OPERATION DYNAMO


Awaiting admission into Dunkirk Harbour. Around 50 of the original little ships made the way across the Channel to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the evacuation


The Dunkirk veterans and their families gather in Dunkirk Harbour to welcome the little ships and remember the fallen


The lighthouse on the east wall of Dunkirk, where many troops were evacuated


Here at Dunkirk is another English epic. To my mind, what was most characteristically English about it, so typical of us, so absurd and yet so grand and gallant, that you hardly know whether to laugh or cry when you read about them, was the part played in the difficult and dangerous embarkation, not by the warships, magnificent though they were, but by the little pleasure steamers – J.B. Priestley, novelist (June 5, 1940)


new larger units. They formed parts of many differ- ent British Armed Forces fighting all over the world as the war progressed. The evacuation of Dunkirk was seen as a victory


in itself and Churchill described the operation in his speech to the House of Commons on June 4, 1940 as a ‘miracle of deliverance’. But he also said that ‘wars are not won by evacuations’. He admitted that the last few weeks had been a ‘colossal military disaster’. However, the British Expeditionary Force has re-


fused to be defeated. The spirit lived on and, in fact, it turned out to be a major boost to morale.


Dunkirk today In 2010, to mark the Dunkirk anniversary, a flotilla of the original ‘little ships’ made the journey from Ramsgate, an important embarkation point during the 1940 evacuation, to Dunkirk. None of the original skippers are still alive, but the ships were steered by their proud descendants. Aircraft from the Royal Navy Historic Flight swooped over the group en route in a spectacular fly-over. Veterans and their families were taking part in a moving ceremony in Dunkirk Harbour, with military band and choir music, to remember their fallen comrades and the miracle that was Dunkirk. •


54 SHOW YOUR SUPPORT www.armedforcesday.org.uk


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