DUNKIRK 1940: OPERATION DYNAMO PDF, EPUB, EBOOK Doug Dildy,Howard Gerrard | 96 pages | 23 Mar 2010 | Bloomsbury Publishing PLC | 9781846034572 | English | Oxford, England, United Kingdom Operation Dynamo, the evacuation from Dunkirk, 27 May-4 June On May 29, more than 47, British troops were rescued; more than 53,, including the first French troops, made it out on May By the time the evacuations ended , some , British and , French troops would manage to get off the beaches at Dunkirk—a total of some , men. On May 27, after holding off a German company until their ammunition was spent, 99 soldiers from the Royal Norfolk Regiment retreated to a farmhouse in the village of Paradis, about 50 miles from Dunkirk. Agreeing to surrender, the trapped regiment started to file out of the farmhouse, waving a white flag tied to a bayonet. They were met by German machine-gun fire. They tried again and the British regiment was ordered by an English-speaking German officer to an open field where they were searched and divested of everything from gas masks to cigarettes. They were then marched into a pit where machine guns had been placed in fixed positions. They lay among the dead until dark, then, in the middle of a rainstorm, they crawled to a farmhouse, where their wounds were tended. With nowhere else to go, they surrendered again to the Germans, who made them POWs. After the war, a British military tribunal in Hamburg found Captain Knochlein, who gave the fateful order to fire, guilty of a war crime. He was hanged for his offense. Germany had hoped defeat at Dunkirk would lead Britain to negotiate a speedy exit from the conflict. In the same speech, however, he delivered a stirring statement of the British resolve that would serve the nation well over the next five grueling years of warfare:. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender. Despite the successful evacuation at Dunkirk, thousands of French troops were left behind and taken prisoner by the advancing Germans. Also abandoned on the shores of Dunkirk were massive supplies of ammunition, machine guns, tanks, motorcycles, jeeps and anti-aircraft artillery. With Western Europe abandoned by its main defenders, the German army swept through the rest of France, and Paris fell on June Eight days later, Henri Petain signed an armistice with the Nazis at Compiegne. Germany annexed half of France, leaving the other half in the hands of their puppet French rulers. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! This route followed the French coast as far as Bray-Dunes , then turned north-east until reaching the Kwinte Buoy. You knew this was the chance to get home and you kept praying, please God, let us go, get us out, get us out of this mess back to England. To see that ship that came in to pick me and my brother up, it was a most fantastic sight. We saw dog fights up in the air, hoping nothing would happen to us and we saw one or two terrible sights. Then somebody said, there's Dover, that was when we saw the White Cliffs , the atmosphere was terrific. From hell to heaven was how the feeling was, you felt like a miracle had happened. The Merchant Navy supplied passenger ferries, hospital ships, and other vessels. Admiral Ramsay arranged for around a thousand copies to be made of the required charts, had buoys laid around the Goodwin Sands and down to Dunkirk, and organised the flow of shipping. The soldiers mostly travelled on the upper decks for fear of being trapped below if the ship sank. A wide variety of small vessels from all over the south of England were pressed into service to aid in the Dunkirk evacuation. They included speedboats, Thames vessels, car ferries, pleasure craft , and many other types of small craft. Agents of the Ministry of Shipping , accompanied by a naval officer, scoured the Thames for likely vessels, had them checked for seaworthiness, and took them downriver to Sheerness , where naval crews were to be placed aboard. Due to shortages of personnel, many small craft crossed the Channel with civilian crews. The first of the "little ships" arrived at Dunkirk on 28 May. But at times, panicky soldiers had to be warned off at gunpoint when they attempted to rush to the boats out of turn. Before the operation was completed, the prognosis had been gloomy, with Churchill warning the House of Commons on 28 May to expect "hard and heavy tidings". Three British divisions and a host of logistic and labour troops were cut off to the south of the Somme by the German "race to the sea". The majority of the 51st Highland Division was forced to surrender on 12 June, but almost , Allied personnel, , of them British, were evacuated through various French ports from 15—25 June under the codename Operation Ariel. The more than , French troops evacuated from Dunkirk were quickly and efficiently shuttled to camps in various parts of south-western England, where they were temporarily lodged before being repatriated. For many French soldiers, the Dunkirk evacuation represented only a few weeks' delay before being killed or captured by the German army after their return to France. In France, the unilateral British decision to evacuate through Dunkirk rather than counter-attack to the south, and the perceived preference of the Royal Navy for evacuating British forces at the expense of the French, led to some bitter resentment. The evacuation was presented to the German public as an overwhelming and decisive German victory. On 5 June , Hitler stated "Dunkirk has fallen! Immeasurable quantities of materiel have been captured. The greatest battle in the history of the world has come to an end. The BEF lost 68, soldiers dead, wounded, missing, or captured from 10 May until the armistice with France on 22 June. Six British and three French destroyers were sunk, along with nine other major vessels. In addition, 19 destroyers were damaged. The RAF lost aircraft, of which at least 42 were Spitfires , while the Luftwaffe lost aircraft in operations in the nine days of Operation Dynamo, [] including 35 destroyed by Royal Navy ships plus 21 damaged during the six days from 27 May to 1 June. For every seven soldiers who escaped through Dunkirk, one man was left behind as a prisoner of war. The majority of these prisoners were sent on forced marches into Germany. Prisoners reported brutal treatment by their guards, including beatings, starvation, and murder. Another complaint was that German guards kicked over buckets of water that had been left at the roadside by French civilians for the marching prisoners to drink. Many of the prisoners were marched to the city of Trier , with the march taking as long as 20 days. Others were marched to the river Scheldt and were sent by barge to the Ruhr. The prisoners were then sent by rail to prisoner of war camps in Germany. Those of the BEF who died or were captured and have no known grave are commemorated on the Dunkirk Memorial. It is known as the Dunkirk Jack. The flag is flown from the jack staff only by civilian vessels that took part in the Dunkirk rescue operation. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Charles Abrial [6]. Battle of France. Further information: Battle of France. Main article: Battle of Dunkirk. See also: List of ships at Dunkirk. Main article: Little Ships of Dunkirk. See also: Royal National Lifeboat Institution. Atkin, Ronald Pillar of Fire: Dunkirk Bajwa, Mandeep Singh 19 May Hindustan Times. Retrieved 18 August Biswas, Soutik 27 July BBC News. Retrieved 5 August Blaxland, Gregory Destination Dunkirk: The story of Gort's Army. London: William Kimber. Retrieved 24 October Chessum, Victoria 9 June Kent Online. Retrieved 2 December Churchill, Winston Their Finest Hour. The Second World War. Boston; Toronto: Houghton Mifflin. In Churchill, Winston S. Never Give In! New York: Hyperion. Cooper, Matthew Mazal Holocaust Collection. Costello, John Ten Days That Saved the West. London; New York: Bantam. Dildy, Douglas C. Dunkirk Operation Dynamo. Oxford: Osprey. Butler, J. The War in France and Flanders — English, John Amazon to Ivanhoe: British Standard Destroyers of the s. Kendal, England: World Ship Society. Fermer, Douglas Forczyk, Robert Manstein: Leadership — Strategy — Conflict. French, David []. New York: Oxford University Press. Gardner, W. London: Routledge. Gelb, Norman Dunkirk: The Incredible Escape. London: Michael Joseph. After crossing the Oise on May 17, German Gen. On May 20 they swept on and reached Abbeville , thus blocking all communications between north and south. Georg-Hans Reinhardt swung south of the British rear position at Arras , headed for the same objective—the last escape port that remained open for the British. Allied planners had hoped to check the Germans at the Dyle Line—a defensive line that ran from Antwerp south to the French frontier, north of Sedan —but by May 16 Gamelin had determined that such a stand was impracticable. The Allied armies in Belgium wheeled back to the line of the Scheldt. By the time they arrived there, the position had been undermined by the cutting of their communications. On May 19 Gen.