DUNKIRK STORY WILL NEVER DIE

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 146, 21 June 1940, Page 6

DUNKIRK STORY WILL NEVER DIE

FIGHTER SPIRIT. FEATS OF VALOUR. 'NO FEAR OF GERMANS' RUN FROM COLD STEEL. SMASHED GUNS BEFORE RETREATING. LONDON", June 2.

"As long as the English tongue survives, the word 'Dunkirk' will be spoken with reverence. At the end of a lost battle, the rags and blemishes that had hidden the soul of democracy fell away. There, beaten but unconquered, she faced the enemy, this shining thing in the souls of free men which Hitler cannot command. It is the great tradition of democracy. It is the future. It is victory."—"New York Times." German infantry attacking in masses "like a fool'ball crowd" and bein<* mown down in masses by our machineguns . . . that was the kind of attack the B.E.F had to face before the German push died down in the face of the fierce resistance put up by the Allies at Dunkirk. Towards tli-e end the deadly work of our fighter pilots and the intense antiaircraft barrage from the Allied guns ashore crushed the German Air Force, and they made no attempt to bomb the ships as they left. ''We were caught like rats in a trap," said one soldier. "We have had to leave our guns and equipment, but it won't be of any use to the enemy. We took the breech blocks out of our guna, and I myself put my foot through equipment and smashed it to pieces." One wounded officer had been shot by a Fifth Columnist in an Allied uniform. "He sniped me from a window," he said, "but we soon gave him a settler." Another group of Tommies, in danger of being cut off by the advancing Germans, found a village cycle shop, raided it, and rode hell for leather on bicycles towards the coast until they caught up with the main body of Allfed Forces. Armed only with rifles and bayonets in the face of heavy machine-gun fire and attacks by dive bombers, the Guards advanced to attack the enemy. They had 'to run over 60 yards of open country swept by the German machine-guns, but the gun crews could not face British steel. They abandoned their machineguns and ran. One soldier told of an incident in which the colonel of a well-known Scots regiment found that, owing to an order which is believed to have been transmitted by Fifth Columnists, the left fhuik was retreating, and that the centre and right were beginning to move with it. The colonel jumped into a Bren nun carrier, swung across country, got to~his men, stopped the retreat and then, at the head of his men, led them into action with rifles and bayonets, against the Germans. They charedg uphill, stopped the German advance and recovered the position from which they had retreated. "Alan to man. nobody in the- British Army has the slightest fear of any German," said a British soldier. "Give us the same equipment as the Germane and we will finish the war in three months. When we get them alone they can't stand up to us." "I saw one young fellow with two wounds in his thigh and another in his calf, riding a bicycle to the quay which was about Ave miles away. He only had shorts on and «his vest. He was singing 'You take the high road and I'll take the low road' at the top of his voice and waving to the boys to come on." Of such was the most brilliant rearguard action in Avar history.