Word: dunkirk
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...will ever know the full story of Dunkirk-"the greatest evacuation in the history of war." Many ships went to the bottom carrying eyewitnesses, logs and records with them. Many rescuers lost "all count of times and days," and after bringing home their load of men, collapsed in sleep and never recaptured a clear remembrance of their work. But British Naval Analyst A. D. Divine (who skippered the yawl Little Ann in the great evacuation) has tried to collect every available account, and to place each one in its proper place within the great, overall story. He has succeeded...
...Author Divine, 19 forces were evacuated (including the famed rescue of General Sir John Moore's army from Corunna). At two points on Gallipoli, the evacuations were executed so admirably that the entire force of 83,000 soldiers was brought off with only half a dozen casualties. But Dunkirk was not the result of expert planning. It was a last-minute improvisation, stamped by "complete and utter absence of red tape." It depended chiefly on the horse sense of hundreds of independent skippers...
...Great Worry." Skipper Davies of the shallow-draught paddle-minesweeper Oriole was a typical example. On arriving at Dunkirk, he saw instantly that his best bet was to run Oriole full-tilt right on to the beach, so that the soldiers might use her as a gangway to the numerous ships that could not enter shallow water. In one day, 3,000 men walked to safety over Oriole; and Skipper Davies, having proved his hunch, radioed defiantly to the Admiralty: "[Have] deliberately grounded ... on own initiative . . . Refloated dusk same day . . . Am again proceeding Belgian coast and will again run aground...
...Dunkirk harbor was a shambles of "twisted steel and broken concrete . . . battered quays . . . flaring oil tanks . . . a long channel already littered with ships burning, ships sunk, ships stranded." Shells poured in from long-range German artillery, bombs fell constantly, German E-boats dashed in from nearby waters and added disruption to confusion. The 39 British destroyers (which took off 103,399 soldiers) threw open their precious watertight doors to make more room, served simultaneously as carriers, leaders, patrollers, defenders against aircraft-and hazards to smaller craft. Turning and twisting at high speed to avoid bombs, their roaring wash flooded...
Many a skipper set out. for Dunkirk with just "a series of courses penciled on the back of an envelope" and no notion of the holocaust that awaited him (personnel-ship Scotia passed a returning destroyer in mid-Channel, received from her merely the deadpan warning: "Windy off No. 6 buoy"). Tug Sun XI found herself ferrying to & fro for seven days, "like a sardine tin full up everywhere." Skipper Lightoller packed troops into his yacht Sundowner until, in his own expressive words, "I could feel her getting distinctly tender, so took no more...