Word: dunkirks
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...British feel an emotional attachment to gallant defeats and desperate defenses that no mere victory can rival. Thus the Gallipoli campaign of World War I has always ranked high in British hearts, along with the Charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava, the evacuation of Dunkirk and the siege of Tobruk...
...aspect of this enthralling subject which seems to me to have been generally overlooked: the U attitude, around which a whole school of humor has grown up. The classic story of this school is, I believe, the following: A young officer who had lived through the Battle of Dunkirk was being urged by his hostess at a dinner party to describe his experiences. With a shudder he replied: "The noise, my dear! And the people...
Turning Life to Account. Originally Flemish, the Malraux family were for 300 years shipbuilders at Dunkirk. André Malraux's grandfather was a fierce little man who for 22 years attended Mass kneeling on the ground outside, in rain or wind, because of a quarrel with the church authorities. He had a prejudice against insurance, and when a storm sank his whole fishing fleet off Newfoundland, the Malraux family fortune was wiped out. André was brought up by his mother, who ran a small grocery shop in a Paris suburb...
...more unwilling warrior could have been found for Operation Popgun than Captain Trimmer, onetime ladies' hairdresser on the Aquitania. But the submarine lost its way, and the trembling Trimmer found himself leading the first Britons since Dunkirk back onto the French coast. Somehow Trimmer's sergeant blew up a rail line, while the press officer quoted tipsy encouragement to the captain. "For God's sake, come on," squeaked Trimmer from the small boat, as the sappers returned. "Be of good comfort, Master Trimmer, and play the man," urged the press officer. "We shall this day light such...
...France, he might have seized the "trumpet from the Angel of Victory at the Arc de Triomphe" and blown such a blast as could "awaken France." But Father Pétain had no breath to spare for trumpeting. Ever since the German breakthrough and the British evacuation from Dunkirk, his mind had been fixed on the idea of saving France by surrendering to Germany, and when he uttered the word "catastrophe," his voice "sounded satisfied . . . as if he accepted defeat joyfully...