Retreat ─ Dunkirk and the Evacuation of Western Europe

At around 7 p.m. on May 26, 1940, Prime Minister Winston Churchill gave the order for Operation Dynamo, the evacuation of British troops from the harbor and beaches of Dunkirk. The German forces that had attacked through the Netherlands, Belgium, and the Ardennes into France on May 10 had rapidly driven to the English Channel, reaching the coast at Noyelles-sur-Mer on May 20 and trapping the BEF (British Expeditionary Force), French forces, and the remnants of the Belgian army. BEF commander Lord Gort immediately began to plan for his forces to withdraw towards Dunkirk, the nearest location with good port facilities. Between May 27 and June 4, ships from the Royal Navy, the Merchant Navy, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, as well as the famous Little Ships, evacuated almost 340,000 Allied troops from Dunkirk and brought them back to Britain. However, the Dunkirk evacuation was not the end. In Operation Cycle, just more than 11,000 Allied troops were evacuated from the port of Le Havre between June 10-13. Later still, in Operation Ariel, another 190,000 troops and between 30,000 and 40,000 civilians would be evacuated between June 15-25 from ports along France’s western coast, including Brest, Saint-Nazaire, and Bordeaux. This evacuation would see the greatest loss of life in a British ship when the Luftwaffe bombed and sank the troop ship Lancastria in the estuary of the Loire. In this book, author Henry Buckton examines the Dunkirk evacuation, the rapid German advance that led up to it, and the evacuations that came after.

Henry Buckton is a social historian, and the author of By Royal Command, The Children's Front, Salisbury Plain, and Yesterday's Country Customs.