May 1940: 500,000 British and French troops are trapped in northern France by the Nazis. Their only escape is the sea, and an incredible armada of 800 craft known as the little ships. This is the story of a young girl and her father, who sail from Deal to Normandy to lend their help.
During 1940 the German army swept with devastating speed across the Low Countries and into northern France and drove Allied forces back into a small pocket around Dunkirk. Without a swift withdrawal across the English Channel, the latter faced certain death or capture. The evacuation plan – Operation Dynamo – initially calculated that 45,000 men might be rescued, but between 26 May and 4 June 338,226 men were in fact brought back to England. Naval historian Philip Weir shows how this was made possible by a vast armada of disparate vessels including destroyers, minesweepers, fishing vessels and, most famously of all, the privately owned 'Little Ships'. He explores the vessels' various roles within the evacuation, and their subsequent fates, including preservation and participation in commemorative return runs to the port, which now take place every five years.
The true story of the World War II evacuation portrayed in the Christopher Nolan film Dunkirk, by the #1 New York Times–bestselling author of Day of Infamy. In May 1940, the remnants of the French and British armies, broken by Hitler’s blitzkrieg, retreated to Dunkirk. Hemmed in by overwhelming Nazi strength, the 338,000 men gathered on the beach were all that stood between Hitler and Western Europe. Crush them, and the path to Paris and London was clear. Unable to retreat any farther, the Allied soldiers set up defense positions and prayed for deliverance. Prime Minister Winston Churchill ordered an evacuation on May 26, expecting to save no more than a handful of his men. But Britain would not let its soldiers down. Hundreds of fishing boats, pleasure yachts, and commercial vessels streamed into the Channel to back up the Royal Navy, and in a week nearly the entire army was ferried safely back to England. Based on interviews with hundreds of survivors and told by “a master narrator,” The Miracle of Dunkirk is a striking history of a week when the outcome of World War II hung in the balance (Arthur Schlesinger Jr.).
Lilian Harry's engrossing wartime saga about the heroes and heroines of Dunkirk. During just nine days in the early summer of 1940, nearly eight hundred 'little ships', from lifeboats and passenger steamers to small private yachts and dinghies, set off across the English Channel to rescue almost half a million men trapped on the beaches of Dunkirk. Among them were three very different craft - a London fireboat from the docklands of the East End, manned by skipper Olly Mears and his crew; a small pleasure steamer from the River Dart in Devon, commanded by twenty-one-year-old Robby Endacott, an Able Seaman in the Royal Navy who grew up on the banks of the Dart; and a small motor yacht owned by Portsmouth solicitor Hubert Stainbank and crewed by his sons, Charles and Toby. As each boat ferries exhausted men from the beaches to the waiting ships, under incessant fire from enemy aircraft and in a sea awash with debris and bodies, the men are unknowingly united by a powerful driving force - the urgent need to find one man, brother or son, who matters more to them than anyone else. Each of these missing men has a family, a wife or a sweetheart at home who is anxiously waiting for news...One sweetheart in particular is determined to play her own part in the rescue.
* * * Special 75th Anniversary Edition * * * Hugh Sebag-Montefiore's Dunkirk: Fight to the Last Man tells the story of the rescue in May 1940 of British soldiers fleeing capture and defeat by the Nazis at Dunkirk. Dunkirk was not just about what happened at sea and on the beaches. The evacuation would never have succeeded had it not been for the tenacity of the British soldiers who stayed behind to ensure they got away. Men like Sergeant Major Gus Jennings who died smothering a German stick bomb in the church at Esquelbecq in an effort to save his comrades, and Captain Marcus Ervine-Andrews VC who single-handedly held back a German attack on the Dunkirk perimeter thereby allowing the British line to form up behind him. Told to stand and fight to the last man, these brave few battalions fought in whatever manner they could to buy precious time for the evacuation. Outnumbered and outgunned, they launched spectacular and heroic attacks time and again, despite ferocious fighting and the knowledge that for many only capture or death would end their struggle. 'A searing story . . . both meticulous military history and a deeply moving testimony to the extraordinary personal bravery of individual soldiers' Tim Gardam, The Times 'Sebag-Montefiore tells [the story] with gusto, a remarkable attention to detail and an inexhaustible appetite for tracking down the evidence' Richard Ovary, Telegraph Hugh Sebag-Montefiore was a barrister before becoming a journalist and then an author. He wrote the best-selling Enigma: The Battle for the Code. One of his ancestors was evacuated from Dunkirk.
'An incredible and important story, finally being told' - Mishal Husain On 28 May 1940, Major Akbar Khan marched at the head of 299 soldiers along a beach in northern France. They were the only Indians in the British Expeditionary Force at Dunkirk. With Stuka sirens wailing, shells falling in the water and Tommies lining up to be evacuated, these soldiers of the British Indian Army, carrying their disabled imam, found their way to the East Mole and embarked for England in the dead of night. On reaching Dover, they borrowed brass trays and started playing Punjabi folk music, upon which even 'many British spectators joined in the dance'. What journey had brought these men to Europe? What became of them – and of comrades captured by the Germans? With the engaging style of a true storyteller, Ghee Bowman reveals in full, for the first time, the astonishing story of the Indian Contingent, from their arrival in France on 26 December 1939 to their return to an India on the verge of partition. It is one of the war's hidden stories that casts fresh light on Britain and its empire.
"In May 1940, as France collapsed in the face of the German blitzkrieg, the British army and some French forces fell back on the Channel coast. The advancing Germans pushed them back and then briefly paused, confident that this cornered remnant of the allied forces was trapped. Yet the German command had failed to appreciate just what sea power could do to deny them the full fruits of their apparent victory; at short notice an evacuation was improvised which, it was initially thought, might if all went well last two days and rescue 45,000 men. The heroic rear guard action of the troops ashore against the renewed German advance, the ability of the RAF to provide just enough air cover, the tireless efforts of naval crews and those manning the priceless 'little ships', and the organisational genius of Vice Admiral Bertram Ramsay saw Operation Dynamo succeed beyond all realistic expectation: two days became nine, and over 338,000 men were saved. Operational disaster in the Battle of France did not become strategic defeat in the war, and albeit at great cost to the Navy, the British army survived to be rebuilt. Above all, Britain could continue to fight. This volume reproduces the complete text of the Battle Summary written shortly after the war by the Admiralty historical staff, comprising a detailed and authoritative account of these dramatic events. This is accompanied by a comprehensive introduction, newly written for this volume, that explains the context for the operation as well as an overview of further reading on the subject."--Publisher website.