The German advance had been relentless; using their Blitzkrieg tactics, the Wehrmacht had crossed over Luxembourg and Belgium, then through the Ardennes. It had seemed unthinkable, but the German army had even broken through the front at Sedan and entered Meuse. Hitler’s troops had bypassed the French and British forces through the command of General Heinz Guderian, who would come to be known as ‘Heinz the Hammer.’ His strokes hit hard and fast, descending like a flash of lightning or an eagle that has spied slow prey. The counter-attack launched by Colonel de Gaulle in Aisne was not enough to halt the German invasion: on 20 May 1940, Heinz’s second Panzer division took the estuary of the Somme and Abbeville, then Boulogne on 22 May, and finally Calais on 23 May. In three days, Heinz the Hammer’s advance had pinned down the British forces, as well as a host of Belgian troops and the entire first French army. All told, no fewer than a million men were caught in this vast net. But on 24 May, when he was just ten kilometres outside Dunkirk, Heinz Guderian received an order from Hitler to stop the advance for two days, as Goering had promised the Führer that he would destroy Britain’s forces from the air with his Luftwaffe. So Heinz paused his march, and waited. General Gort, leader of the British forces, had formed a plan to evacuate his troops, and decided to seize upon the opportunity provided. The evacuation was codenamed ‘Operation Dynamo.’
The time had come to depart. General Gort ordered the French units to defend the routes into Dunkirk so that he could evacuate as many British and French soldiers as possible. Operation Dynamo would go on for nine days. During the evacuation, French soldiers and officers battled tirelessly against the Wehrmacht, at times fighting one man against twenty, never losing hope despite their lack of men and munitions compared to the might of the German army. The Battle of Dunkirk was bloody, and interminable. Tens of thousands of soldiers died under artillery fire and the Luftwaffe bombs dropped during the night. Evacuation ships were torpedoed, and thousands of men were lost to the sea or gunned down on the beaches. Jack had climbed aboard a boat the night before, and had seen stars emerge amidst the clouds of smoke. Explosions rang in his ears as he prayed he might see England once more, where Mary was waiting for him. He had promised her he would come back alive. This day, the 26th of May 1940, would mark the day of his exodus and his survival, along with seven thousand other men. They were the first to depart. The next day eighteen thousand men were evacuated, then forty-seven thousand the next day, and fifty-four thousand the next. Aboard Jack’s boat there were no French soldiers; as General Gort put it, “every Frenchman on board is an Englishman lost.” But a few days later, Winston Churchill would put an end to this discrimination and give the order to evacuate French soldiers in equal numbers, as promised.
On the morning of the 4th of June, the German forces took Dunkirk and thirty-five thousand French prisoners along with it. But on that morning, Jack was not thinking of Dunkirk. He lit a cigarette out the window of the train, and watched the English countryside rolling past. The war and France were behind him now. It was a fine spring day, and the trees looked greener than they ever had. On the platform of St. Pancras station the women waited eagerly, crying out with joy. Their fiancés were returning from Dunkirk; their men had made it home. They would send no more melancholy letters, and would no longer live in fear of death. Their fiancés would become their husbands. They would go off to work in the city wearing suits and hats, they would read their papers on Sundays, and they would bounce their children on their knees. Mary spotted the train rolling into the station. It stopped at the platform and the crowd hurried over, as the soldiers spilled out laughing and hollering; they were young and happy, handsome and dapper in their uniforms. Mary wove through the couples kissing and hugging around her. She could not wait to feel Jack’s soft skin against hers, and his warmth as she pressed against him. Finally she heard someone calling into the crowd: “Mary! Mary!” Her Jack had returned, and he was unspoiled.
Alan Alfredo Geday
Opmerkingen