'Dunkirk' tells of heroic rescue of Allied troops

By Mark Hopkins

A movie about one of the most amazing deliverance miracles in history is sweeping the country. "Dunkirk" is one of the greatest events of World War II and the movie tells the story of 500,000 British, French, and Belgian soldiers surrounded by the German army in a hopeless situation. Braving great danger, the British people rallied to their rescue, saved the day and, perhaps, the war.

Watching this movie puts you at ground zero for the terror, which never lets up for a full 90 minutes. The Nazi army had charged through Belgium and into France against troops that were ill-equipped and ill-trained to meet the German assault. The Maginot Line, built by France to provide a first line of defense in case the Germans attacked again as they did in WWI, had been constructed with its heavy guns all facing to the east. The German army came around the Maginot Line and entered France very quickly, making the French defenses useless.

In a short 10 days, from May 10 to 20 of 1940, German troops had the allies surrounded and began pushing them back toward the English Channel. The three armies, British, French and Belgian, found themselves on the beach north of Dunkirk with virtually no food or water and without the means to protect themselves from the German Air Force.

It was at the point of "no hope," that the tide began to turn for the allied soldiers. A flood of more than 800 small boats left Dover, England, for the beaches of Dunkirk. They braved a mined channel, German submarines and constant harassment by enemy planes to travel the 60 miles across the always treacherous English Channel to carry their troops home. One British naval officer looking out at the dots on the horizon coming in from the north was asked, "What do you see?" He responded with a smile, "Hope, I see hope."

The parade of small boats from England continued for eight days carrying more than 325,000 soldiers from Dunkirk and another 150,000 from Calais, Amiens and Lille. One soldier said, "When we saw the white cliffs of Dover in the distance it was like going from hell to heaven. You knew a miracle had happened."

The Allies lost almost 80,000 dead and captured. Also lost was virtually all of the means to fight, including guns, tanks, ammunition and fuel. From a humanitarian perspective the evacuation from Dunkirk was a miracle. From a military perspective it was a disaster. So much of the necessary material of war was lost that Great Britain's ability to carry on was in question.

The disaster at Dunkirk motivated the United States to offer war materials through its lend-lease plan that would support any government fighting the Nazis. There was great resistance in our Congress to getting involved in any way with the war going on in Europe, but Roosevelt kept the pressure on and it passed Congress by a narrow vote.

At the end of the movie, when the evacuation was over and British troops were on a train into the interior of England, one of the soldiers found a newspaper. From it he read the report of prime minister Winston Churchill's famous, "We shall never give up," speech.

"We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, 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."

The only thing missing from that reading was that it did not come with the raspy voice of Churchill himself. Surely no one ever delivered a stronger statement nor a better speech.

If you see "Dunkirk," it will affect you. You will not soon forget.