The town and port were bombed and time was running out. Naturally, there was panic and chaos on the beaches. To escape annihilation, the BEF staged a fighting retreat to the coast, and rescue plans were hastily made, including appeals for owners of “ self-propelled pleasure craft between 30 and 100 feet” to contact the Admiralty.Ĭovered by rear-guard actions by both British and French units, exhausted troops converged on Dunkirk. However, Lord Gort was preparing to evacuate his troops, apparently with the blessing of the secretary of state for war, Anthony Eden. Prime minster Winston Churchill had promised the French that the BEF would play its part in a coordinated counterattack against the German flank. Within a week, German panzer divisions had reached the French coast south of Boulogne, trapping the BEF and the French 1st Army in a small pocket around the channel ports, cutting them off from the main Allied force. But by May 13, German units had pierced French defences and crossed the River Meuse near Sedan, close to the Belgian border in northeast France. On May 10, 1940, the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) – totalling approximately 400,000 at the height of the campaign and commanded by Lord Gort – was deployed in Belgium, alongside its allies, as part of a defensive line against German invasion. Quite often we now forget the catastrophic defeat that led to “Operation Dynamo”. Yet this was anything but a military success. It was a victory snatched from the jaws of defeat. The evacuation of 338,226 troops and other personnel from the beaches of northern France – which took place between May 26 and J– was an act of stubborn defiance by a plucky island nation against Hitler’s blitzkrieg. For Britons, Dunkirk is one of the proudest moments of World War II.
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