion. Most people, she felt, had little idea what this would really mean, the slaughter, the upheaval and terror it would cause. She had spent the day carrying on – but knowing that something nasty was going to happen. It was like, she writes, waiting to visit the dentist for an extraction.

  Her conflicted words and feelings, lurching between fear, forced courage and banality, offer a vivid sense of the period. This is how you and I would have behaved on the Home Front. A few days later, like the soldiers on the beach, she was escaping into her own foxhole: ‘If I worry and fret, it will only help to wear my nerves a bit more, so I have created a kind of blank in my mind about the battle.’

  But like so much of the British population, she tried to channel her fears in a more productive way. ‘I would like to engage in local defence work, or something,’ she writes. This adds weight to the 1 June morale report, when it notes that people seemed ‘willing to do a lot themselves to help the war’. The tidal wave of volunteerism had begun, that spontaneous unity that was shortly to bind the country and change it for ever.

  At home in Britain, as the troops were suffering in France and Belgium, we can observe the birth of Dunkirk Spirit as a reaction to fear, and an alternative to escape. In order to survive, however, fear was going to have to be balanced – and boosted – by hope.

  Back in France, on Friday 31 May, Lord Gort handed his command over to the impressive Major General Alexander and returned to Britain.* Gort had been keen to stay to the bitter end, but Churchill would not allow the possibility; he could imagine how Goebbels’ propaganda machine would have exploited Gort’s capture. The chief of the British Expeditionary Force would have been paraded in front of Nazi film cameras, and photographed looking sheepish alongside Hitler. The prospect was intolerable.

  Conditions in Dunkirk on 31 May, meanwhile, were not easy. A fresh wind was causing a sizeable surf, but the greater problem was a shortage of boats. Although significant numbers had actually been arriving at Dunkirk since the previous day, accounting for the fact that almost thirty thousand soldiers had been taken off the beaches on Thursday, many more were needed. Early in the morning, soldiers could only stare at the empty naval and civilian ships offshore. To make matters worse, an artillery bombardment on the mole was sending even more passenger ships to the beaches. But things were about to change.

  This Friday, 31 May, was the day that the Dunkirk legend was born. It was the day that the Armada truly arrived. A procession of coasters, launches, lighters, lifeboats, barges, tenders, trawlers, motor boats, cockle boats, pinnaces, fire floats, tugs, yachts, and goodness knows what else left Ramsgate and made its way to Dunkirk. The line of boats stretched for almost five miles. To Frederick Eldred, aboard HMS Harvester, it was a fantastic sight. ‘It was almost a holiday scene,’ he says, ‘with every type of boat afloat.’ Flight Lieutenant Frank Howell of 609 Squadron flew low overhead.* In a letter to his brother he wrote: ‘The shipping between England and Dunkirk was a sight worth seeing. Never again shall I see so many ships of different sizes and shapes over such a stretch of water.’

  The ships did not appear by magic. The possibility that they would be needed for some purpose had been contemplated for a fortnight, initially by Admiral Sir Lionel Preston, head of an obscure Admiralty department known as the Small Vessels Pool. On 14 May, Admiral Preston had placed an item on the BBC radio news (and in a yachting magazine) ordering the owners of self-propelled pleasure craft of a certain size to send their particulars to the Admiralty within fourteen days. This was the start of the requisitioning of yachts and motor boats – but it had nothing to do with the Dunkirk evacuation. At the time, Preston was seeking boats for various home defence purposes, including the sweeping of magnetic mines.

  As the days passed, however, the prospect of an evacuation, at first barely feasible, became possible and then likely. And as the prospect hardened, so Admiral Ramsay made it known that large numbers of boats would be needed for an evacuation from the Dunkirk beaches. On 27 May, the day after the commencement of Operation Dynamo, the need became urgent. But sorting through the particulars sent in response to the BBC broadcast was time consuming. Instead, it was decided to take vessels directly from boatyards along the Thames and coastal estuaries. Douglas Tough, of Tough Brothers Boatyard in Teddington, was authorised by Admiral Preston to commandeer any boats he thought suitable. Some were already in his boatyard, others he found on his travels up and down the river. Some owners were happy to give up their boats, others put up a futile struggle. One man, convinced that his boat was being stolen, pursued it up the Thames and called the police.

  In the end, Tough assembled over a hundred boats at his yard, while other yard owners and boat
builders did the same. Admiral Ramsay’s staff was busy, meanwhile, finding boats elsewhere, from assault landing craft to ocean liners’ lifeboats. The boats were emptied of inessentials and towed to Sheerness, where crews were found – usually members of the Royal Navy who took temporary control of them.* The unfortunate result was that many boat owners who understood their own vessels were prevented from taking them to France, while retired or reserve naval personnel unfamiliar with small boats were sent in their place. The results were predictable: many of the boats succumbed to engine failure, while others sank in the shallows. On the evening of 28 May, another appeal was broadcast over the BBC, this time for civilians with knowledge of boats to come forward. The Admiralty was tacitly acknowledging its mistake. It did not merely need boats – it also needed people who could operate them effectively. Of all the improvised elements of Operation Dynamo, none was more homespun than the story of the Little Ships.

  The log of one of these Little Ships, the Thames tugboat Sun IV, gives an indication how the system operated. On 31 May, she left Tilbury docks for Ramsgate, arriving just before noon. Early in the afternoon, while she was fitted with guns, two naval officers and several ratings came on board to sail her. She then departed for Dunkirk, towing nine small boats.

  Several hours later, on her way to France, she was caught in the wash of a destroyer. As her entire port side was forced underwater, three of her ratings were thrown into the sea. One was quickly picked up by a nearby boat, while another drifted away shouting that he could not swim. Sun IV swung quickly to port, cast off her boats, and slowed down to look for the missing ratings. One was spotted and pulled aboard, but the other had disappeared. After ten minutes of fruitless searching, Sun IV collected her boats and rejoined the flotilla. She had recorded her first fatality before the French coast was even in sight. At 10.30 that night, she anchored off the beaches and began sending her boats to the shore. Between them, they picked up eighty-two soldiers who were brought on board. She then sailed back to Ramsgate, where the soldiers disembarked – and the process began again.

  On the same day, a fleet of six cockle boats set sail from Leigh-on-Sea, manned by their civilian crews. One of these boats, Leona, was narrowly missed by a stick of four bombs as she sailed towards Dunkirk. ‘They were so close,’ says crew member Alf Leggett, ‘that I could see the yellow stencilling on them as they came down.’ Leggett and his fellow fishermen had never seen a bomb before, and they were so shaken that they all went together to the side of the boat and urinated overboard.

  Another of the cockle boats, Renown, suffering engine trouble early the next morning, was receiving a tow from another cockle boat – Letitia – who was herself being towed by a coaster. As the procession neared Ramsgate in the dark, Letitia touched a contact mine primed with a delayed action fuse. She sailed past it unawares, but it exploded beside Renown, several fathoms behind. Wood splinters rained down onto Letitia’s deck, and the tow rope went slack. There was nothing left of Renown and her crew of four.

  A third cockle boat, Endeavour, was also being towed that night due to a smashed rudder. She had successfully ferried soldiers from the beaches and the mole. She arrived safely in Ramsgate with a full complement of soldiers on board. She lives on today – and makes an appearance in Chris Nolan’s film.

  In fact, a number of original Dunkirk Little Ships appear in the film, testament surely to the film’s integrity. It is testament also to the ships’ owners, to their many admirers, and to the Association of Dunkirk Little Ships that these vessels remain in such fine health. Endeavour is a good example; she sank in 1987 but was raised by members of the Nautilus Diving Club. With luck and a fair wind, she has a long future ahead of her.

  Appearing alongside Endeavour in the film are the motor yachts Elvin, Hilfranor, Mary Jane, Mimosa, Nyula, White Heather and Papillon, the auxiliary ketch Caronia, the paddle steamer Princess Elizabeth, the motor launch New Britannic, and Motor Torpedo Boat 102. Their stories are worth recounting.

  When retired lieutenant commander Archie Buchanan listened to the BBC news on the evening of Tuesday 28 May, he heard the Admiralty’s call for those with experience of marine engines and coastal navigation. In answer, he showed up at a Suffolk boatyard, where he was given command of the motor yacht Elvin and a crew comprising a retired fisherman and an author of maritime short stories.

  The three men sailed around the coast without maps, the fisherman guiding Elvin from memory. They reached Ramsgate on Friday afternoon – and were promptly told to return to Suffolk. No sooner had they done so than Buchanan received a telephone call ordering them back to Ramsgate – but once there, they were prevented from sailing to Dunkirk. According to the authorities, Elvin was too slow to make the trip, and her crew too inexperienced to be trusted. By now, Buchanan and his crew were so frustrated with the treatment they were receiving that they set off anyway.

  ‘We had no idea what the operation was or what we were supposed to do,’ says Buchanan. ‘With our boat darkened we just followed the general flow of traffic across and then steered straight for the fires of Dunkirk.’

  Despite a brief engine failure during the journey, Elvin came alongside the mole early on Monday morning. By this time, the majority of soldiers remaining in Dunkirk were French, and a poilu* called out, ‘Combien de soldats?’ Buchanan understood what the soldier was asking. How many men could come on board? And while he did not know the French word for twenty-five, he did know the word for thirty. ‘Trente!’ he shouted. Elvin duly filled up with too many soldiers.

  Buchanan was hoping to transfer the soldiers to another ship on the way home, but Elvin was moving so slowly that all the other ships pulled away from her. ‘We had no idea where the swept channel was,’ Buchanan remembers, ‘but as we drew only three feet six inches and it was not low water we didn’t think that there was much danger from mines.’ Arriving safely back in Ramsgate with twenty-five French and eight British soldiers on board, it can be said with confidence that Elvin had done her duty. In fact, if a story has ever epitomised Dunkirk Spirit, then it is the story of Elvin and her motley crew.

  Hilfranor (an unwieldy amalgam of her first owner’s three daughters’ names – Hilda, Frances and Nora) was one of the ships collected at Teddington by Douglas Tough, who ripped out her cabins in order to make more room for soldiers. When she reached Dunkirk, her frame was cracked by a Stuka bomb, and she was abandoned. But desperate French soldiers pushed her back into the water and set sail in her, bailing her out as they went until she began to sink on the Goodwin Sands. She was finally towed back to Ramsgate by a passing minesweeper.

  New Britannic, built in 1930, is a 54ft motor launch with an open deck and a powerful engine. Licensed to carry 117 passengers, she sailed for Dunkirk from Ramsgate on the afternoon of Tuesday 28 May, arriving early on Wednesday morning. On arrival, she began lifting troops from the beach at La Panne, ferrying them to destroyers and passenger ships offshore. Her design made her ideal for the work, and it is thought that she ferried more than three thousand soldiers during the course of the evacuation. She is among the true workhorses of Operation Dynamo, vessels whose importance cannot be exaggerated. She returned to Ramsgate carrying eighty-three men on board.

  White Heather carried fewer soldiers than New Britannic, but her experience was similar. She sailed to Dunkirk on 1 June, and ferried soldiers from the beaches to larger ships offshore, before making three round trips to England carrying troops. Renamed RIIS1, she was later owned by the commodore of the Association of Dunkirk Little Ships.

  An Isle of Wight ferry before the war, Princess Elizabeth’s first job during Operation Dynamo was as a paddle minesweeper, clearing mines from the channel in front of the beaches on four occasions. This was an exceptionally dangerous job that led to the sinking of three other ships. On 29 May, together with six other minesweepers, she lifted soldiers from the beach at La Panne. She returned twice more to Dunkirk, finally bringing 329 French troops to England on 4 June, at the very end of the
evacuation. Over the course of her four trips, she rescued 1,673 soldiers.

  It is likely that many Operation Dynamo Little Ships will never be recognised, as their records no longer exist – if indeed they ever did. Papillon’s contribution is recorded only in fortuitously preserved notes belonging to a Dover naval commander. A requisitioned motor yacht, she sailed to Dunkirk on 2 June with a crew of four civilian volunteers – despite an official finding that her engines were defective. She returned to Dover the following day.

  Caronia was a fishing boat, built in 1927, whose first summer haul of pilchards paid for her construction costs. Requisitioned by the navy, she is one of the Little Ships whose story is likely to remain unknown. Better documented is her role in the 1960s when she was used to ferry supplies to the pirate station Radio Caroline.

  Mimosa, Mary Jane and Nyula are three other Dunkirk veterans whose exploits are relatively obscure. It is clear that Mimosa made three trips to Dunkirk and back under the command of Lieutenant Commander Dixon, while Mary Jane was a particularly comfortable and well-appointed boat for her time. Uffa Fox, a celebrated British yacht designer, described her as ‘one of the cosiest yachts I’ve ever slept aboard’. One wonders whether her state-of-the-art central heating was turned on for the soldiers of the British Expeditionary Force. Nyula, meanwhile, was first seen at the Motor Boat Exhibition at Olympia in 1933, where she was described as ‘a very shapely 40ft cruiser, quite one of the most interesting and sea-worthy boats at the show’. Following her service at Dunkirk, she was fitted with a First World War German gun.

  MTB 102 is a remarkable survivor. Like a character in a novel who recurs at every pivotal moment, she pops up throughout the story of Operation Dynamo. Equipped with an early form of radar, she was instructed to report to Dover on the opening day of the evacuation. The following day, her crew was told by Admiral Ramsay to ‘nip over to Dunkirk and report to Captain William Tennant . . . to see what they could do to help’.