A LESSON FROM HISTORY

 

British author Carol Browne explains the Battle of Dunkirk and why Britons still hold that spirit.

The Dunkirk Spirit – a Lesson from History

By Carol Browne

Let me begin by setting the scene …

It’s the summer of 1940 and on the beaches around Dunkirk in France hundreds of thousands of British troops are trapped with no hope of escape. Behind them was the vastly superior German army with its engines of war; before them was the cruel sea; above them was the relentless strafing of enemy aircraft.

Despite overwhelming odds, the men of the British Expeditionary Force and their Belgian and French allies had fought to defend their positions but, with all escape routes blocked, a desperate retreat to the beaches and harbour at Dunkirk was the only option left.

Now all these men want is to get to England—to home and safety. They have put their faith in the navy. Operation Dynamo has been set in motion to evacuate them, even though the transport ships and destroyers can only expect to have enough time to rescue about 30,000 troops. But soon, repeated attacks from the enemy’s aircraft have blocked the harbour with sinking ships. The soldiers must be evacuated from the beaches. How is this possible in such shallow water?

What happens next will leave a permanent impression upon the British psyche, for when the call goes out that small boats are needed to rescue the troops, a motley fleet of plucky ‘little ships’ will chug its way across the Channel to bring the warriors home. They are motor boats, trawlers, paddle steamers, fishing smacks, lifeboats, barges, and other shallow-draught vessels. The majority of them are privately owned. Many will be taken across by naval personnel, but an equal number will be crewed by their owners and other civilians eager to stand by their country during its darkest hour.

Braving the combined onslaughts of the German army and air force, these civilians will risk their lives again and again to take troops from the beaches and ferry them to the destroyers waiting out in deeper water. Some of these boats will take thousands of men all the way back to England. Thanks to their efforts, a total catastrophe will be averted. It will be described by Winston Churchill as a “miracle of deliverance” and what takes place at Dunkirk from May 27^th to June 4^th, 1940, will live in the hearts and minds of the British people for many generations to come. At a time when Great Britain faces certain invasion, recovering over a third of a million troops has turned defeat into victory. The phrase, “The Dunkirk Spirit” is born.

***

“The Dunkirk Spirit.” This is a phrase I have heard many times during my life. If you are British, it needs no explanation and yet as the event that created it moves further back in time, I feared that new generations would have no knowledge of it and an important part of my country’s heritage would be lost. I was delighted, therefore, when a new movie about Dunkirk was released in 2017. Not only will people much younger than me now know about “The Dunkirk Spirit,” but so will people of other countries, and a valuable historical lesson will continue to inspire us all.

What is the lesson? During current uncertain and divisive times, it resonates as much as ever. It shows us what we can achieve when we cooperate.  It demonstrates how brave and selfless ordinary folk can be. We are all capable of far more than we know and when individuals work together for the common good, the tide will turn, and even in the most hopeless and desperate of situations, defeat can be transformed into victory. Because “The Dunkirk Spirit” is the human spirit at its best and nothing can stand in its way.

***

The book “Being Krystyna” by Carol Browne recounts another true story of survival in World War II.

 

In 2012 when young Polish immigrant Agnieszka visits fellow countrywoman Krystyna in a Peterborough care home for the first time, she thinks it a simple act of kindness. However, the meeting proves to be the beginning of a life-changing experience.

Krystyna’s stories about the past are not memories of the good old days but recollections of war-ravaged Europe: The Warsaw Ghetto, Pawiak Prison, Ravensbrück Concentration Camp, and a death march to freedom.

The losses and ordeals Krystyna suffered and what she had to do to survive are horrors Agnieszka must confront when she volunteers to be Krystyna’s biographer.

Will Agnieszka be able to keep her promise to tell her story? And, in this harrowing memoir of survival, what is the message for us today?

Buy Links
Dilliebooks - Amazon UK - Amazon US

#WorldWarII, #Dunkirk, #OperationDynamo, #WinstonChurchill, #AMiracleofDeliverance, #CarolBrowne, #BeingKrystyna

 

©A STEP AT A TIME… In War and Peace

By Linda Lee Greene, Author & Artist

When on May 13, 1943, the Axis forces in Tunisia fell to the Allied forces, ending the North Africa Campaign of World War II, Ohio-native soldier Bob Gaffin and his fellow US Second Armored Division warriors knew what was coming. The scuttlebutt was that Sicily was next. It made perfect sense. Knock out Sicily; punch through Italy; kill Hitler’s cohort, the fascist Italian dictator Mussolini, and you’ve destroyed Hitler’s southern flank. The Mediterranean oil secured—an army could run for a long time on that oil, straight north to Nazi-occupied Europe, to Hitler’s bunker, and then to jam his Tweedledee and Tweedledum, or his lonely Tweedledee according to rumor, down his throat for his breakfast. And that would be just an appetizer! Bob and his “Hell on Wheels” boys had trained for the offensive: they were tough; they were gritty; they were ready. The hitch in the overall itinerary was the actual fact of Sicily’s being the obvious next target. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill himself is reputed to have said, “Everyone but a bloody fool would know that it’s Sicily.” The Allies needed a con to deflect Hitler’s attention away from Sicily.

The elaborate deception operation, concocted and supervised by two members of British Intelligence, hinged on a dead Welsh tramp dressed up as a marooned officer of the Royal Marines carrying credible British correspondence indicating an Allied invasion on Greece and Sardinia rather than on Sicily in early July. Transported from Scotland to the southern coast of Spain by submarine, the body was released close to shore, where it was pulled out of the water the next morning by a Spanish fisherman. “Abwehr,” the German Intelligence organization, which maintained a strong presence in the area, an area chosen for the drop by the British for that very reason, examined the documents, and then transmitted the information to Hitler. He fell for the ruse and shifted his reinforcements to Greece and Sardinia, as a result. Sicily received none.

A violent summer storm kicked up huge waves in the sea and many of the Allied troops holed up on the landing crafts of the armada underway from North Africa to Sicily were green with seasickness and lost the contents of their stomachs over the sides. Commanders circulated among them, boosting morale, reassuring the men that the mission was secure. Actually, the storm worked to the Allies’ advantage, for the enemy let its guard down based on an assumption that no commander would brave such wind and rain. But brave it they did. While Hitler’s larger force dug in for the onslaught at Greece and Sardinia, before the sun broke the horizon on July 10, 1943 the combined air and sea landing, which was comprised of 150,000 Allied troops, 3,000 ships, 4,000 aircraft, and 600 tanks landed and commenced to crush the remaining enemy positions on Sicily. Bob Gaffin was a half-track driver in that armored brigade.

Ten days into the offensive, Mount Etna was merely an imprint on Bob’s internal eye as he and his comrades bypassed it in their aggressive drive toward Palermo. The bulletproof windshield of his half-track was thick with the volcano’s ever-present ash kicked up by the vehicle’s powerful tires and treads from the coast road. A hard day of fighting lay ahead, a battle in which several of the twelve men he carried in his half-track personnel carrier would lose their lives.

Twenty-six years from that very day, on July 20, 1969, as he and his wife and some of their children gathered around their television set in their home located in a little town in southern Ohio, USA and watched a fellow Ohioan place man’s first footprint on the moon, Bob recalled a footprint of his own in another landscape in an earlier time. It was a place as alien to him then as was the moon’s surface to astronaut Neil Armstrong, a footprint in the ashy soil someplace in Sicily when Bob hopped down from his seat behind the steering wheel of the half-track he drove to take a quick breather.     

By mid-August, the Allies conquered Sicily, and the heel of Italy loomed large in that unfolding theater of war. Meanwhile, Mussolini was soiling his underwear, and Hitler was scratching his Tweedledee, nervously, no doubt!

Books by Linda Lee Greene are available at Amazon.com.