All Haste To Dunkirk
picked up the glow of the Dunkirk flames,” he wrote. “The aircraft started dropping parachute flares. We saw them hanging all about us in the night, like young moons. The sound of the firing and the bombing was with us always, growing steadily louder as we got nearer and nearer… The beach, black with men, illumined by the fires, seemed a perfect target, but no doubt the thick clouds of smoke were a useful screen. “The picture will always remain sharpetched in my memory,” Divine’s account continued, “the lines of men wearily and sleepily staggering across the beach from the dunes to the shallows, falling into little boats, great columns of men thrust out into the water among bomb and shell splashes… As the front ranks were dragged aboard the boats, the rear ranks moved up, from ankle deep to knee deep, from knee deep to waist deep, until they, too, came to shoulder depth
“As the front ranks were dragged aboard the boats, the rear ranks moved up, from ankle deep to knee deep, from knee deep to waist deep” and their turn… The little boats that ferried from the beach to the big ships in deep water listed drunkenly with the weight of men… And always down the dunes and across the beach came new hordes of men, new columns, new lines.” The ordeal of retreat, incessant bombardment, and finally salvation took its toll on the suffering soldiers of the BEF. Sam Kershaw, a private in the 42nd East Lancashire Division, remembered: “We were fighting in northern France when a German armoured column caught up with us and sprayed the whole unit with gunfire. We
sheltered from the gunfire in a ditch and lost all our equipment. When we got away from the German column our officer said we had to make our way to Dunkirk, where we were going to be evacuated.” The trek took 48 hours, mostly on foot. “When we got there I laid down in the sand, tired and starving, and went to sleep,” recalled Kershaw. “We waited in some nearby sand hills all of the next day and when night fell we were taken in a rowing boat to HMS Halcyon (a Royal Navy minesweeper). I fell asleep on deck, and when I awoke I saw the white cliffs of Dover in front of me.”
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