EVACUATION FROM FLANDERS

Camp News (Northern Command), Volume 1, Issue 10, 5 July 1940, Page 6

EVACUATION FROM FLANDERS

\ Great British Spirit OLD SOLDIERS’ COMMENT ON ACTION . .

New Zealand has its share of that world-wide affliction, the prophet of woe, but he received many a rebuff yesterday from the wave of courageous confidence that swept over the people at the news of the wonderful success of what may have been the greatest rearguard action in history—the evacuation of the British ExpeditionaryForce from Flanders.

The buoyant spirit was particularly in evidence among ex-servicemen, whose comprehension of the quality of the operation, by reason of 'experience, is probably keener than the average. Said an old Anzac who fought in the Gallipoli landing, , and at the Daisy Patch, and was in the evacuation : “The idea of the invincibility of the Germans, through their weight of machines on land and in the air, has gone. Hitler’s boast that through mass air bombing the British Navy cannot operate in narrow waters is completely disproved.” Another ex-soldier who was a Contemptible remarked-: -“In his book Hitler said that Germany must avoid conflict with the British, because lie knew that we are stickers. ' Well, he has not avoided the conflict, and now he has had another lesson in the tenacity of the British soldier, the secret of which lies.not only in training and inheritance,- but also in that tremendous asset of our system—the spirit of mutual respect which exists between officers and men. The Navy has this asest in high degree. So also has the Army, . and particularly the .'regular Army. Hence the amazing standard of co-operation and the sense of personal responsibility throughout units.” X 7 people who are facing it with the great traditions of the centuries to uphold them.” A New Zealand soldier of the last war recalled a story he heard in an English country house from a gunner officer who had been in the retreat

from Mons. “One morning,’ the offi; cer said, “our O.C. gave us- a little talk and declared that the time had now’ arrived when the battery must sacrifice itself for the army. /Me prepared to die as gallantly as possible, but after fighting all day we managed to withdraw to.a new position at night. The next morning he again told us that we must now sacrifice' ourselves. Again we fought and got away. . Next morning/ he repeated his conviction, but again ,he was wrong, and by the time the line was established we be-’ gan to wonder if the O.C. was rather disappointed that the battery had not won special fame by sacrificing itself. Through this levity one felt the spirit of Mons, and today all over Britain and on every craft that helped in . the evacuation of the B.E.F. the same kind of story is being told, with the same touch of levity, proclaiming the same old spirit. Hence the general confidence, the inner light of the soul of the British people, against which the enemy cannot prevail. Finally, a sailor of the last war. Airman Smiles. An airman with Home experience smiled. ‘ Yes, we’ve got it on the Hun all right, but believe me he has not yet found out what is coming to him in the air,” he said. More on the subject of air , warfare he would not say, but the aura of confidence that emanated from him could almost be felt. “I feel like telling some of my friends that they should knock off listening to the radio, otherwise in the future when men. are talking about what they did in this war they ’ will have to say they were regular listeners,” he said. ‘‘Anyway, if they insist on making listening more than a sparetime job they should not inflict their gloomy ,reactions' upon others. The radio jitterbug is infectious and the disease is bad, particularly in this remote little country, where not enough of us are doing anything that matters. Sometimes I would like to be whisked off to England to get cheered up by ‘Get it into your head” —and he spoke with intensity—-“that if the Navy says it can do a job it will do it if allowed If Roger Keyes says the Navy can lake a port up a Norwegian fiord or take troops off a beach under fire, it means hat the thing can. lie done. Our admirals .do not guessthey know And the lowin' deck knows they know ’