As early as the evening of 14 May, following the BBC’s nine o’clock news, an Admiralty message requested owners of self-propelled boats between 30 and 100 feet in length to send details of them to the navy within fourteen days. It is convenient to begin the story of the evacuation of Dunkirk with this fact and many accounts do so, but it is also important to see the announcements as part of a series of actions now established as arising from the German use of magnetic mines. For at this time wooden minesweepers so occupied the resources of boat yards as to cause a shortage of other small craft. In no way can that announcement be said to provide, as prejudiced observers have tried to claim for it, proof that the British were getting ready to flee the continent of Europe when the German assault was only four days old.
In fact the Dunkirk evacuation was born out of the BEF’s urgent need for a new supply route across the Channel. On 19 May both the British and French navies were instructed to prepare sea transport for the besieged armies. Since the BEF, organized on the expectation of a rapid expansion, had an unusually large proportion of nonfighting soldiers, it was decided to bring what the army calls “useless mouths” back to England.
The Ministry of Shipping in London worked valiantly to cut through the red tape and release ships that could ply between the two best French ports: Calais and Boulogne. At Dover, Vice Admiral Bertram Ramsay was given command of these seaborne operations. One of the underground rooms used by Ramsay’s staff had once housed an electricity generator, and from this came the code word for the actual evacuation—Operation Dynamo. From Ramsay’s office window it was possible on a clear day to see France. On 23 May the visibility was good enough to see the explosions as 2.Pz. Div shelled
Boulogne. Even before Operation Dynamo had started, one of Ramsay’s ports had been lost to him.
It was common sense to use cross-Channel ferry boats for personnel carriers, but in war one must not take common sense for granted. The ships were suited to the task, and many of them were manned by the same peacetime crews who knew the waters so well. At the start these ships were supplying the BEF and bringing back nonfighting soldiers and the wounded from the base hospitals.
On Saturday, 25 May, Boulogne fell to the Germans. In London, ChurchiU decided that the rifle brigade and the tank battalion which had been landed in France less than a week before must hold out in Calais for as long as possible. The message sent to their commander. Brigadier Claude Nicholson, said, “Every hour you continue to exist is of the greatest help to the BEF. Government has therefore decided you must continue to fight. Have greatest possible admiration for your splendid stand. Evacuation will not (repeat not) take place, and craft required for above purpose are to return to Dover. .
With Anthony Eden, Secretary of State for War, and Sir Edmund Ironside, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Churchill ordered the destroyers earmarked for the evacuation back to England. “It involved Eden’s own regiment in which he had long served and fought in the previous struggle,” wrote Churchill later. “One has to eat and drink in war, but I could not help feeling physically sick as we afterwards sat silent at the table.”47
It is doubtful whether many of the British soldiers fighting in the streets of Calais ever heard the stirring words sent to Nicholson, but they carried on fighting anyway until, in the early evening of Sunday, 26 May, resistance petered out.
On that same Sunday evening the Admiralty in London signaled that Operation Dynamo should commence, although Ramsay had already sent the personnel ships out on his own responsibility. By 10:30 that evening, the first homecoming fighting troops were disembarking at Dover. At this time there was only hope of rescuing a small proportion of Gort’s men. Late on Sunday night, an urgent signal from the Admiralty urged Ramsay to use the greatest vigor in getting up to 45,000 soldiers away, as it was thought that the Germans would have occupied the coast within two days.
The port facilities of Dunkirk were soon out of commission, and Ramsay realized that he would have to find some way of bringing men directly off the beaches. Captain E. F. Wharton, deputy chief of the Small Vessels Pool, had already been preparing for this eventuality. Entirely on his own authority, he had started requisitioning every small boat he could find and was somewhat relieved to find that this unlawful seizure of private property was to be made official. Now he began to search out men who could sail these boats.
World History
