Chapter 1: The Beaches of Dunkirk by Frank Owen and Peter Howard Lyrics
THE CAST:
The Doomed Army
A blazing, ferocious sun beats down on a beach which offers no shade; none except for the few precious square inches beneath the lighthouse and the pier. The sea runs out shallow for many yards from the sand and beyond the beach; between it and the town the sand dunes rise, providing at least some pretence of cover.
Mark well the dunes, the shallow sea and, most of all, the pier. The lives of three hundred thousand troops were to depend on those accidental amenities.
Dunkirk was the door at the end of a corridor no more than thirty miles wide. Inside the corridor some four hundred thousand of the picked soldiers of Britain and France waged unending battle. They were well used now to this formula of march, dig and fight. They had been doing it so long; up into the heart of Belgium, back again in perfect order when their rear was threatened, back once more when the perfidy of a King laid bare their flank.
For one moment they had sought to cut south through the enveloping German arm of steel. Alas! such a daring stroke could not be accomplished without heavy tanks and dive bombers. There was nothing else left. They glanced back over their shoulders at the one speck of chance offered at the end of the corridor.
It was a ridiculous hope. Against the walls of the corridor forty German infantry divisions and eight armoured columns battered with prodigal and ceaseless fury. Even this blazing sun seemed blackened by the German planes which filled the sky. And at Dunkirk itself the most strenuous exertions of the biggest air force in the world were spent without relaxation day or night to slam the door in the face of the retreating soldiers. Berlin and London and Paris all believed that the army was doomed. No military authority would dare another prophecy. Hitler foretold “total annihilation”. Winston Churchill prepared the British people for “hard and heavy tidings”. M. Reynaud said that only a miracle could save them.
Here then, it seemed, was the end of the finest army which Britain had ever put in the field. Through all those days of fighting no order was given by their commanders which had not been executed. When the word was “Advance” they advanced and staked courage against superior metal in the face of machine gunning and bombing from the air. When the word was “retire”, as it had so often had to be, they fell back in perfect order despite the deficiency of proper anti-tank guns to meet the onslaught, despite the continuous pitiless harrying from the air. All that courage and discipline could do they had done. They were unbeaten and unconquerable.
But all, it seemed, was of no avail. For they were now stumbling back, footsore, eyes red with weariness, sleepless for days, still pelted by all the metal which the resources of the German Reich could muster, stumbling back, aching in every limb, towards one port, already half in flames, towards one pier which one bomb could blow to oblivion. Those sands were only thirty miles from England. But they were bare, naked, inviting targets for the Nazi bomber.
Dunkirk itself was a shambles. Against it the Nazis had struck with remorseless precision. The reservoir was hit. In the hotels chartered as hospitals each wounded man was allowed only one nimbler full of water a day. There was none left for washing. Food was reduced chiefly to a ration of biscuits. So along a corridor raked by German bomb and fire, into a town crumbling in ruin and flame, on to a beach, without shade, without water, without food, without defences; to this awful extremity came the first army of Britain.
The early arrivals crowded on the beach or burrowed like rabbits amid the dunes. They gazed forlornly at the shallow waters and the pier. They were heroes; but heroism is not enough in this world of air power and seventy-ton tanks. And if the plight of those first thirty thousand was bad, what of the thousands who still fought their retreat step by step down the corridor?
That night a miracle was born. This land of Britain is rich in heroes. She had brave, daring men in her Navy and Air Force as well as in her Army. She had heroes in jerseys and sweaters and old rubber boots in all the fishing ports of Britain. That night the word went round.
In a few hours the channel was thick with barges, tugs, small coastal vessels, motor boats, lifeboats, private yachts, several hundred ships of all sizes and shapes sailing alongside British destroyers and sometimes beneath the protection of British fighters. It was still a small, the slenderest of hopes.
German bombers were massing in ever increasing numbers. They machine gunned along the beach which had now become as black with soldiers, in the words of one, “as Blackpool during Wakes Week”. They hunted amid the sand dunes. They struck hard and without discrimination in the town. They waited in ambush for the ships. They tried their luck at that pier. Certainly the chance was still slender. But in all the south-east ports of Britain there was not a man or a boy, who knew how to handle a boat who was not prepared to give his own life to save some unknown, valorous son of his country who had faced without flinching the red hell of Flanders in the cause which he knew to be his own. “I was too young to go to France as a soldier,” said a lad of eighteen who set out with the argosy as a volunteer seaman, “but I’m going to get damn near it.”
For almost a week the epic went on. The little ships dodged their way up the waters and hauled, over their sides the soldiers who waded waist deep, shoulder deep to safety. The pier by some miracle was not hit. From here the Navy did its work.
Yet every hour, except for one lucky day of fog, the assault became hotter. More planes obscured the sky. The machine gunners came lower and more daring. German heavy guns coming closer down the corridor brought the beach within range of bombardment. By the third day hopes were sinking again. In the face of such blistering, blasting metal an awful decision had to be taken. Embarkation could henceforth only be done at night.
With heavy, downcast heart a naval officer stepped down the jetty to break the news. The long queues had to squat back on the sands or return to the dunes. They must face another twenty hours of agony. They must have patience and strong nerves amid perpetual din and death all about them. They had both. They were soldiers. There was no panic.
Hour after hour the work went on even though the eager seamen must now watch more carefully to slip in and out again with their human cargo. One ship was attacked six times by dive bombers across the Straits of Dover. She lay off the coast of Belgium providing an anti-aircraft barrage for other ships landing. As she pulled alongside the quay the explosions from high bombing attacks burst all around her. As she started homewards twelve more dive bombers made her their target. There was no direct hit, but an explosion burst her steampipes. She lost her way, drifted towards the sandbanks and would have stuck irrevocably had not another ship taken her in tow. Once more the vigilant dive bombers picked her out.
The Captain was nervous for his passengers. He unloaded them onto the tow ship, waved his farewell and turned to address his crew. “You have one chance,” he said, “Forget the bombers and repair the steam pipes.” For one and a half hours under constant fire they strove to repair the ship. At last safety was snatched from the jaws of shipwreck. She limped home to Dover. Next day she was back at Dunkirk. She was only one of a thousand. Her tale one of a million.
Thus, hungry, bandaged, thirsty, soaked in oil, salt water and blood the unbeaten Army returned to the shores of England. The first words they uttered on English soil were tributes to the seamen who had saved their lives. “God!” said one Tommy, “they were incredible. What men!” A seaman answered: “These lads are the heroes, not us,” he said.
They came ashore smiling. They waved from the railway carriages. They were so proud of their saviours. They knew they were lucky too. They had seen a comrade at their elbow struck down amid those sand dunes by a splintering piece of metal. They had blessed the good fortune of those shallow waters which enabled them to wade in and scramble aboard.
Most of all, they had sunk to their knees and thanked Heaven for that single block of concrete and wood — the pier of Dunkirk; two hundred and fifty thousand of them had come aboard from that pier. Without it half the miracle would never have happened. Certainly luck as well as heroism had saved their lives. After all the long months of training, all the terrific fighting across Belgium, all the endurance of that last, fearful week the salvation of the first Army of Britain hung through precious hours like a thread on the survival of that pier.
How was it, you may ask, that the bravest sons of Britain ever come to be placed in such jeopardy? Yes, well may you ask it. How was it, that, though the best soldiers in the world, they were driven back from Belgium? How was it that to the men along the roads of Belgium and even amid the sand dunes the German airmen seemed able to work their will as they pleased? How was it that in the last resort their safety depended not on their unmatched skill with weapons, not on their dauntless heroism, not on their unbroken discipline, but partly too on a calm sea, shallow waters and one miraculously immune pierhead?
We know the various, complicated answers. The bridges on the Meuse that were not blown up, the treacherous King of the Belgians, the mistaken notions of defensive war—all these and many more played their part. But there is another answer more truthful and more comprehensive. It was the answer stuttered out by every soldier as he stepped ashore.
Unshaven, weary, perhaps wounded he yet found time to speak the bitter truth for all the world to hear. For beneath the smiles, beneath the cheering, beneath the thanksgiving for merciful deliverance, he remembered his thirty thousand lost comrades left behind, he recalled the hell which he himself had suffered and amid his rejoicing he spoke in a voice of anger. He spoke the truth that was in him.
Here then are the right answers:
A Cornish able seaman said: “The bravest man I ever saw was an R.A.S.C. sergeant. Eight Heinkels bombed the fifty men under him who were wading ammunition to our boat. I saw several of them fall dead. The sergeant grabbed a Bren gun, stood his ground in the middle of the beach and blazed away at them. When they came back he did the same thing again and drove them off.” One Bren gun and one hero against eight Heinkels. That is the right answer.
A B.E.F. infantryman said: “The finest thing I ever saw in my life was three guardsmen, the only ones left of a whole company. They stood shoulder to shoulder and plunged with their bayonets into nests of machine gunners near Dunkirk.” That is the right answer. Three bayonets and three heroes against machine guns.
Another infantryman said: “We have had a few swimming lessons this last fortnight in those canals. Not much sleep, but plenty of bombs. Fifty or more Jerries would come and drop bombs. Just as we were recovering another fifty and so in relays. We longed to see our own fighters.” That is the right answer. Relays of Nazi bombers against non-existent British fighters.
A Quarter-master Sergeant said: “Before embarking my men marched without sleep for nine days. They bombed us most of the time.” That is the right answer. Marching men against unceasing bombers.
One infantryman said: “For the last three weeks it has been march, dig and fight. We never had a fair chance, but our time will come.” That is the right answer. Unconquerable spirit against overpowering weapons. Never a fair chance.
“Three Spitfires in the sky,” said another, “meant that troops were not bombarded. Why didn’t we send more planes?”
Why? Why? Why?
“Give us the same equipment as the Germans,” said yet another, “and we will finish them in three months.” That is the right answer. Men against machines.
“Their only bitterness,” wrote E. A. Montague, of the Manchester Guardian, and most of the other correspondents beside, “is about the lack of R.A.F. planes to defend them from the German bombers.” How could they know when German planes bombed without ceasing or interference that the perhaps greatest heroes of all, the young pilots of England, were risking their lives every minute of the day against overwhelming numbers, by their skill alone were tackling four or five of the enemy, by their daring were wresting sacred minutes of immunity for the scarred beaches of Dunkirk. They could not know. They could not know that just as they had been pitted against superior tanks, so the last ounce of energy was being extorted from the gallant pilots to grapple with a hugely preponderating air power.
Here then in three words is the story. Flesh against steel. The flesh of heroes, but none the less, flesh. It is the story of an Army doomed before they took the field.
The Doomed Army
A blazing, ferocious sun beats down on a beach which offers no shade; none except for the few precious square inches beneath the lighthouse and the pier. The sea runs out shallow for many yards from the sand and beyond the beach; between it and the town the sand dunes rise, providing at least some pretence of cover.
Mark well the dunes, the shallow sea and, most of all, the pier. The lives of three hundred thousand troops were to depend on those accidental amenities.
Dunkirk was the door at the end of a corridor no more than thirty miles wide. Inside the corridor some four hundred thousand of the picked soldiers of Britain and France waged unending battle. They were well used now to this formula of march, dig and fight. They had been doing it so long; up into the heart of Belgium, back again in perfect order when their rear was threatened, back once more when the perfidy of a King laid bare their flank.
For one moment they had sought to cut south through the enveloping German arm of steel. Alas! such a daring stroke could not be accomplished without heavy tanks and dive bombers. There was nothing else left. They glanced back over their shoulders at the one speck of chance offered at the end of the corridor.
It was a ridiculous hope. Against the walls of the corridor forty German infantry divisions and eight armoured columns battered with prodigal and ceaseless fury. Even this blazing sun seemed blackened by the German planes which filled the sky. And at Dunkirk itself the most strenuous exertions of the biggest air force in the world were spent without relaxation day or night to slam the door in the face of the retreating soldiers. Berlin and London and Paris all believed that the army was doomed. No military authority would dare another prophecy. Hitler foretold “total annihilation”. Winston Churchill prepared the British people for “hard and heavy tidings”. M. Reynaud said that only a miracle could save them.
Here then, it seemed, was the end of the finest army which Britain had ever put in the field. Through all those days of fighting no order was given by their commanders which had not been executed. When the word was “Advance” they advanced and staked courage against superior metal in the face of machine gunning and bombing from the air. When the word was “retire”, as it had so often had to be, they fell back in perfect order despite the deficiency of proper anti-tank guns to meet the onslaught, despite the continuous pitiless harrying from the air. All that courage and discipline could do they had done. They were unbeaten and unconquerable.
But all, it seemed, was of no avail. For they were now stumbling back, footsore, eyes red with weariness, sleepless for days, still pelted by all the metal which the resources of the German Reich could muster, stumbling back, aching in every limb, towards one port, already half in flames, towards one pier which one bomb could blow to oblivion. Those sands were only thirty miles from England. But they were bare, naked, inviting targets for the Nazi bomber.
Dunkirk itself was a shambles. Against it the Nazis had struck with remorseless precision. The reservoir was hit. In the hotels chartered as hospitals each wounded man was allowed only one nimbler full of water a day. There was none left for washing. Food was reduced chiefly to a ration of biscuits. So along a corridor raked by German bomb and fire, into a town crumbling in ruin and flame, on to a beach, without shade, without water, without food, without defences; to this awful extremity came the first army of Britain.
The early arrivals crowded on the beach or burrowed like rabbits amid the dunes. They gazed forlornly at the shallow waters and the pier. They were heroes; but heroism is not enough in this world of air power and seventy-ton tanks. And if the plight of those first thirty thousand was bad, what of the thousands who still fought their retreat step by step down the corridor?
That night a miracle was born. This land of Britain is rich in heroes. She had brave, daring men in her Navy and Air Force as well as in her Army. She had heroes in jerseys and sweaters and old rubber boots in all the fishing ports of Britain. That night the word went round.
In a few hours the channel was thick with barges, tugs, small coastal vessels, motor boats, lifeboats, private yachts, several hundred ships of all sizes and shapes sailing alongside British destroyers and sometimes beneath the protection of British fighters. It was still a small, the slenderest of hopes.
German bombers were massing in ever increasing numbers. They machine gunned along the beach which had now become as black with soldiers, in the words of one, “as Blackpool during Wakes Week”. They hunted amid the sand dunes. They struck hard and without discrimination in the town. They waited in ambush for the ships. They tried their luck at that pier. Certainly the chance was still slender. But in all the south-east ports of Britain there was not a man or a boy, who knew how to handle a boat who was not prepared to give his own life to save some unknown, valorous son of his country who had faced without flinching the red hell of Flanders in the cause which he knew to be his own. “I was too young to go to France as a soldier,” said a lad of eighteen who set out with the argosy as a volunteer seaman, “but I’m going to get damn near it.”
For almost a week the epic went on. The little ships dodged their way up the waters and hauled, over their sides the soldiers who waded waist deep, shoulder deep to safety. The pier by some miracle was not hit. From here the Navy did its work.
Yet every hour, except for one lucky day of fog, the assault became hotter. More planes obscured the sky. The machine gunners came lower and more daring. German heavy guns coming closer down the corridor brought the beach within range of bombardment. By the third day hopes were sinking again. In the face of such blistering, blasting metal an awful decision had to be taken. Embarkation could henceforth only be done at night.
With heavy, downcast heart a naval officer stepped down the jetty to break the news. The long queues had to squat back on the sands or return to the dunes. They must face another twenty hours of agony. They must have patience and strong nerves amid perpetual din and death all about them. They had both. They were soldiers. There was no panic.
Hour after hour the work went on even though the eager seamen must now watch more carefully to slip in and out again with their human cargo. One ship was attacked six times by dive bombers across the Straits of Dover. She lay off the coast of Belgium providing an anti-aircraft barrage for other ships landing. As she pulled alongside the quay the explosions from high bombing attacks burst all around her. As she started homewards twelve more dive bombers made her their target. There was no direct hit, but an explosion burst her steampipes. She lost her way, drifted towards the sandbanks and would have stuck irrevocably had not another ship taken her in tow. Once more the vigilant dive bombers picked her out.
The Captain was nervous for his passengers. He unloaded them onto the tow ship, waved his farewell and turned to address his crew. “You have one chance,” he said, “Forget the bombers and repair the steam pipes.” For one and a half hours under constant fire they strove to repair the ship. At last safety was snatched from the jaws of shipwreck. She limped home to Dover. Next day she was back at Dunkirk. She was only one of a thousand. Her tale one of a million.
Thus, hungry, bandaged, thirsty, soaked in oil, salt water and blood the unbeaten Army returned to the shores of England. The first words they uttered on English soil were tributes to the seamen who had saved their lives. “God!” said one Tommy, “they were incredible. What men!” A seaman answered: “These lads are the heroes, not us,” he said.
They came ashore smiling. They waved from the railway carriages. They were so proud of their saviours. They knew they were lucky too. They had seen a comrade at their elbow struck down amid those sand dunes by a splintering piece of metal. They had blessed the good fortune of those shallow waters which enabled them to wade in and scramble aboard.
Most of all, they had sunk to their knees and thanked Heaven for that single block of concrete and wood — the pier of Dunkirk; two hundred and fifty thousand of them had come aboard from that pier. Without it half the miracle would never have happened. Certainly luck as well as heroism had saved their lives. After all the long months of training, all the terrific fighting across Belgium, all the endurance of that last, fearful week the salvation of the first Army of Britain hung through precious hours like a thread on the survival of that pier.
How was it, you may ask, that the bravest sons of Britain ever come to be placed in such jeopardy? Yes, well may you ask it. How was it, that, though the best soldiers in the world, they were driven back from Belgium? How was it that to the men along the roads of Belgium and even amid the sand dunes the German airmen seemed able to work their will as they pleased? How was it that in the last resort their safety depended not on their unmatched skill with weapons, not on their dauntless heroism, not on their unbroken discipline, but partly too on a calm sea, shallow waters and one miraculously immune pierhead?
We know the various, complicated answers. The bridges on the Meuse that were not blown up, the treacherous King of the Belgians, the mistaken notions of defensive war—all these and many more played their part. But there is another answer more truthful and more comprehensive. It was the answer stuttered out by every soldier as he stepped ashore.
Unshaven, weary, perhaps wounded he yet found time to speak the bitter truth for all the world to hear. For beneath the smiles, beneath the cheering, beneath the thanksgiving for merciful deliverance, he remembered his thirty thousand lost comrades left behind, he recalled the hell which he himself had suffered and amid his rejoicing he spoke in a voice of anger. He spoke the truth that was in him.
Here then are the right answers:
A Cornish able seaman said: “The bravest man I ever saw was an R.A.S.C. sergeant. Eight Heinkels bombed the fifty men under him who were wading ammunition to our boat. I saw several of them fall dead. The sergeant grabbed a Bren gun, stood his ground in the middle of the beach and blazed away at them. When they came back he did the same thing again and drove them off.” One Bren gun and one hero against eight Heinkels. That is the right answer.
A B.E.F. infantryman said: “The finest thing I ever saw in my life was three guardsmen, the only ones left of a whole company. They stood shoulder to shoulder and plunged with their bayonets into nests of machine gunners near Dunkirk.” That is the right answer. Three bayonets and three heroes against machine guns.
Another infantryman said: “We have had a few swimming lessons this last fortnight in those canals. Not much sleep, but plenty of bombs. Fifty or more Jerries would come and drop bombs. Just as we were recovering another fifty and so in relays. We longed to see our own fighters.” That is the right answer. Relays of Nazi bombers against non-existent British fighters.
A Quarter-master Sergeant said: “Before embarking my men marched without sleep for nine days. They bombed us most of the time.” That is the right answer. Marching men against unceasing bombers.
One infantryman said: “For the last three weeks it has been march, dig and fight. We never had a fair chance, but our time will come.” That is the right answer. Unconquerable spirit against overpowering weapons. Never a fair chance.
“Three Spitfires in the sky,” said another, “meant that troops were not bombarded. Why didn’t we send more planes?”
Why? Why? Why?
“Give us the same equipment as the Germans,” said yet another, “and we will finish them in three months.” That is the right answer. Men against machines.
“Their only bitterness,” wrote E. A. Montague, of the Manchester Guardian, and most of the other correspondents beside, “is about the lack of R.A.F. planes to defend them from the German bombers.” How could they know when German planes bombed without ceasing or interference that the perhaps greatest heroes of all, the young pilots of England, were risking their lives every minute of the day against overwhelming numbers, by their skill alone were tackling four or five of the enemy, by their daring were wresting sacred minutes of immunity for the scarred beaches of Dunkirk. They could not know. They could not know that just as they had been pitted against superior tanks, so the last ounce of energy was being extorted from the gallant pilots to grapple with a hugely preponderating air power.
Here then in three words is the story. Flesh against steel. The flesh of heroes, but none the less, flesh. It is the story of an Army doomed before they took the field.