Leopold III, the king atop the Belgian constitutional monarchy, was both Head of State and Commander in Chief of the army. In the former role, he could choose to evacuate to England and maintain his government in exile, as the monarchs of Norway and Holland had done. As Commander in Chief, however, he lacked the authority to act alone. His Government shared that responsibility. Early the morning of Saturday the 25th, he told the Premier and the Foreign Minister that he had decided to surrender his army and remain with them in Belgium to share in whatever may come. The two ministers reminded Leopold that he was constitutionally sworn to follow the advice of the Cabinet, which was unanimously opposed to the decision. He said, “I have decided to capitulate and to stay. The decision is final.” As the meeting ended, Leopold wired George VI to say he could expect the “immediate surrender” of the Belgian army.
Before the day was out, before Leopold had acted by reaching out to Hitler, the news of his decision was everywhere. Shirer was present that day in Berlin at a Ribbentrop briefing to the foreign press where the German Foreign Minister announced, “The French will be destroyed and the English on the continent will either be killed or made prisoners of war.”
Shirer asked, “What of the Belgians?”
Ribbentrop said, “They have made a wiser choice, of which I can say no more.”
Shirer wrote in his diary, “No one among the Nazi leadership is as smug and certain of the wisdom of every idiotic thought that enters his head as Ribbentrop. You would have to be supremely stupid to think you’re as smart as he thinks he is. If God had made him as tall as he is smart, he’d be a dwarf.”
*
In London, Alexander of the Admiralty revealed to Churchill the plan for the evacuation from Dunkirk. Admiral Bertram Ramsay was present. He was to be in command, overlooking the Channel from a headquarters long ago hacked from the white limestone cliffs of Dover to house an electrical generator, a dynamo, that supplied power to the Dover Castle above the cliffs. The plan was code named Operation Dynamo.
All ships up to a thousand tons displacement were identified, their owners notified, and requisitions were made ready. Within hours of the Prime Minister’s command an estimated 600 ships could be under sail. The Channel was heavily mined, but Ramsay had overseen clearances sufficient to permit three half-mile wide routes of passage, all using Dover as the beginning and end of the trip. The routes were inpropitiously designated X, Y, and Z.
X hugged the English shore out of Dover north to the Lightship of the Goodwin Sands, a shoal beneath the surface just off the promontory of Ramsgate, and then proceeded directly to Dunkirk. Its fifty-five miles met the greatest danger from mines. Y took the X route to the Lightship but then continued northeast to a marker buoy where it made a hard turn, doubling back on itself to Dunkirk. At eighty-seven miles, Y was much the longest of the three routes and would be exposed to attacks from submarines, surface ships, and the Luftwaffe throughout the four hours of exposure, but fewer mines. Z would go straight to Dunkirk, a thirty-nine mile trip, gaining close contact with the beaches for the last twenty miles of its voyage during which it would add exposure to German shore batteries to all the other perils.
Winston suggested Y should be abandoned for it “roundaboutness,” but Ramsay said at least it wouldn’t be troubled by mines and had the advantage of being “sort of out of the way of danger.” Winston grumbled something no one could understand, and then approved Ramsay’s work with prayerful gratitude.
The Imperial General Staff advised Churchill of their shared opinion that, following the evacuation, invasion was imminent. Winston demurred. “Imminent is too strong a word for that possibility. The desire may be there, but the Germans will have to assemble a mighty fleet of transports before that can occur and there is no evidence of that happening. We must concentrate on the crisis at hand, and not the one to come. How many Tommies do we expect to be stranded on the beaches?”
The British soldiers of the line had been called Tommies since the Flanders Campaign of the French Revolutionary War of 1794. A soldier named Thomas Atkins rushed up to the Duke of Wellington during the Battle of Boxtel and said to the Duke, “I think we’ve got them on the run, sir.” The Duke noticed the man was bleeding badly and said, “Are you all right, son?” Tommy Atkins said, “It’s nothing, sir. All in a day’s work.” And fell dead at the Duke’s feet.
Ismay said, “Perhaps two hundred thousand Tommies. And about that many French.”
“And how many can we get home?”
Ismay said, “Who knows, Prime Minister. If I said fifty thousand, would that strike you as a lot or a few?”
Winston asked Ironside, Dill, and Eden for their estimates, and none exceeded fifty thousand. Then, “Admiral Ramsay, what is your best estimate?”
“I have none, Prime Minister. But I have great willingness to begin and I shall count them one by one.”
Winston said, “Well then, Pug, I would say fifty thousand is too damn few.”
*
Brooke told Gort that he had picked up the report that the Belgians were about to leave the battle. His message said, “I am convinced that the Belgian army is closing down and will have stopped fighting by this time tomorrow. This entirely exposes our flank.” Gort was headquartered at Prémesques forty-five miles from Dunkirk. Brooke was only ten miles closer at Armentières. Ronald Adam, Gort’s other Corps commander, was at Steenvorde, on the same route, and twenty-five miles from the beach.
Gort spent a long afternoon examining his maps. His only reserves were the 5th and the 50th Divisions, awaiting orders to attack to the south, where he knew they would be annihilated. He canceled the offensive and sent the 5th and 50th to Adam’s flank to plug the Belgian hole. He wired Eden that he had no other choice than to take his entire force to Dunkirk. His cable was delayed by traffic. Before it arrived, Churchill had come to the same conclusion. He wired Gort, “It is clear that it will not be possible for French to deliver attack in the south. You are now authorized to operate towards coast forthwith in conjunction with French and Belgian armies.” That cable was also delayed. Formal approval didn’t reach Gort for twenty-four hours. By then, he had already acted on his own initiative.
As the day closed, Winston confronted a painful decision. The Calais Garrison — the 229th Anti-Tank Battery, battalions from the King’s Royal Rifle Corps, the Rifle Brigade, the Royal Tank Regiment, the Queen Victoria’s Rifles, and a thousand French soldiers — could be saved by British destroyers waiting off the coast to rescue them, but if they left, the Panzer army would have unimpeded freedom to move on Dunkirk, and the Dunkirk flotilla would be even more exposed to shore batteries. Eden, Ironside, Dill, and Ismay were with Winston as the horrible option opened before them that night and all agreed with the hard choice. If the Garrison held on and fought — and died, surely died — to the last man, their fight could mean tens of thousands more could escape at Dunkirk. Winston said, “Let’s put it off for now. Perhaps something extraterrestrial may occur.”
*
An odd struggle opened in the northwest corner of France. Both sides shared the same goal, the Allied forces battling to reach the beaches of Dunkirk where rescue was possible, and the Germans determined to force them there for their execution on arrival. The battlefield itself was a tall isosceles triangle, a funnel for forces in the shape of a funnel, though upsidedown. The base was the dozen miles of sand at the water’s edge; for thirty miles the two sides tapered inland as they narrowed and met near the village of Cassel. Major Ronald Cartland was at Cassel with his Anti-Tank Regiment. As the triangle shrunk, he would be at its apex.
Men at war learn quickly what is required of them, even those confronting combat after long lives of peace. It is hate. The final emotion suddenly becomes clear to them, swallowing all others in its consumptive power. The British troops carried special memberships in the names of their regiments, battalions, and brigades. They were not just Englishmen, but soldiers of the Royal Inskilling Fusiliers, of the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry, of the 2nd Sherwood Foresters, the 6th Black Watch, the 6th Seaforth Highlanders, and many others whose names spoke to the steel of their manhood. Great depths of character and a rigid respect for the traditions of their units were now called upon in a desperate battle. They must also be faithful and brave, faithful to all the others who fought beside them, behind them, and in their advance, and brave above all, in view of their own death.
The 1st Coldstream Guards held a line at Ledringhem for thirty hours to enable the passage of the 2nd Royal Norfolk. The 2nd Gloucestershire and the 4th Royal Sussex outflanked a German column and forced it to retreat so the 2nd Buffs could break the momentum of a German wheeling movement at Wormhout. The 1st Cameroons, reduced to forty survivors, counterattacked and drove the enemy back across the Canal de la Lawe where they were destroyed by the waiting Welsh Fusiliers. Between Ypres and the Warneton-Comines Canal, the 3rd Grenadier Guards, the 13/18th Hussars, and the 2nd North Staffordshire counterattacked the claw of a German pincer movement. The 3rd Cameroons and the Royal Scots Fusiliers, each reduced to company strength, came together at Godewaersvelde and blocked a German penetration until they all lay dead.
They fought by day that Saturday against enemies who were everywhere in a field of blood. When night settled over the battlefield they used its darkness to shield their escape. Sunday’s dawn would slow their advance and bring them back to the horror of unrestrained war coming from all directions.
Alan Brooke spent the night of Saturday leading to the morning of Sunday directing troops. He was working on word of mouth. All the communication links had broken down. He travelled in an open car, transferring battalions from one crisis to another. He found Montgomery and directed him to make a dangerous night march across the face of an attack to reach the vulnerable flank. He came across an empty cottage and used its shelter for a short nap, but was thrown from the bed after only an hour by an explosion that shattered the cottage. There were masses of civilians making their dreadful way across battlefields, dying in crossfire. The inmates of an insane asylum, freed from their home, stood by the road and waved and cheered and fell dead from the fire of the troops that passed by engaged in battle. Brooke leapt from his car and rolled into a trench when an overflight of German bombers dropped their loads, indiscriminately. He slept there as the bombs fell and then awoke when they passed, and drove on.
*
That Sunday, the 26th, the Archbishop of Canterbury conducted a special service at Westminster Abbey. The King and Queen were in attendance, and as many others as the pews could hold. Duff Cooper and the newspapers had, by now, awakened the people to the reality that was unfolding in France. From his perch in the choir loft, Winston thought they were rising to their defiant island spirit. Still, the King, the Archbishop, and a great many in Parliament were recent devotees of appeasement, and likely remained so.
Churchill convened the War Cabinet. Halifax opened with a passionate appeal to negotiate peace terms with Hitler. He said the Italian ambassador had approached him with “fresh proposals for a peace conference and I believe the time has come to seize the opportunity. It is not so much now a question of imposing a complete defeat upon Germany, but of safeguarding the independence of our own Empire.”
Churchill said, “Yes, peace can be achieved under a certain German domination of the continent, but that is a condition we could never accept.”
Halifax pushed on. “If Mussolini is willing to act as mediator carrying terms which do not postulate the destruction of our independence, we should be foolish if we did not entertain them. If we can preserve our nation and our freedom, and also save our army, it is proper, rather than to subject the people to several months of air raids, to accept an offer which would save us from avoidable disaster.”
Churchill said, “If that man offered to return to Germany with his tail between his legs if we would only forgive and forget, we could not agree. If he were to sign such a document, or any document, we can be certain he would repudiate it before the ink is dry.”
Attlee said, “How little have we learned if we can consider asking one dictator to intercede for us with another dictator? Those days are surely forever behind us.”
Churchill said, “Any such response — any response! — would ruin the integrity of our fighting position in this country. Lord Halifax, please inform the Italian ambassador that we shall wage unending war against Hitler until he is conquered. We shall not be dragged down the slippery slope of ignominious capitulation along with France.” But he knew he hadn’t heard the last of it, knew that if the evacuation at Dunkirk failed, if as much was lost in the month of his service as now appeared possible, even likely, his service might end and, with it, all hope for saving the Empire.
Chamberlain was silent throughout the debate.
*
Late that afternoon, it was no longer possible to put off the painful decision that would seal the fate of the several thousand soldiers at Calais. Nothing extraterrestrial had intervened. Eden had the task of informing Brigadier C. H. Nicholson that he must fight to the destruction of his command. His cable read, “The eyes of the Empire are upon the defense of Calais, and His Majesty’s Government are confident that you and your gallant regiments will perform an exploit worthy of the British name.”
*
Hitler, at Charleville, was informed of tens of thousands of British soldiers arriving at the beaches. French troops were not expected at Dunkirk. A slight, safe pause settled over the beach as the pursuing German infantry held its ground to provide a better target for the Luftwaffe, which was waiting for daylight. Hitler’s artillery was opening a barrage, but the Panzers, still struggling with terrain, were silent. Hitler cancelled his order of two days previous, releasing the Panzers to turn on Calais with full fury, and then to attack Dunkirk.
The Panzers struggled with the elimination of Brigadier Nicholson’s small army at Calais. They were not suited for a stationary attack, especially if the terrain beneath their tracks compromised them. Coordinated mobility was their strength. Their attack on Calais, as it succeeded, revealed a weakness that would haunt them, and verify Hitler’s fear, when they turned on the beaches of Dunkirk.
At 7:00 pm Sunday the 26th, almost precisely the same time as Hitler issued the command to destroy Calais, Churchill ordered Operation Dynamo to proceed.
*
Two weeks earlier, Dunkirk was home to 50,000 French citizens. Now there were fewer than a thousand huddled among the battered ruins, and their lives were about to end. The city’s featured structures were clustered about its huge harbor. A mile-long wooden jetty arced out from the shore to a terminus where an opening permitted passage to the harbor. The jetty’s width was ten feet, barely enough for three men to stand side by side. The beach before the harbor extended to the jetty in a shallow slope of a half-mile. In the days of peace, this long sandy reach granted safe frolic at low tide. Centuries before, an ingenious system of locks controlled the sea’s tidal arrival within the jetty, but the locks were long gone, and now high tide brought the English Channel close to shore. Beyond the harbor, ten miles of narrower beach extended halfway to Calais.
Ramsay had launched a growing ragtag armada, now of close to 800 ships, boats, ferries, barges, schooners, sloops, launches, scows, and tugs, sorting and sending them from the Dover Quay according to their designated routes. He changed his plan, now choosing to use Ramsgate, as well as Dover to retrieve the returning craft and send them back to Dunkirk.
He reported progress before Churchill retired. It was uneven at best, as the flotilla and its leaders were groping for a hold on a confused and confounding task. Many craft had wandered from their route and met an early fate from the mines. Departure from Dover would be restricted to daylight hours beginning Monday, Ramsay reported. Once at Dunkirk, only small vessels with shallow drafts were able to work within the jetty where the wide, sloping, shallow beach of the harbor was full of soldiers waiting in waist-deep water in organized queues. The larger craft waited on the Channel side for delivery of the smaller loads. The wooden jetty had been built as a breakwater, and not a dock. It was soon judged to be perilously weak as a berth for large ships, but it was dense with standing soldiers and there was nothing to be done but offload them from the jetty to ships within reach. Some jumped and made it. Others jumped and disappeared in the deeper water.
Fewer soldiers had managed to escape to the beaches to the south where they could be more easily reached by crafts of all sizes, but they and the rescue crafts were also exposed to tightly targeted fire from German machine guns, artillery, and the Panzers. The attack on the harbor was heavier, but more misguided as the Germans seemed to be farther away. In the harbor and on the narrower beaches, troops not yet in line for evacuation were returning fire before their turn came to leave, trading defense with the new arrivals.
Churchill slept badly.
The Prime Minister was awakened that Monday in his quarters at the Admiralty by Inches, something of a surprise since in the nine months of his residency the ritual opening of his day had come with the arrival of Captain Richard Pim of the Royal Navy. Pim commanded his map room and brought overnight news.
“Where’s Pim?” he said to Inches, who said he didn’t know.
Soon, Eden and the generals and admirals were convened in the map room. “Where is Pim?” he said again.
“Gone to Dunkirk,” was the answer from Dudley Pound.
“How? To do what?”
“To help. He has a boat.”
“What kind of boat?”
“A paddler. I believe it’s called a schuit.”
“He paddled to Dunkirk?”
“No, I authorized him to transfer it on the foredeck of a destroyer. The craft is built for hauling supplies in the waters of the Netherlands. It has an auxiliary motor and a shallow draft and he said it would accommodate as many as a dozen Tommies.”
“How brave! How extraordinarily brave!”
Ironside said, “Or perhaps ordinarily, routinely, brave.”
Winston said, “Yes. That. To our tasks.”
ared that responsibility. Early the morning of Saturday the 25th, he told the Premier and the Foreign Minister that he had decided to surrender his army and remain with them in Belgium to share in whatever may come. The two ministers reminded Leopold that he was constitutionally sworn to follow the advice of the Cabinet, which was unanimously opposed to the decision. He said, “I have decided to capitulate and to stay. The decision is final.” As the meeting ended, Leopold wired George VI to say he could expect the “immediate surrender” of the Belgian army.
Before the day was out, before Leopold had acted by reaching out to Hitler, the news of his decision was everywhere. Shirer was present that day in Berlin at a Ribbentrop briefing to the foreign press where the German Foreign Minister announced, “The French will be destroyed and the English on the continent will either be killed or made prisoners of war.”
Shirer asked, “What of the Belgians?”
Ribbentrop said, “They have made a wiser choice, of which I can say no more.”
Shirer wrote in his diary, “No one among the Nazi leadership is as smug and certain of the wisdom of every idiotic thought that enters his head as Ribbentrop. You would have to be supremely stupid to think you’re as smart as he thinks he is. If God had made him as tall as he is smart, he’d be a dwarf.”
*
In London, Alexander of the Admiralty revealed to Churchill the plan for the evacuation from Dunkirk. Admiral Bertram Ramsay was present. He was to be in command, overlooking the Channel from a headquarters long ago hacked from the white limestone cliffs of Dover to house an electrical generator, a dynamo, that supplied power to the Dover Castle above the cliffs. The plan was code named Operation Dynamo.
All ships up to a thousand tons displacement were identified, their owners notified, and requisitions were made ready. Within hours of the Prime Minister’s command an estimated 600 ships could be under sail. The Channel was heavily mined, but Ramsay had overseen clearances sufficient to permit three half-mile wide routes of passage, all using Dover as the beginning and end of the trip. The routes were inpropitiously designated X, Y, and Z.
X hugged the English shore out of Dover north to the Lightship of the Goodwin Sands, a shoal beneath the surface just off the promontory of Ramsgate, and then proceeded directly to Dunkirk. Its fifty-five miles met the greatest danger from mines. Y took the X route to the Lightship but then continued northeast to a marker buoy where it made a hard turn, doubling back on itself to Dunkirk. At eighty-seven miles, Y was much the longest of the three routes and would be exposed to attacks from submarines, surface ships, and the Luftwaffe throughout the four hours of exposure, but fewer mines. Z would go straight to Dunkirk, a thirty-nine mile trip, gaining close contact with the beaches for the last twenty miles of its voyage during which it would add exposure to German shore batteries to all the other perils.
Winston suggested Y should be abandoned for it “roundaboutness,” but Ramsay said at least it wouldn’t be troubled by mines and had the advantage of being “sort of out of the way of danger.” Winston grumbled something no one could understand, and then approved Ramsay’s work with prayerful gratitude.
The Imperial General Staff advised Churchill of their shared opinion that, following the evacuation, invasion was imminent. Winston demurred. “Imminent is too strong a word for that possibility. The desire may be there, but the Germans will have to assemble a mighty fleet of transports before that can occur and there is no evidence of that happening. We must concentrate on the crisis at hand, and not the one to come. How many Tommies do we expect to be stranded on the beaches?”
The British soldiers of the line had been called Tommies since the Flanders Campaign of the French Revolutionary War of 1794. A soldier named Thomas Atkins rushed up to the Duke of Wellington during the Battle of Boxtel and said to the Duke, “I think we’ve got them on the run, sir.” The Duke noticed the man was bleeding badly and said, “Are you all right, son?” Tommy Atkins said, “It’s nothing, sir. All in a day’s work.” And fell dead at the Duke’s feet.
Ismay said, “Perhaps two hundred thousand Tommies. And about that many French.”
“And how many can we get home?”
Ismay said, “Who knows, Prime Minister. If I said fifty thousand, would that strike you as a lot or a few?”
Winston asked Ironside, Dill, and Eden for their estimates, and none exceeded fifty thousand. Then, “Admiral Ramsay, what is your best estimate?”
“I have none, Prime Minister. But I have great willingness to begin and I shall count them one by one.”
Winston said, “Well then, Pug, I would say fifty thousand is too damn few.”
*
Brooke told Gort that he had picked up the report that the Belgians were about to leave the battle. His message said, “I am convinced that the Belgian army is closing down and will have stopped fighting by this time tomorrow. This entirely exposes our flank.” Gort was headquartered at Prémesques forty-five miles from Dunkirk. Brooke was only ten miles closer at Armentières. Ronald Adam, Gort’s other Corps commander, was at Steenvorde, on the same route, and twenty-five miles from the beach.
Gort spent a long afternoon examining his maps. His only reserves were the 5th and the 50th Divisions, awaiting orders to attack to the south, where he knew they would be annihilated. He canceled the offensive and sent the 5th and 50th to Adam’s flank to plug the Belgian hole. He wired Eden that he had no other choice than to take his entire force to Dunkirk. His cable was delayed by traffic. Before it arrived, Churchill had come to the same conclusion. He wired Gort, “It is clear that it will not be possible for French to deliver attack in the south. You are now authorized to operate towards coast forthwith in conjunction with French and Belgian armies.” That cable was also delayed. Formal approval didn’t reach Gort for twenty-four hours. By then, he had already acted on his own initiative.
As the day closed, Winston confronted a painful decision. The Calais Garrison — the 229th Anti-Tank Battery, battalions from the King’s Royal Rifle Corps, the Rifle Brigade, the Royal Tank Regiment, the Queen Victoria’s Rifles, and a thousand French soldiers — could be saved by British destroyers waiting off the coast to rescue them, but if they left, the Panzer army would have unimpeded freedom to move on Dunkirk, and the Dunkirk flotilla would be even more exposed to shore batteries. Eden, Ironside, Dill, and Ismay were with Winston as the horrible option opened before them that night and all agreed with the hard choice. If the Garrison held on and fought — and died, surely died — to the last man, their fight could mean tens of thousands more could escape at Dunkirk. Winston said, “Let’s put it off for now. Perhaps something extraterrestrial may occur.”
*
An odd struggle opened in the northwest corner of France. Both sides shared the same goal, the Allied forces battling to reach the beaches of Dunkirk where rescue was possible, and the Germans determined to force them there for their execution on arrival. The battlefield itself was a tall isosceles triangle, a funnel for forces in the shape of a funnel, though upsidedown. The base was the dozen miles of sand at the water’s edge; for thirty miles the two sides tapered inland as they narrowed and met near the village of Cassel. Major Ronald Cartland was at Cassel with his Anti-Tank Regiment. As the triangle shrunk, he would be at its apex.
Men at war learn quickly what is required of them, even those confronting combat after long lives of peace. It is hate. The final emotion suddenly becomes clear to them, swallowing all others in its consumptive power. The British troops carried special memberships in the names of their regiments, battalions, and brigades. They were not just Englishmen, but soldiers of the Royal Inskilling Fusiliers, of the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry, of the 2nd Sherwood Foresters, the 6th Black Watch, the 6th Seaforth Highlanders, and many others whose names spoke to the steel of their manhood. Great depths of character and a rigid respect for the traditions of their units were now called upon in a desperate battle. They must also be faithful and brave, faithful to all the others who fought beside them, behind them, and in their advance, and brave above all, in view of their own death.
The 1st Coldstream Guards held a line at Ledringhem for thirty hours to enable the passage of the 2nd Royal Norfolk. The 2nd Gloucestershire and the 4th Royal Sussex outflanked a German column and forced it to retreat so the 2nd Buffs could break the momentum of a German wheeling movement at Wormhout. The 1st Cameroons, reduced to forty survivors, counterattacked and drove the enemy back across the Canal de la Lawe where they were destroyed by the waiting Welsh Fusiliers. Between Ypres and the Warneton-Comines Canal, the 3rd Grenadier Guards, the 13/18th Hussars, and the 2nd North Staffordshire counterattacked the claw of a German pincer movement. The 3rd Cameroons and the Royal Scots Fusiliers, each reduced to company strength, came together at Godewaersvelde and blocked a German penetration until they all lay dead.
They fought by day that Saturday against enemies who were everywhere in a field of blood. When night settled over the battlefield they used its darkness to shield their escape. Sunday’s dawn would slow their advance and bring them back to the horror of unrestrained war coming from all directions.
Alan Brooke spent the night of Saturday leading to the morning of Sunday directing troops. He was working on word of mouth. All the communication links had broken down. He travelled in an open car, transferring battalions from one crisis to another. He found Montgomery and directed him to make a dangerous night march across the face of an attack to reach the vulnerable flank. He came across an empty cottage and used its shelter for a short nap, but was thrown from the bed after only an hour by an explosion that shattered the cottage. There were masses of civilians making their dreadful way across battlefields, dying in crossfire. The inmates of an insane asylum, freed from their home, stood by the road and waved and cheered and fell dead from the fire of the troops that passed by engaged in battle. Brooke leapt from his car and rolled into a trench when an overflight of German bombers dropped their loads, indiscriminately. He slept there as the bombs fell and then awoke when they passed, and drove on.
*
That Sunday, the 26th, the Archbishop of Canterbury conducted a special service at Westminster Abbey. The King and Queen were in attendance, and as many others as the pews could hold. Duff Cooper and the newspapers had, by now, awakened the people to the reality that was unfolding in France. From his perch in the choir loft, Winston thought they were rising to their defiant island spirit. Still, the King, the Archbishop, and a great many in Parliament were recent devotees of appeasement, and likely remained so.
Churchill convened the War Cabinet. Halifax opened with a passionate appeal to negotiate peace terms with Hitler. He said the Italian ambassador had approached him with “fresh proposals for a peace conference and I believe the time has come to seize the opportunity. It is not so much now a question of imposing a complete defeat upon Germany, but of safeguarding the independence of our own Empire.”
Churchill said, “Yes, peace can be achieved under a certain German domination of the continent, but that is a condition we could never accept.”
Halifax pushed on. “If Mussolini is willing to act as mediator carrying terms which do not postulate the destruction of our independence, we should be foolish if we did not entertain them. If we can preserve our nation and our freedom, and also save our army, it is proper, rather than to subject the people to several months of air raids, to accept an offer which would save us from avoidable disaster.”
Churchill said, “If that man offered to return to Germany with his tail between his legs if we would only forgive and forget, we could not agree. If he were to sign such a document, or any document, we can be certain he would repudiate it before the ink is dry.”
Attlee said, “How little have we learned if we can consider asking one dictator to intercede for us with another dictator? Those days are surely forever behind us.”
Churchill said, “Any such response — any response! — would ruin the integrity of our fighting position in this country. Lord Halifax, please inform the Italian ambassador that we shall wage unending war against Hitler until he is conquered. We shall not be dragged down the slippery slope of ignominious capitulation along with France.” But he knew he hadn’t heard the last of it, knew that if the evacuation at Dunkirk failed, if as much was lost in the month of his service as now appeared possible, even likely, his service might end and, with it, all hope for saving the Empire.
Chamberlain was silent throughout the debate.
*
Late that afternoon, it was no longer possible to put off the painful decision that would seal the fate of the several thousand soldiers at Calais. Nothing extraterrestrial had intervened. Eden had the task of informing Brigadier C. H. Nicholson that he must fight to the destruction of his command. His cable read, “The eyes of the Empire are upon the defense of Calais, and His Majesty’s Government are confident that you and your gallant regiments will perform an exploit worthy of the British name.”
*
Hitler, at Charleville, was informed of tens of thousands of British soldiers arriving at the beaches. French troops were not expected at Dunkirk. A slight, safe pause settled over the beach as the pursuing German infantry held its ground to provide a better target for the Luftwaffe, which was waiting for daylight. Hitler’s artillery was opening a barrage, but the Panzers, still struggling with terrain, were silent. Hitler cancelled his order of two days previous, releasing the Panzers to turn on Calais with full fury, and then to attack Dunkirk.
The Panzers struggled with the elimination of Brigadier Nicholson’s small army at Calais. They were not suited for a stationary attack, especially if the terrain beneath their tracks compromised them. Coordinated mobility was their strength. Their attack on Calais, as it succeeded, revealed a weakness that would haunt them, and verify Hitler’s fear, when they turned on the beaches of Dunkirk.
At 7:00 pm Sunday the 26th, almost precisely the same time as Hitler issued the command to destroy Calais, Churchill ordered Operation Dynamo to proceed.
*
Two weeks earlier, Dunkirk was home to 50,000 French citizens. Now there were fewer than a thousand huddled among the battered ruins, and their lives were about to end. The city’s featured structures were clustered about its huge harbor. A mile-long wooden jetty arced out from the shore to a terminus where an opening permitted passage to the harbor. The jetty’s width was ten feet, barely enough for three men to stand side by side. The beach before the harbor extended to the jetty in a shallow slope of a half-mile. In the days of peace, this long sandy reach granted safe frolic at low tide. Centuries before, an ingenious system of locks controlled the sea’s tidal arrival within the jetty, but the locks were long gone, and now high tide brought the English Channel close to shore. Beyond the harbor, ten miles of narrower beach extended halfway to Calais.
Ramsay had launched a growing ragtag armada, now of close to 800 ships, boats, ferries, barges, schooners, sloops, launches, scows, and tugs, sorting and sending them from the Dover Quay according to their designated routes. He changed his plan, now choosing to use Ramsgate, as well as Dover to retrieve the returning craft and send them back to Dunkirk.
He reported progress before Churchill retired. It was uneven at best, as the flotilla and its leaders were groping for a hold on a confused and confounding task. Many craft had wandered from their route and met an early fate from the mines. Departure from Dover would be restricted to daylight hours beginning Monday, Ramsay reported. Once at Dunkirk, only small vessels with shallow drafts were able to work within the jetty where the wide, sloping, shallow beach of the harbor was full of soldiers waiting in waist-deep water in organized queues. The larger craft waited on the Channel side for delivery of the smaller loads. The wooden jetty had been built as a breakwater, and not a dock. It was soon judged to be perilously weak as a berth for large ships, but it was dense with standing soldiers and there was nothing to be done but offload them from the jetty to ships within reach. Some jumped and made it. Others jumped and disappeared in the deeper water.
Fewer soldiers had managed to escape to the beaches to the south where they could be more easily reached by crafts of all sizes, but they and the rescue crafts were also exposed to tightly targeted fire from German machine guns, artillery, and the Panzers. The attack on the harbor was heavier, but more misguided as the Germans seemed to be farther away. In the harbor and on the narrower beaches, troops not yet in line for evacuation were returning fire before their turn came to leave, trading defense with the new arrivals.
Churchill slept badly.
The Prime Minister was awakened that Monday in his quarters at the Admiralty by Inches, something of a surprise since in the nine months of his residency the ritual opening of his day had come with the arrival of Captain Richard Pim of the Royal Navy. Pim commanded his map room and brought overnight news.
“Where’s Pim?” he said to Inches, who said he didn’t know.
Soon, Eden and the generals and admirals were convened in the map room. “Where is Pim?” he said again.
“Gone to Dunkirk,” was the answer from Dudley Pound.
“How? To do what?”
“To help. He has a boat.”
“What kind of boat?”
“A paddler. I believe it’s called a schuit.”
“He paddled to Dunkirk?”
“No, I authorized him to transfer it on the foredeck of a destroyer. The craft is built for hauling supplies in the waters of the Netherlands. It has an auxiliary motor and a shallow draft and he said it would accommodate as many as a dozen Tommies.”
“How brave! How extraordinarily brave!”
Ironside said, “Or perhaps ordinarily, routinely, brave.”
Winston said, “Yes. That. To our tasks.”
07-07 Seeking The Hinge: Blitzkrieg: Dunkirk!