The Miracle of Dunkirk: Operation Dynamo
1940 · event
Trapped on a beach with the enemy closing in, 338,000 soldiers were carried home across the Channel by warships, ferries and hundreds of little civilian boats, fishermen, weekend sailors, volunteers. A defeat that became a rescue, and a promise: we shall never surrender.
The call went out for anything that could float, and eight hundred fishing boats, lifeboats, pleasure yachts and paddle steamers answered. Their owners sailed straight into the bombing, some crossing the Channel three and four times.
Churchill had hoped thirty thousand men might be saved. The little ships and the Royal Navy brought home 338,000. "Wars are not won by evacuations," he warned the House, and then gave the speech about fighting on the beaches that the rescued men had just left.