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*

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Nearly 60 years ago, thousands of men waited on this beach for days, under repeated attack from the air.

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They were members of the British Expeditionary Force, now surrounded by the German army.

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Most of their guns and their few tanks had been destroyed in battle or smashed to prevent capture.

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They were running short of food and even drinking water was scarce.

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Their only hope lay in rescue from the sea.

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For the British, evacuation would be a miracle. For their French allies, it would seem like a betrayal.

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For the men who were there,

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soldiers and rescuers alike,

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Dunkirk was an unforgettable experience.

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I can remember very vividly, at that time, that the beach...

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- all those sand dunes were black.
- Those...?
- All along there.

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Totally black.

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And at intervals, a black line came down to the water,

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which was, sort of... four-abreast soldiers coming down.

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It was a most amazing sight. And the boats were taking them off...

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It was patently obvious to me at that stage

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that we hadn't a hope in hell of getting a pennyworth of those chaps off.

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# Wish me luck as you wave me goodbye... #

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The men who ended up on the beaches at Dunkirk

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had set off for France in September, 1939, full of naive optimism.

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"To our shame," said Montgomery, then a divisional commander,

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"we have sent our army into that most modern of wars

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"with weapons and equipment that are quite inadequate."

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For nine months, the BEF - the British Expeditionary Force -

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settled into life in northern France - a life which, in retrospect, was a fool's paradise.

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The German invasion began May 10, 1940, in the Netherlands and Belgium.

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But the decisive breakthrough was at Sedan,

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tearing a hole in Allied defences, and heading straight for the Channel.

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This road crosses the Somme battlefield of 1916.

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In those days, advances were measured in yards,

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and their human cost is still counted in the cemeteries all around.

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In 1940, the Germans broke through the gap like water through a dam

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and surged down these long, straight roads of northern France

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past memorials to another war.

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The Germans had developed a new technique of warfare - Blitzkrieg.

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Their tanks moved swiftly ahead of the infantry, supported by aircraft,

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clearing a narrow path and moving faster than the Allies could react.

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The German advance was relentless. The Allies collapsed before it.

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On the 20th of May, the Germans reached the Channel coast here, just beyond Abbeville.

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They'd advanced 40 miles in 14 hours and were astonished by their achievement.

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One German commander wrote to his wife, "A blazing success.

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"Now the hunt is up against 60 encircled British, French and Belgian divisions.

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"Don't worry about me. As I see it, the war in France will be over in a fortnight."

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The Allies were in chaos. Lord Gort was responsible for the BEF,

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but was under French command, who'd just sacked a Commander-in-Chief.

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On the 21st of May, the new French Commander-in-Chief, General Weygand,

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called a meeting to coordinate a counter-attack. Nobody told Gort, who arrived only after Weygand left.

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Gort had earlier written that the BEF was making "that retreat with which all British campaigns start."

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He must now have wondered whether that retreat was becoming a rout.

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Just over 20 miles away,

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across the Channel in Dover,

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they were also beginning to anticipate disaster.

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These tunnels under Dover Castle were dug during the Napoleonic Wars.

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In 1940, they were the headquarters of Vice-Admiral Bertram Ramsay.

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By the time of Gort's aborted meeting,

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Ramsay was already beginning to plan the evacuation of non-combatants from France.

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Over the days that followed, this plan would swell into the rescue of an entire army from Dunkirk.

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Its code name was inspired by one of these underground chambers - Operation Dynamo.

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At this stage, Ramsay and the Prime Minister, Churchill,

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only planned to evacuate maybe 20,000 men, a tenth of the force.

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The British must not be seen to be running out on their allies.

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At Calais, 3,000 troops under Brigadier Claude Nicholson,

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were holding on to the town under constant bombardment.

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By the 23rd of May, they were effectively under siege in the ancient citadel.

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On the 24th of May,

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Nicholson was told that they might be evacuated. Then he was ordered to hold on for Allied solidarity.

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Churchill was determined to show his confidence in the Alliance.

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Nicholson's men fought on, completely surrounded,

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hopelessly outnumbered, but refusing to surrender.

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Finally, the Germans forced their way into the citadel and captured Nicholson.

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That evening, a message was sent from Dover:

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"To officer commanding troops, Calais, from Secretary of State.

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"I'm filled with admiration for your magnificent stand,

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"which is worthy of the highest traditions of the British Army."

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There was no-one here to receive it.

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Gort's command post was in a little chateau at Premesques, west of Lille.

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This was his own office. On the 25th of May, he was standing here studying the map.

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The Germans had cut the Allied armies in half.

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On his left, the Belgians had been fought to the very edge of collapse.

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The French, on his right, were pressing him to participate in a counter-attack...

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in which he had very little confidence.

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A staff officer, Lt-Colonel Gerald Templer, had to walk through Gort's office to get to another room.

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He described: "I walked in to see Gort in a very typical attitude, legs apart and hands behind his back,

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"wrestling with his God and his duty at a moment of destiny."

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By 6.30 that evening, Gort's mind was made up.

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He cancelled the British contribution to the attack and ordered a retreat on Dunkirk.

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The rout had begun.

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Thousands of troops were retreating, abandoning and destroying their equipment as they went.

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There was no way out except by sea.

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The fall of Calais left Dunkirk the only point for an evacuation.

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It was the third largest port in France a fortress in its own right, with a French Admiral in command.

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But its fortifications were hopelessly obsolete, and were built to resist attack from land or sea.

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This attack came from the air and left these docks in pieces,

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their oil tanks blazing, casting a pall of smoke over the scene.

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Dunkirk itself was in ruins. The plume of black smoke could be seen from Dover.

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Troops could not be evacuated from the ruined harbour.

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The only hope lay in the ten miles of beaches to the east of the town.

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The BEF fell back on the beaches of Dunkirk like a balloon slowly losing air.

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But it was very difficult actually getting men off from here.

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The sand shelves so gently that big ships couldn't get in shore

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but had to use their lifeboats, cutters or whalers to ferry men out.

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Less than 8,000 men were rescued that first day.

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At this rate, most of the BEF would be captured before it could be rescued.

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On the beaches, queues of men stretched into the water,

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those at the head already standing up to their chests in the sea.

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A rowing boat would appear and the head of the queue would clamber in,

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leaving those behind praying that another one would appear, and fearing that it would not.

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Head and shoulders only above the surface - fixed, immovable, as if chained there.

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Then a boat would appear,

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but the men were too exhausted and weighed down by sodden clothing to clamber in unaided.

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Once hauled aboard, there was a marvellous feeling of relief. What remained was the Navy's business.

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One of the early arrivals at the beach was Bob Brooks, then a 20-year-old gunner.

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I remember there was a NAAFI wagon on the beach. I was very thirsty.

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And I drank two tins of evaporated milk.

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And I was probably very sick! Which taught me a lesson.

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Um... There were, well... a few senior officers doing their best - I must say that.

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And they were organising people into lines.

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And we remained there until the Stukas came over.

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And then we all sort of, eh...

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burrowed into the dunes, tried to make ourselves invisible.

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And when the Stukas went we went back into line.

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There was a long interval when no-one was being picked up,

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and we were told that if we could swim, we should try and swim out to boats, which were quite a way out.

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I did, and tried to climb a rope. I hadn't done that since school!

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In the gym.

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And I suppose the combination of tiredness

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and the fact that we hadn't eaten anything for two or three days,

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and the drag of the water...

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I just about got myself out of the water and I couldn't climb any higher.

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And so we had to drop off and come back to the beach.

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When one got back to the beach, one had to go to the end of the queue.

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The evacuation itself might be painfully slow,

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but for men to have even a chance of reaching Dunkirk, others must keep fighting to hold the Germans back.

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In fields and farmhouses, beside canals and in blockhouses,

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small groups of men stood their ground to keep the Germans from Dunkirk.

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The little town of Cassel, behind me, overlooks the Flanders plain.

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It was held by a scratch force of British and French troops.

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This bunker, part of a pre-war French defence line, was garrisoned by a platoon of the Gloucesters -

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13 men under a young second lieutenant, Roy Cresswell.

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They held out under constant attack for three whole days with no food and little water.

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It was only when an ominous silence from Cassel told them that they were on their own that they gave up.

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By that stage, the Germans were on the roof.

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Roy Cresswell and his men spent the rest of the war in captivity. In a way, they were lucky.

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In other cases, the old rules of war no longer applied.

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Wormhoudt, about 12 miles from Dunkirk, was stoutly held.

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Some of its defenders, most of them Royal Warwickshires, eventually surrendered to SS troops.

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They were herded into a barn just behind them. The Germans threw grenades in...

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and shot the survivors.

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We don't know how many were killed

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because the Germans scattered the bodies to conceal evidence of the massacre,

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but at least 60 men died.

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The journey to Dunkirk itself was fraught with danger.

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Men were retreating, sometimes in disorder,

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often without rations and with no orders other than "Make for Dunkirk. Every man for himself."

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They were constantly under fire.

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Even here, yards from the beaches, are the marks of the shell splinters that spattered the fleeing troops.

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The ships answering the call to France also faced a dangerous journey.

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They suffered repeated attack by air and were at the mercy of mines and torpedoes by sea.

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Over 220 of them were sunk during Dunkirk, many with rescued soldiers on board.

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Among the ships arriving at Dunkirk

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was MTB - Motor Torpedo Boat - 102, then the fastest ship in the Royal Navy.

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MTP 102 was the prototype of a new breed of small warship.

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She was commanded by Lt Christopher Dreyer.

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The soldiers were all desperately tired,

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demoralised, frightened...

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At intervals, ME-109s - the German fighters -

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used to come flying along the beach and shoot up everything in sight.

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And three Stuka bombers just set about us,

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going back to Dunkirk, along here - just about where we are now. We were belting along.

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Flat out. And she was very fast, this boat, in those days. She could do about 48 knots flat out.

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If you did the telegraphs "full ahead" three times,

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- it meant, like... "I really mean it."
- "Go like smoke."
- "Give everything." And he did.

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But even so, a stick of three bombs disappeared from sight

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under the transom there.

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And that was very frightening.

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The 22-year-old Lt Dreyer was shocked by the chaos he saw on the beaches.

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One major problem for everybody

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was that the soldiers piled on to the side of the boat...

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crazy keen to get in and get away from this ghastly place,

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and, em...tipped a lot of them over.

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And there was, you know... an awfully sadly indisciplined performance, the whole thing.

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And very slow and very inefficient.

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Em... So that it was...it was...

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To my mind, it was AWFULLY clear at the beginning

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that that was no way to conduct the operation!

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You'd never get this black horde off the beaches in that way.

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On the 27th of May, less than 8,000 men were rescued and the port itself was still burning.

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Then somebody noticed

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that the two moles, or breakwaters, jutting into the sea were undamaged.

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The eastern mole, by far the longer of the two, was especially promising.

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But there were serious practical problems in using it.

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The tide rises and falls by 15 feet.

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It's a long way from the water to the top of the mole, even at high tide.

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This section is modern. The original was flimsier,

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with no guarantee that big ships could use it.

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On the 28th, a passenger steamer, Queen Of The Channel, came alongside.

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She got away with 1,000 men.

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Bombers sank her in the Channel, but she proved the mole would work.

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The mole transformed operations,

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allowing up to 2,000 men an hour to be rescued,

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piling off it directly on to destroyers and other large ships.

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The surprisingly calm spring weather was another blessing.

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The Germans had also inadvertently offered the BEF a crucial stay of execution.

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They'd halted their advance, giving the British an extra two days.

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But by May 28th, the advance had begun again.

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On the same day, the Luftwaffe finally bombed the mole,

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blowing a hole in it and sinking and damaging shipping on both sides.

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For a while it seemed that the mole could no longer be used.

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The beaches would have to play a fuller part,

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and that would require more ships - especially little ones.

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From Ramsay's headquarters, the message went out that the small ships were desperately required.

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Ramsay had already been ordered to withdraw all modern destroyers from Operation Dynamo,

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leaving him with only 15 old ones.

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Churchill now declared that the British and French would be evacuated on equal terms.

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That meant even more troops to be taken off mole and beaches alike.

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Big ships, little ships all had their part to play.

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The call for small ships was quickly answered.

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Pleasure boats and tugs, fishing smacks and cabin cruisers,

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sailing barges and motor yachts -

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some manned by their owners, others by the Navy.

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They sailed, most of them, up the Thames to Sheerness and on here to Ramsgate.

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Here they were given charts and water before setting sail for France and the beaches of Dunkirk.

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This is Sundowner. She was built in 1912 as an Admiralty steam launch

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and in 1930 was converted into a private motor yacht for her new owner, Commander Charles Lightoller.

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Lightoller had been an officer aboard the Titanic.

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On June 1st, Lightoller, his son Roger, and an 18-year-old Sea Scout called George Ashcroft

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took Sundowner to Dunkirk.

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They stopped to take five men off a burning motor cruiser and went on to the mole under fierce air attack.

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Lightoller got another 122 men aboard and set off for home.

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Like all the ships, large or small, rescuing men from Dunkirk,

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Sundowner was a tempting target for German dive bombers.

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Another son, an RAF pilot shot down the year before, had discussed evasive tactics with his father,

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and as German aircraft dived in to machine-gun Sundowner, Lightoller veered just before they opened fire.

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He got back to Ramsgate safely, but wrote that with so many men aboard, many of them very seasick,

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there was a nice cleaning-up job.

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Not all the small ships arrived home safely.

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The courage shown by their largely civilian crews was a powerful boost to British morale.

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As Dunkirk continued to burn under constant bombing, the German troops came ever closer.

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There were still thousands of men on the beaches and the dunes behind them, waiting to be rescued.

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One Royal Artillery unit halted just behind the dunes and sent an officer forward to whistle up the Navy.

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The officer thought his task was hopeless, but he found "Call to an unknown ship" in his signal manual

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and dutifully stood up here and flashed it out to sea.

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Against all odds, there was an answering flicker in the dark, and a ship duly appeared.

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But time was running out and the Germans were now breathing down their necks.

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This is the last ditch, the canal line that marked the defensive perimeter of Dunkirk.

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By May 31st, it was all that stood between the Germans and the port.

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The canal was filled with abandoned vehicles. The surrounding fields had been flooded to delay German tanks.

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This sector was held by about 70 men

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of the East Lancashire Regiment.

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On the morning of the 1st of June, the Germans crossed the canal on both sides of them.

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They'd been told to hold to the last round and they did exactly that. Almost half were killed or wounded.

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The survivors escaped by wading up to their necks for over a mile down this side canal.

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Actions like this bought time for thousands more to reach the beaches.

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From there, they were ferried to England by men who were themselves feeling the strain of battle.

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Back in Dover, the naval and civilian crews were now exhausted.

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By the first of June, the crews of several passenger steamers were refusing to return to Dunkirk.

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They were civilians and couldn't face another trip across the Channel with its mines, torpedoes and Stukas.

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But they were replaced by Navy men and the stream of vessels across the Channel continued.

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By June 2nd, over a quarter of a million soldiers had been rescued from Dunkirk.

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Men arrived here in their thousands,

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wounded on stretchers, French and Belgian soldiers, even German prisoners.

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The shocked, the exhausted, but above all the enormously relieved.

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Most of them landed in those docks and then crossed to the harbour station. And what a welcome they got.

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"I thought we'd be shot for neglect of duty," said a Yorkshire gunner. "It looks like we're bloody heroes."

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- Glad to be back, boys?
- > Sure!

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Just before midnight on June 2nd, a signal from senior naval officer, Dunkirk,

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was received here in Ramsay's headquarters.

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It said simply, "BEF evacuated."

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Yet it was not quite over. The French were still fighting around Dunkirk

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and Churchill was anxious that they should not be sacrificed.

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So Ramsay sent some ships back for one last try.

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Among the ships which returned for that last night was MTB 102, still commanded by Lt Dreyer.

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It was his seventh trip.

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I must say, I was desperately tired by that time.

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I kept dropping off and waking up suddenly and finding I was pointing quite in the wrong direction.

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But by the last stages of the night, um... it really was quite a moving thing

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because we were very conscious

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that left behind there was a line of French soldiers who weren't going to get taken off.

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And they didn't. And they just stood there in line, at attention...

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absolutely immovable.

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It was a very moving sight, that one.

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Among the French soldiers waiting in Dunkirk was a young Jean Becaert.

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By the morning of the 4th of June, the Germans had taken Dunkirk. The British had gone.

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Behind them they'd left their dead,

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and a France which, within weeks,

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would surrender to the armies of the Third Reich.

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On a clear day,

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you can see France from Dover.

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And in June 1940, Admiral Ramsay could stand on this balcony and glimpse the smoke over Dunkirk.

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Operation Dynamo had been an outstanding success -

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338,000 men brought safely across a mine-infested sea.

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The myth of Dunkirk was born - a triumph snatched from the jaws of defeat.

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But it was a triumph born out of disaster and Churchill knew it.

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"We must be very careful not to assign to this deliverance the attributes of a victory," he warned.

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"Wars are not won by evacuations."

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- WINSTON CHURCHILL:
- We shall defend our island...

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and with the British Empire around us, we shall fight on, unconquerable,

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until the curse of Hitler is lifted from the brows of men.

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We are sure that, in the end, all will be well.

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Subtitles by Anne Morgan BBC Scotland 1997