Dunkirk, 1940, 26 May to 3 June

The nine days of Dunkirk was a withdrawal of land forces less all their equipment across the English Channel, following many military disasters in France. The German conquest of France was complete. The evacuation owed much to the unstinting bravery of the French troops fighting at the Dunkirk perimeter and to seven hundred brave small craft almost a hundred of which were lost in the evacuation of 385,000 troops, more than 100,000 of them French, were ferried to the waiting ships or taken direct to England to fight again another day.

Boats not built for war, which came from rivers and coastal waters of England and some who came to England as refugees - 49 sturdy schuyts from the Netherlands. There were river launches, old sailing and rowing lifeboats, yachts, pleasure steamers, fishing boats, working sailing barges; fireboats without so much as a compass, many of which had not been to sea before. Some chartered in the name of the King, some were commandeered without notice and given hand written slips for a receipt by the Naval crews.

Everything that could float in England some boats making three or more journeys on their own amid dive bombing and strafing by the Luftwaffe. Unlit and unable to comprehend, or respond to naval signals by night, they risked being sunk by their own side. The small boats negotiated the shallow waters off La Panne on the French-Belgian border, where no deep draught ships could approached and extracted the brave exhausted British Expeditionary Force, the French Army and a few thousand troops of the Belgian Army from the beaches of Dunkirk. We should not forget the debts we owe to those who have gone before us.

Regards
Sinclair