Word: dunkirks
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...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...
Shamrock was a pleasure boat which, like scores of the other craft, had not been designed for the Dunkirk job (the armada even included three Thames flak ships). "I was [soon] numb to [danger]," says Shamrock Skipper Barrell. "It was hot bravery but just a will to snatch those boys." Barrell squeezed his way into the beaches among upturned boats and floating torpedoes. "Soldiers in the water trying to be sailors for the first time . . . paddled their collapsible little boats out to me with the butts of their rifles, and many shouted that they were sinking, we could not help...
...H.M.S. Shikari, one of the oldest destroyers in the navy, "fell the honor of being the last ship to leave Dunkirk." On June 3, at 3:40 a.m., she pulled away, with "the German machine guns stuttering in the streets." Naval experts had expected to evacuate 30,000 men at most. The actual total was nearer...