A Page in History

DUNKIRK (311 pp.)--A. D. Divine--Dutton ($4.50).

No one will ever know the full story of Dunkirk--"the greatest evacuation in the history of war." Many ships went to the bottom carrying eyewitnesses, logs and records with them. Many rescuers lost "all count of times and days," and after bringing home their load of men, collapsed in sleep and never recaptured a clear remembrance of their work. But British Naval Analyst A. D. Divine (who skippered the yawl Little Ann in the great evacuation) has tried to collect every available account, and to place each one in its proper place within the great, overall story. He has succeeded so brilliantly that Dunkirk takes a place among the most exciting records of heroism in World War II.

Naval evacuation is an old story in British history. In the Napoleonic campaigns alone, says Author Divine, 19 forces were evacuated (including the famed rescue of General Sir John Moore's army from Corunna). At two points on Gallipoli, the evacuations were executed so admirably that the entire force of 83,000 soldiers was brought off with only half a dozen casualties. But Dunkirk was not the result of expert planning. It was a last-minute improvisation, stamped by "complete and utter absence of red tape." It depended chiefly on the horse sense of hundreds of independent skippers.

"A Great Worry." Skipper Davies of the shallow-draught paddle-minesweeper Oriole was a typical example. On arriving at Dunkirk, he saw instantly that his best bet was to run Oriole full-tilt right on to the beach, so that the soldiers might use her as a gangway to the numerous ships that could not enter shallow water. In one day, 3,000 men walked to safety over Oriole; and Skipper Davies, having proved his hunch, radioed defiantly to the Admiralty: "[Have] deliberately grounded ... on own initiative . . . Refloated dusk same day . . . Am again proceeding Belgian coast and will again run aground if such course seems desirable." The Admiralty "fully approved."

Dunkirk harbor was a shambles of "twisted steel and broken concrete . . . battered quays . . . flaring oil tanks . . . a long channel already littered with ships burning, ships sunk, ships stranded." Shells poured in from long-range German artillery, bombs fell constantly, German E-boats dashed in from nearby waters and added disruption to confusion. The 39 British destroyers (which took off 103,399 soldiers) threw open their precious watertight doors to make more room, served simultaneously as carriers, leaders, patrollers, defenders against aircraft--and hazards to smaller craft. Turning and twisting at high speed to avoid bombs, their roaring wash flooded or capsized scores of loaded dinghies, launches, yachts. Collision in the dark, too, "was a great worry," reported Mr. Lowe, dour skipper of the tug Simla.

Many a skipper set out. for Dunkirk with just "a series of courses penciled on the back of an envelope" and no notion of the holocaust that awaited him (personnel-ship Scotia passed a returning destroyer in mid-Channel, received from her merely the deadpan warning: "Windy off No. 6 buoy"). Tug Sun XI found herself ferrying to & fro for seven days, "like a sardine tin full up everywhere." Skipper Lightoller packed troops into his yacht Sundowner until, in his own expressive words, "I could feel her getting distinctly tender, so took no more."

"The Last Straw." Ship's-Boat Leader R. Brett rowed from his ship to the beaches, found to his surprise "a causeway about eight feet wide heading out into the water." This "causeway" soon turned out to be "a perfectly ordered straight column of men about six abreast . . . When I reached them, a sergeant stepped up to me and said, 'Yes, sir. Sixty men, sir?' He then walked along the column, which remained in perfect formation, and detailed the required number."

Despite much of this sort of discipline, embarkation was a staggering problem. Boats rowed into the darkness and were never seen again. In the heavy ground swell, towropes parted and snapped like whips. Propellers came to a dead stop, fouled by wire, wreckage and "human obstruction" (corpses).

It seemed that "the whole canine population of France and Belgium" had collected to be evacuated, too. Troops took to the water on homemade rafts--and it was a sight to see one such raft, made of wood and an old door and manned by a French officer and two Belgians, equipped for the voyage with a very old bicycle, two tins of crackers, and "six demijohns of wine." In the main, French soldiers, naturally chary of seawater, refused to wade out to the boats (one officer even signaled: "I have just eaten and am therefore unable to enter the water").

Shamrock was a pleasure boat which, like scores of the other craft, had not been designed for the Dunkirk job (the armada even included three Thames flak ships). "I was [soon] numb to [danger]," says Shamrock Skipper Barrell. "It was hot bravery but just a will to snatch those boys." Barrell squeezed his way into the beaches among upturned boats and floating torpedoes. "Soldiers in the water trying to be sailors for the first time . . . paddled their collapsible little boats out to me with the butts of their rifles, and many shouted that they were sinking, we could not help them . . . 'Stop shouting and save your breath, and bail out with your steel helmets,' was the only command suitable for the occasion." At last Shamrock was put out of action, and her load shifted to another ship. Skipper Barrell reported: "This was the last straw, having to leave my vessel which constituted my life savings ... I sat down beneath a gun with my hands over my face and prayed."

To H.M.S. Shikari, one of the oldest destroyers in the navy, "fell the honor of being the last ship to leave Dunkirk." On June 3, at 3:40 a.m., she pulled away, with "the German machine guns stuttering in the streets." Naval experts had expected to evacuate 30,000 men at most. The actual total was nearer 330,000.

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