DUNKIRK RETIREMENT

Grey River Argus, 31 July 1940, Page 4

DUNKIRK RETIREMENT

Original Operation FOR TWO DAYS ONLY All Dunkirk’s docks were blazing, unapproachable. German planes were raining bombs. Yet 250,000 deadweary men of the B.E.F. “walked the plank” along narrow mess-tables from a little wooden breakwater to the British ships, writes Stuart Young in the “Daily Mail.” The first complete story of the rescue of 335,000 men of the B.E.F. was told me by the man who planned and directed it—Vice-Admiral Bertram Howe Ramsay, who has just been awarded a knighthood for his work. He talked to me in the plain, white-washed room from which the gigantic task was directed. Had 1 met him in civilian clothes I should have said he was a doctor or a lawyer.

He is of medium height and looks younger than I expected, for he retired from the Navy in 1938. This was his story: “In my wildest imagination I would never have visualised that anything like this could happen either in the last war or this.

“When the blitzkrieg started and the .(Army advanced into Belgium none of us imagined we were going to be driven back in the way we were. “When the break-through took place a meeting was held at the Admiralty to examine the possibility of evacuation. It was emphasised that the Army might have to fall back on the Channel ports. “It did not seem too bad: we would have Ostend, Boulogne, Calais, and Dunkirk from which to withdraw men and material.

“It was possible, we found, to put 1200 men in a small destroyer. The ordinary cross-Channel steamers can take about 2000 men each.

“But we had not enough to keep the thing going, and we obtained a large number of Dutch ‘scocM’—■ motor-vessels of 500 to 1000 toilleft in British ports after the evadllation of Holland. “Paddle steamers and other craft were also taken over.

“Our first job was to evacuate Boulogne. This was done by six destroyers between 5.30 p.m. and about 3 a.m.

“They brought off 4600 soldiers without any preparation under powerful fire from shore batteries, ma-chine-guns, snipers at every point, and heavy aerial attack.

“The captain in charge of the flotilla was shot by a sniper on his bridge. “Troops were sent to Calais in order to hold on to the last. They did it gallantly. “Yet bombs, shells, and shore batteries made Calais untenable. We could neither send in supplies nor bring off the wounded.

“It was horrible to "‘be so close and yet powerless to “It was then decided that we must get the B.E.F. out quickly. I was J told by telephone to get out as many as could be taken in forty-eight hours. i ;

“Our plans were made on the assumption that we should be able to carry on the evacuation only for a couple of days and nights. , “On Monday, May 26, we started

evacuation. About 20 officers and 180 bluejackets came down from the Admiralty. “They- had no idea what they had come for until given instructions and sent to Dunkirk.

“They were bombed all the way. At Dunkirk they were bombed all afternoon. They had a really good opening scene. “We set aside a room here with about seven telephones and fifteen or sixteen fellows working in it. “Most operations are given a name nowadays. This one became known as the Dynamo Operation. I don’t know who thought of the name, but I can’t imagine a better one. “The room which was the hub of operations was called Dynamo Room. After three or four days the men working thertf were so tired that they were lying down behind their chairs, falling fast asleep. They would wake up and carry straight on with their work.

“After a couple of days it became clear that this was a bigger show than anybody had imagined. We were going to get off larger numbers than had been thought possible. “It was an evacuation not only of the B.E.F. but of the French Northern Army as well. “The Germans decided to try to stop the evacuation and sent over hundreds of bombers.

“They made Dunkirk docks a shambles. The whole place was on fire. The heat was so great that no troops could approach the docks. “The only part of Dunkirk harbour where a ship could go alongside was a narrow pier or breakwater on wooden piles—a place never intended in the wildest imagination for such a purpose as ours. “Eventually something like 250,009 men came off this pier. “The use of it was the inspiration of our fellows at Dunkirk. Captain Tennant in charge of operations there, and his men guided the men to the ships. Without them the troops would have been like lost sheep. “There were no gangways. Narrow mess-tables were put across for gangplanks from the pier to the ships. About a quarter of a' million soldiers walked the plank to safety, mostly in the dark and most of them so tired that they could hardly drag their legs.

“At the same time it became obvious that we must embark from the beaches also.

“After a couple of days all our landing parties were exhausted. They had had no sleep. Every day we had to draw on another 100 men and if possible, 50 more boats.

“We had denuded our harbours at home, yet the cry was continually for more men and more boats. “The reason was that many of these boats were lost on the way over. “About May, 29-30 it seemed we were getting men away in better numbers than had been thought possible.

“Our figures jumped from 13.000 the first night to 20,000 the second, and 45,000 the third. “We began to think we might do a big thing, and we asked the Admiralty to raise every single craft possible within twenty-four hours. “The response was quite astonishing. I don’t quite know how the Admiralty did it, but hordes of these little vessels arrived, manned mostly by civilians.

“The boats and their crews arrived without charts, without fuel, and without food. Which set us a big problem. “All had to be supplied and instructed what to do.

“In the. end these craft caved thou-

sands off Dunkirk beach, their crews acting mostly on their own initiative. “Our first route was Calais. But the Germans mounted heavy batteries commanding it, and we had to take a new route which meant a round journey of 175 miles as against 76.

“Then the Germans fired on this route, and we had to find a third. “We made a channel across sandbanks, buoyed it, and kept it swept of mines.

“Eventually even this channel could be used only at night, and the rate of evacuation dropped from our peak of 66,000 to 30,000 a day. “By this time— Monday, June 3—l was getting very anxious about the exhaustion of officers and men of my ships. “They had been working without rest of any kind for eight days under conditions of unprecedented strain. “I called for more men. The Admiralty sent them. “This job was made possible by the extraordinarily fine ship-handling and the amazing endurance of the men engaged.”