1940: Dunkirk rescue is over - Churchill defiant

The Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, has described the "miracle of deliverance" from Dunkirk and warned of an impending invasion.
His moving speech to Parliament came on the day the last allied soldier arrived home from France at the end of a 10-day operation to bring back hundreds of thousands of retreating allied troops trapped by the German Army.
Many French troops remained to hold the perimeter and were captured.
Major-General Harold Alexander inspected the shores of Dunkirk from a motorboat this morning to make sure no-one was left behind before boarding the last ship back to Britain.
The beach and sea were in chaos. There were bodies floating in the water and we were under constant attack from machine-gun fire, bombing, explosions sending shrapnel in every direction.
Battle-weary and hungry soldiers from the retreating British Expeditionary Force (BEF) as well as French and Belgian troops had spent many days waiting to board ships from the one remaining pier, the east mole.
Many thousands were taken straight off the beaches, struggling in shallow waters to board small vessels that transferred them to the waiting ships.
When those who survived the evacuation arrived exhausted in England they were welcomed as returning heroes and offered plenty of tea and sandwiches as they boarded special trains.
Commander-in-chief of the BEF, Lord Gort, arrived back in England on 1 June and was also feted as a hero.
When his force was almost swallowed up by the Germans - after the French were driven south from Sedan and the Belgians surrendered - he took the vital decision to withdraw to Dunkirk where, according to the Times newspaper, four-fifths of his men were rescued.
This afternoon Mr Churchill admitted to the House that when Operation Dynamo was launched on 26 May to rescue allied forces cornered by the advancing Germany Army, he expected about 20,000 or 30,000 would be saved.
But thanks to the valour of the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force, no less than 338,000 British and French troops were rescued and brought back across the Channel to fight another day.
Mr Churchill tempered his admiration for the success of Operation Dynamo with these words: "Wars are not won by evacuations".
He said there was no doubt in his mind that the last few weeks had been a "colossal military disaster".
The BEF had to leave behind all its heavy armour and equipment.
The French army was weakened, the Belgian army had surrendered, Channel ports, valuable mines and factories in France and Belgium had been taken over by the enemy.
He said the nation should brace itself for another blow. "We are told that Herr Hitler has a plan for invading the British Isles," he said.
Returning troops were vital if Britain were to resist such an invasion.
He ended his speech with a defiant message to Hitler's armies.
"We shall defend our island whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender."
Britain would "ride out the tyranny of war, if necessary for years, if necessary alone."
Mr Churchill paid special tribute to the Royal Air Force that had provided what protection it could for the ships and stranded soldiers .
The Royal Navy sent 220 light war ships and 650 other vessels under a hail of bombs and artillery fire.

On 10 May 1940 Hitler’s armies struck westwards across Europe. Within three weeks Holland and Belgium had surrendered and German Panzer (tank) divisions had split the British and French armies. The British Expeditionary Force (BEF) and a substantial number of French troops were trapped in a diminishing pocket of land centred on the port of Dunkirk. On 25 May Boulogne was captured and on the following day Calais fell. That evening the Admiralty signalled the start of Operation Dynamo - the evacuation of the troops stranded on the beaches at Dunkirk.
Operation Dynamo was masterminded by ViceAdmiral Bertram Ramsay, who had been given less than a week to prepare. From his headquarters in tunnels beneath Dover Castle, he directed and inspired a small staff who had the awesome task of planning the evacuation of up to 400,000 British and French troops under constant attack from German forces. By 26 May Ramsay had assembled 15 passenger ferries at Dover and a further 20 at Southampton. These it was hoped would be able to embark troops direct from the quays at Dunkirk. To help in the evacuation and to provide escorts for the merchant ships Ramsay had a force of destroyers, corvettes, minesweepers and naval trawlers. These ships were augmented by cargo vessels, coasters and some 40 Dutch self-propelled barges.

Minefields and shelling from German batteries on the French coast forced evacuation convoys to take longer routes to Dunkirk. The first convoy, after sustaining heavy air attacks, found the port of Dunkirk and its oil tanks ablaze and only the passenger ferries ‘Royal Daffodil’ and later the‘Canterbury’ succeeded in berthing. By the end of the first day only 7,500 troops had been rescued and it was clearly impossible to use the port. Captain Tennant, in charge of the naval shore party at Dunkirk, signalled for the rescue ships to be diverted to the beaches east of the town. But here shallow waters prevented the large ships getting within a mile of the shore and troops had to be ferried in smaller craft from the beaches to the ships. There was an alternative, a spindly concrete pier with a wooden walkway, never designed to have ships docking against it but it was found that it could be used. Differences in loading speeds were dramatic HMS ‘Sabre’ took 2 hours to load 100 troops from the beach, but from the pier it took only 35 minutes to board 500 troops.
In London the Admiralty’s Small Vessels Pool had been collecting all available seaworthy pleasure craft. With volunteer crews, many of whom had never sailed out of sight of land before, they were checked at Sheerness Dockyard and then sent to Ramsgate to await final sailing orders. The pleasure craft were joined by lifeboats, trawlers, Thames sailing barges, tugs and other small craft. The first convoy of ‘little ships’ sailed from Ramsgate at 10pm on 29 May and by the next day they were streaming across the Channel in seemingly unending lines. The dangers were great, ships, both large and small, were targets for German fighters, bombers, submarines and coastal batteries plus the random danger of mines. Fortunately, throughout the evacuation, the seas remained abnormally calm. Most of the small craft headed for the beaches to act as tenders, while some of the larger trawlers and drifters loaded troops directly in Dunkirk Harbour.
On the evening of 2 June, with the German forces closing in, Ramsay despatched a large force of ships, including 13 passenger ships, 14 minesweepers and 11 destroyers. At 11:30 pm Captain Tennant sent the historic signal from Dunkirk “BEF evacuated.” By now, the German forces were nearly in the outskirts of the town. Only one more night evacuation was possible. On the night of 3 June a final effort was made using British, French, Belgian and Dutch ships to bring out as many of the French rearguard as possible and over 26,000 were saved.

Between 26th May and 4th June 338,000 troops were rescued from Dunkirk, over 200,000 of them passing through Dover. During the nine day period the Southern Railway laid on a total of 327 special trains, which cleared 180,982 troops from Dover. 4,500 casualties were treated at the town'sBuckland Hospital and all but 50 of these seriously ill men were saved.