The Miracle Of Dunkirk Told By Those Who Were There | Battle Of Dunkirk | Timeline

hi everybody welcome to this timeline documentary my name is dan snow and here i am in a lancaster bomber cockpit one of the few remaining lancasters from the second world war to tell you about my new history channel it's called history hit it's like netflix for history hundreds of history documentaries on there and interviews with many of the world's best historians follow the information below this film or just search online for history hit and make sure you use the code timeline to get a special introductory offer now enjoy this show [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] in the spring of 1940 britain faced a military disaster trapped on the beaches of dunkirk the british expeditionary force faced an impossible situation as hitler's army closed in we went through hell the guts the bleeding the man being bloated pieces and the machine gunners shooting them down by the others it was absolutely dreadful these stoopers were fitted with sirens and they screamed as they came down to frighten you and they did and the dive bombed all day long dead bodies you just prayed you were in the right queue one of my friends got hit in the head by a strap-off both of his eyes were blown clean out of his head he died almost instantly which was a good thing they came diving down on us the soldiers said what the devil are you doing here missus they piggybacked me along the beach it looked as though potentially for britain the war was over before it had even begun the core of the british army was on the brink of being eliminated there seemed no escape was on the beach for 48 hours no food no water nowhere to go nowhere to hide we just hope to don't miss you operation dynamo was the climactic moment of one of the greatest escapes of all time hundreds of british ship crews many in private boats crossed the channel bravely plunging into the thick of battle the water was up to my chest overcame the lovelocker so we were like sitting ducks in the water my overcoat was permanently wet from the waist down i could hardly swim but it's surprising when you've got to you you do it this hospital ship got blown this bomb went right down the funnel and it blew the smithereens and those dead and dying boys all laying in the water and the captain said we cannot stop them from we cannot stop and then suddenly we got into the channel and there was relief relief relief we got to dover and then we kissed the ground and cried our eyes right in celebration of the courage of the soldiers and those who saved them this is the story of an epic escape that must never be forgotten told by those who were actually there i have been to hell i think a dream of it every night every day of the days when i went through so much to live and now 99.4 is clear every morning wake up there is now amazing i'm still alive i can dream every night about it i'm the only known living survivor of my battalion i mean there's only one of millionaires no they're so forgetful today i talked to some people they said what war was that you know that's the attitude of today i mean i go to schools kids have never heard of dunkirk nor the teachers dunkirk is so important in a global military political sense that it's amazing to me that it you know people don't remember it certainly until the film came along people had no idea at all what dunkirk was and even those who knew thought about it as you know that little british bit that happened before america got involved and saved the day it's a hell of a lot more important than that it's a universal story of survival it was a miracle in the sense that so many troops got home when you know on the face of it didn't seem likely that very many would at all the fact that the british got home meant that britain didn't have to make a peace treaty with hitler britain didn't have to surrender if the troops had been destroyed the war would have been over and the consequences well would still be with us today there is no glory in war it is just survival [Music] i was born in 1918. a pretty poor family my mother wasn't a lovely lady and they couldn't control me so they said you will go to dr darda's home so i went when i was five till i was eight and then from there i went to norwich children's homes for two years and i went to suit cup homes and that was my early years and believe you me you can't understand life in those days it was pretty pretty rough pretty rough i joined the territorial army and at the age of 18. well i joined it because the cheap beer in the canteen and the girls like many uniforms i didn't really join it to become a soldier we joined the territorial army at brixton i was in front of the infantry my job was a dynamic tank gunner was to shoot the tanks we were cycling along with my friend and when was uncommon recruiting sergeant stopped us and said would you like to join now i mean we said yes he said how old are you and i told him 16 always says you're not old enough i said hang on a minute no i'm 17. so he signed me on in life with nothing is marvellous the uniform we tried again and again to prevent this war but now we are at war and we are going to make war and persevere in making war until the other side have had enough of it i was born in belgium antwerp then the war came because we had to get out the germans smashed our house to bits and of course we had to leave everything behind i was only nine war was declared september the 3rd 1939 in the end of september i was called up so i was in pretty quick i was conscripted i saw the war was coming and my father admires me to get out of the army and join the air force we had a medical for air crew i was wearing glasses i failed a medical and saved my life because majority of my class didn't live out the war so having glasses saved my life you looked upon it as an adventure at first you never realized you know what it was going to be i was 19 we didn't know what it was going to be well nobody could really really know like what would happen [Music] world war ii was the most savage and destructive global conflict in history in the wake of the german invasion of poland in september 1939 the british expeditionary force were dispatched to europe the very beginning of the war in 1939 you had the british expeditionary force traveling out to france these were young men who'd never been abroad before so it was an incredible experience for these people they were going out on the boats across and then train traveling across france you know clamoring to get to the windows to see what a foreign country was like not much was happening and they ended up meeting french people eating french food doing all sorts of things that they'd never done before and being away from home it was kind of an adventure for these young people is slow to anger and certainly never wanted this war but since it's been forced upon her she's fully determined to see it through no matter what sacrifices are demanded and those who are making the biggest sacrifice the fighting men are the most cheerful [Music] we went to cacho de brias which is a big chateau very nice we traveled across on christmas day landed in sherburg in france on boxing day so that was our christmas we went to a place called ghandicore up near the belgium border and i was in a machine gun battalion a lot different from being at home with your mum you know as i was able to drive i was put into the royal army service door which is all transport that winter of 1939 was a very severe winter deep snow it was so short of supplies and that was a trouble he was sleeping in halos and you were given one blanket between two and it was freezing in fact my pal and i got up one night and had a job in the snow we run as much as we could to try and get warm through that frozen soldiers were issued with food rations designed to meet their nutritional requirements you're given a tender bully beef like a corned beef a packet of biscuits like dog biscuits and that was your meals for the day these army biscuits you couldn't bite them you had to break them with something and make them soft and swollen so i said yes i'll have another one and i nearly broke the teeth brightening they were so hard they say the biscuits got a lot of energy in it so i'll say their word for that sometimes the cook gave us what he called stew but best not to ask what was in it [Music] the bef that went to europe in 1939 was a totally mechanized army but with scandalously inadequate training they were ill-equipped to fight a superior german army a lot of the troops weren't trained because they weren't really soldiers virtually all of them it was the first time they'd seen that it's amazing fact a lot of these people had never fired a gun literally never fired a gun by the time we went to france we just about knew which end of the machine gun the bullet came out we all we did much about you've given a bit of basic drill given rifle a little bit of target practice and then i was allocated a lot and that lorry you kept all the time what we used to do was run each other's jobs on an mtv i could file a gun strip it down quick that i could cops a boat that know everything about brothers well jack seems to be having a pretty exciting time at sea there's no doubt he's doing his bit all right here we are at home nice and comfortable sitting around the fireside do you know it makes me feel i'm not pulling my weight in this room may 1940 things looked bleak in europe as hitler's army unleashed devastating attacks on france belgium and the netherlands in may the action really began the germans went forward and so did the british expeditionary force move forward to meet them at a prearranged point in belgium but they hadn't been allowed into belgium up to this point the idea was belgium was staying neutral and would only get involved if it was attacked so once the germans moved into belgium so the british expeditionary force and the french move forward from their line in france forward into belgium to meet them first place we went to was brussels and the street we were in was empty he's been completely evacuated the civilians had just gone we got on the train in antwerp and it wouldn't move so we got off and we walked from belgium to france we walked all that way it's a beautiful day lovely sunny sky little white clouds and we was in this french village and i was walking across the square and out of a white cloud came as a german fighter swooped down machine gun but he was a rotten shot he missed me when germany started the blitz crew the 10th of may that's when we first met up with the germans went all the way along the river dial and the germans were on the other side firing in our guns and we were firing at their guns so we had a lysander up there sending the information to me and i informed the army so i eventually got there and towered and shot their aircraft down what was expected really it was a standoff like the first world war a war of attrition a war very little movement people thought they would be ending up in their own trenches facing the germany in their trenches because that's what they were used to but that's not what happened because the germans mounted this incredibly audacious attack through the our day using their panzer tanks and it just cut through the defenses people didn't think they could get through a foreign attack but the fact was they did and there were virtually no defenses behind it so they got straight through and in a matter of days they had reached the coast we found ourselves at a town called wyvern these stoopers would circle up and then pick their target and the leading ones to be diving down well we discovered that if you fired those who were circling could see the flash of the guns and they would probably bomb you so in the end we used to wait until the last one was in his dive he should come almost vertically and he couldn't alter it and that's the one we used to shoot at shot one down anyway that was quite satisfactory i heard that the germans are four miles away and i suddenly saw a roadblock soldiers coming through it was a guard brigade i said what are you buggers doing he said we've been told to retire to lille i said well i'm i've just left there and he said well you better hang about see what's going on so my officer he went and found out that we've got the move too so from there we went to arrest damian and fought the germans down there the allied armies were hampered by poor communications with no common leader they often operated solely with their own objectives in mind we didn't know where we were going and what we were doing the lack of communication between the british and the french in the build-up to duncan neither side really knew what the other was doing sergeant grover said hurry you put on that spot there with your gun and if any tanks come into you with their guns pointing toward their enemy if the guns are reversed they are friendly so i said okay sarge so i sat there with my gun and i said there's tanks coming south he said well shoot the bathroom then i said yeah well i can't see him oh right get on so carried on and some people they started foreign us younger blowness jesus this is terrible this is terrible and then suddenly my gun was hit and we were knocked out for a couple of minutes and suddenly but sure oh my shelby saw we're so sorry we thought you were the germans these are funny frenchmen in this tank as big of a house but we got about 17 characters in the lesson that was learned was that communication with their allies would have to be far far better in future and not only that their communication amongst themselves would have to be better [Music] the allied defenders were unable to match the sheer might and ferocity of the german blitzkrieg attack faced with superior air power and a more unified command they were a poor match for the german wehrmacht the german army was better equipped it was most certainly better trained and more experienced all her armaments were better than ours their machine guns were better their anti-tank guns were better their tanks were better always one step ahead of what we got they always had bigger tanks that could fire far distances they just stood out a range of hours and just knocked them out we had rifles but they weren't good my weapon was a webley 38 when it was time to fire them it was time to get out of it because you couldn't hit a barn door 10 feet with him the defenses of paris are airtight enemy planes will find a barrier of steel guarding the throbbing heart of france the bitter lesson of 1914 has resulted in the famous maginot line for mile after mile along france's eastern and northeastern frontier are lines of steel and concrete gun turrets connected underground by vast subterranean chambers here entire armies can be quartered in comfortable and air-conditioned surroundings they shall not pass is the historic war cry of the french soldier and the scissor-like crossfire of the maginot line makes doubly sure that the new world war will not be fought in france the allies could do little to stem the advance of the enemy in the town of wormhoot 17 miles from dunkirk british troops were overrun by advancing german forces i saw the best and the worst of war i had some wonderful friends and my colleagues were so brave there was a hundred soldiers put in a barn as business so the nazis came through one evening and they machine gun and shot every soldier in there and these men were murdered but unfortunately poli and callahan were still alive under their bodies with their mates and they stayed there with all their dead and dying and those dear ladies farmers wives put their in their grave i tell you one thing not all germans were bad all they were trying to kill each other and i don't suppose a lot of them wanted to be where they were any more than we did the funny thing is that i like the german people they're lovely a lot of people it was just these nazi troops i saw plenty of germans do you might say acts of mercy to wounded soldiers they would always attend them according to severity to their wounds regardless of what uniform whether it was gray or whether it was coral key and we used to do the same you know the ordinary german person that's about to fight i wish you to say to my men if you take any prisoners treat them as you would wish to be treated if the situation was reversed i mean after all they were human beings as hitler's forces moved through france at lightning speed the allies found themselves fighting against overwhelming odds had to be disciplined i didn't see any cowards only had one he was a driver i'm not going to tell you what his name was but he was a proper ladies man curly hair with a little moustache and his side cap on the side of his head and he was a boaster we couldn't find this fella he went missing and i found him lying in our slick trench so i said like where have you been he said i got lost and i said how did you get lost walking up in broad daylight behind someone else but anyway that was it so he used to give him the least responsible job which i thought wasn't quite fair you know the least dangerous job i know you had a wife and daughter what will your family think when you're branded a coward he said to me i don't care what you say or do to me he said i'm not driving this carrier up that road well the only thing you could do was to stop their pay not that we got much anyway and i wouldn't mind if he wasn't such a poster when he was out oh we did this we did that i said you did nothing you said crap your pants i don't know whether you call that trauma or what it would be several years after the events at dunkirk that military psychiatry became an essential element of medical provision those soldiers that come back from the front i know exactly how they feel i used to have a lot of flashbacks but i never i never had any treatment or anything never bothered about counselling you had to get on with that i didn't need counseling may i say the men of those days were a lot different than them today counseling kick up the backside bloody counselling load of rubbish there was anyone to give them counselling well not officially outnumbered outgunned and outmaneuvered the allied defenders fought a desperate retreat as the nazi war machine closed [Music] in [Music] the blitzkrieg operations of the germans had effectively encircled the british army in northern france the speed meant that it almost got to the point of cutting off any exit the effect of these tanks streaking through and reaching the coast meant that the british expedition force was effectively outplanned it meant that even before the fighting had begun in any real sense they already were on the back foot and they were going to have to retreat the british from purely pragmatic view saw that the battle was lost they knew it was going to end badly and they thought the only way we can stay in the war is to get our men away and then we can carry on the fight we knew things were boiling up and journalists came in at one end and we went out the other and the germans circled us around it happened so quickly the only way out was by water by that time the word was dunkirk that was the only escape for the british soldier along this road came this german star car the troll shot the driver the officer in the back jumped out and ran away but he left behind in the car his helmet his belt with his luger and a briefcase that was immediately taken to the division of and they realized this briefcase contained the plans for the german corps that was to attack duncan there were two days grace which allowed the french citizens to get out of dunkirk itself because it's been bombed heavily and the french soldiers barricade it so that they could defend it the situation was rapidly becoming desperate german tanks had reached the channel coast the maginot line had been outflanked with the french and belgian armies retreating on each side there was only one option for the bef withdrawal to dunkirk i was driving on this very twisty road and there was a bridge that had been hit and the rubber completely blocked you couldn't get through so i stopped and while looking at my map i suddenly saw someone coming up with the revolver in his hand so i grabbed my raffle ready to shoot and then realized it was a british officer he said where are you making for and i said that little village he said well good job for you that these bridges down because germans are then charged with that village and he said in case you don't know you're encircled so make for the beach so i drove back to where my company was but they'd gone montgomery was able to shift my division to fill up the gap where the german panzers were going to come through so we got to the comings canal where we took up position just in time before the germans arrived the other side we were there for about five days holding them back while the rest were getting away from dunkirk on the last night the germans got around us so we decided someone had to go back to our heatquarters and tell them what was happening so i volunteered so i ran up to this farm and on god outside was a friend of mine and he shot me from a few feet but but it wasn't serious it went through my shoulder right shoulder he thought i was a german and he said i'm sorry he said i i aim for your head well it was only a few feet from me i said it's a bloody good job you're rotten shot then on it john defeated and humiliated the allies were backed into a corner surrender seemed inevitable the war for europe was assumed to be won this incredible defeat because that's what it was it was a huge defeat looked as though it would wipe out the british army if the army was outflanked already all the germans had to do was to curve round and it would be completely surrounded and it was completely surrounded how on earth could it possibly do anything but surrender we heard from the general that they could not help us i knew we lost the war you thought well they're going to invade britain now and that's it i didn't know how we could uh possibly win at that stage we'd lost everything the whole british army all this equipment [Music] amid the unfolding chaos the bef headed for dunkirk as the british army moved back he became very clear to lord gort he was the commander-in-chief of the british army that if britain was going to survive in the war there would have to be some kind of evacuation and it became very clear that evacuation could only take place through dunkirk because bit by bit all the other ports came into german hands the only one that was still in that right hand was duncan now the british soldiers they didn't know why they were retreating we didn't know what was happening it was dark we just walked and walked and walked into bridals eventually we decided walked to where that smoke was coming from don't care they were sent into the retreat thinking maybe my unit's done something wrong and we're being punished and we've been sent back they didn't realize for a long time that they have been completely outflanked themselves and so back they came we got soon i said oh come on ken jump up i got a lovely big horse but i put him on board i said we're going to have a ride on this we started the ride i said no we can't do that the whole horse is going to get killed come on i'll forget let's go back and then we walked walked and that was it we handed over to french troops to hold the germans back while we got away so we drove to the outskirts of le pen and we were told there was someone there would meet us and tell us where to go because we got there was no one there so we walked into the sea i remember the water was about up to my chest overcame the love offer machine running along the beach there were no ships no boats at all there so they took us out the water and decided that each machine gun crew would find their own way we came across a farm and the farmer came out and said are you staying and we said well we're moving slowly and he said well here's the key of my house he said look after as long as you can because i'm going and leaving everything behind and then the signal came through evacuate so we evacuated and that was the end of that we were three weeks on the road we were in farmyard with all the animals we could help ourselves went into the nest boxes but we couldn't drink the water we couldn't drink nothing we could have nothing to drink i hadn't got any food no water nothing i said oh abby i said what we're going to do he said harry there's a there's a little bullet where he said we're going to shoot him up he's like he's going to hear him i could hear moaning for a whole thing so we shot him and he cut some joints of beef off and we had to stake that thing my god we did eventually meet the soldiers we with the cheshire regiment they were very good they fed us we had a lot of biscuits hard crust things horrible with the enemy on their heels the retreating army continued to the coast we were told that if you find a forces shock just go in and help yourself because the germans will have everything so i went in there and i got some cigarettes and my co-driver who'd never driven the laundry he got some whiskey he was a scotsman he was in the back of the lorry drunk and that was the last i saw until i got to the beach as thousands of defenseless civilians fled for their lives the soldiers witnessed scenes of countless horrors [Music] god i just can't believe we really can be doing this again there were so many refugees on the road and they just wanted to get out of the way so this really hampered the british retreat because they were retreating alongside hundreds of thousands millions of civilians who were also trying to get away so it's chaos you know the roads are chaos the whole atmosphere is one of chaos what is going to happen nobody knew we had to keep going but um the french did suffer or else we saw some terrible things there terrible the dead bodies on the side it was terrible [Music] the terrible sights were used to see of hundreds of people being murdered and bombed and blown up all these uh refugees with friends and horses and carts and of course the luftwaffe they were machine gunning to cause chaos to block the rose and just bomb anything they didn't care we went through so much death rotten bodies men adult soldiers horses cattle everything it was absolutely dreadful we saw an officer laid out he was he was dead lying on oh i said to him and all his little photographs were hanging out of his children and everything despite the horrors the soldiers had no choice but to keep moving people trying to help me help me it was a fiasco absolutely a fiasco when i saw those poor dad's been blown to pieces and you just ignore it and just ignore it you know it's happened and it's gone it's really terrible to see these women and children being injured and that but not much we could do about it like you know we couldn't save anybody when you're going through on an election with despair and you did your best but you know you had a job to do there was a little boy came home from school and found his house had been bombed and his fat mother and father killed and where's my mummy then he followed the soldiers with us they've got little carts and bikes and crumbs i can remember when we did nothing but do peasants feet their feet got bad how medic burned them up my feet were terrible the soldiers kept putting me on their backs because i couldn't walk anymore i was only a little kid i was awful but my my father gave up he he didn't want to he said i'm not going any further so the boss can have me deep in a complex of tunnels beneath dover castle the british began to formulate operation dynamo the person with the overall control of the evacuation was admiral bertram ramsey who was a trusted old naval hand and who was put in an extraordinarily difficult situation he was working from dover castle in fact working from the dynamo the message came through here that operation dynamo was to commence things would had to be done so quickly you hadn't got weeks to plan what to do it had to be done immediately the recovery was no ordinary military operation admiral ramsey devised an evacuation involving over 900 vessels [Music] the port of dunkirk had been almost completely destroyed by the luftwaffe it was almost unusable so all you had was the beaches the trouble was the ships were too large to come in close to the beaches the beaches were very very shallow it was a flat vast juni beach which is great if you want to sunbathe but if you're trying to get large destroyers up to it and get men off the beach it's it's impossible and that is what they found what was needed were smaller boats that could actually ferry the soldiers from the beaches to the larger naval and civilian ships offshore the british government appealed for small civilian craft to join the rescue mission the operation would become the biggest evacuation in military history desperate times call for desperate measures it came up by radio to begin with and that was it that's all people knew it wasn't until very late on in the evacuation that the newspapers and the radio even reported that there was an evacuation it was kept secret it was all done in such a rush the requirement to requisition the vessel sort of came overnight it was organized chaos and everybody who could lend a hand lend to hand a lot of the time the owners had no idea that their boats were being taken if the owner happened to be nearby then they could join in with the project if not the navy basically went along and just took them arriving at the outskirts of dunkirk many of the exhausted soldiers had not eaten for days i drove 48 hours kept falling asleep in the way and hitting the curb waking up and eventually arrived to the beach i went into a cafe and asked if we could have some water in our bottles because we'd had no drink and the lady said i'm sorry we've got no water in donko the germans have blown up the waterworks she said but i will fill it with van rouge for me so we had van roots for the beach i said look at that warehouse over there look it's empty there's nobody there i said give me your rifle so i got his rifle and i bang bang bang that five shots would have opened the door when i opened up this door you would never believe this it was full of neat jamaica rum loads of carbonation milk biscuits everything you wanted it's gonna be left for the germans dunkirk was a military disaster the loss of equipment to the british army was colossal as soon as they got to dunkirk the soldiers were surprised to hear that they were going to have to blow up their cars their tanks anything that they'd traveled in to get there the vast majority of the equipment that the british army had taken to france with them was lost all their heavy artillery virtually all their vehicles all those had to be abandoned in france because they couldn't get them back across the channel they were told to put sand into the tanks so that the engine would completely seize up because they didn't want the germans to have any of their equipment but as every soldier has drummed into him they didn't leave their rifles behind you put on a charge if you lose the rifle that was more valuable to them than your life my 1500 white van went into the canal with my kit bag camera with some films that would be worth a fortune now we smashed up all the lorries and we couldn't take it to england we took our machine guns out the lorry drove the lorries over the machine guns that they were destroyed then cut all the pipes on the lorries and left them running they'd seize up we've just got to smash everything up pour all the petal into the water didn't like doing it there was a big hotel on the seafront we went down into the cellar he dived in you know and we saw other people in there and this woman she said don't don't bother she said come in she said there was beds there and we laid there for a while you know it was all right but we couldn't go to the toilet or anything we had a machine gun on the top where they were firing keep the enemy away but it didn't seem to make any difference you couldn't do anything with money there was money lying in the streets [Music] after we got to the beach the lieutenant said to me your air force and these are all army and if they get hold of you you'll get beaten up because they could see no support on the air he said well what you'll have to do take your shoes off and put some boots on a macintosh and a tin head so i was completely disguised as an armature as tens of thousands of soldiers congregated on the sands at dunkirk they were confronted with scenes of destruction they would never forget it was all on fire down the beach we got attacked by the bombers and the supers were coming down dive bombing on the beach people don't realize but my god you saw your mates been blown to pieces ships being blown apart you had big cannons going off we were powerless in the shelter we just got out of the sun i can remember being in the back of a big sandbank and i could hear bullets going in the other side of it we just had to lay in the sand it's all rather nasty prices and bombers kept coming over they're sitting down in the beach no protecting at all and you just sat on the beach and nowhere to go so we just sat there and hoped that they'd miss you you used to make a duvet you'd dig up the sand put a tent roof on it and make a hole so you could caught it the part of the beach that i was on there was no offices at all we just had to look after ourselves i don't even seen an officer there everybody was looking at himself there's bodies lying all over the place we had to bury a lot and where we buried them they put bottles and i didn't know till well recently they put the bottles there to know where they were buried so that they could take them up again morale plummeted to a previously unknown level as the soldiers waited without surprise or hope [Music] for about four days hadn't got any food no water nothing 40 hours on the beach no food no water nothing we couldn't drink the water we couldn't drink nothing oh it was terrible there were people going out their minds some just i suppose just gave up i don't know yeah they cook about uh 24 stone and he found an old bicycle and he was running around the beach on his bicycle [Music] the feeling of despair was in your mind all the time you didn't know what was going to happen you were just not you couldn't think ahead and we did you know wonder what was gonna happen as they waited under a hail of bombs and machine gun fire the defenseless soldiers felt abandoned by the royal air force there was a general sense amongst the army on the beach that they had been abandoned by the raf there was enough defense where was the aircraft coming there was none there i never saw one british plane they didn't know much well we hadn't got many planes don't we the royal air force and fighting command were being vilified by the soldiers and sailors who felt the raf weren't defending them with duncan every time they looked up in the sky they only saw germans where were the raf we had one rf spitfire come across the beach and everybody cheered every place and this british plane came down machine countries it was a jet fire that had been captured by the germans and the germans were useless airmen who had been downed or working on the ground were trying to get back on board ships to go back to britain they were basically turned away or they were attacked by people saying you're not getting on board you haven't helped us off you go that's how much they were building i thought that was a bit uncalled for we heard when we came back to england how the raf were protecting the troops on the beach well not on our bed weakened by losses during the french campaign the raf couldn't stop the german air assault but they could hamper it the soldiers and the sailors simply believed that the raf weren't there the fact is it was really unfair because the raf were there the air battles over dunkirk were actually quite intense they were there they just weren't directly over the beach the spitfire overflying the beach is going at well over 300 miles an hour and he's going to be over the beach for a fraction of a second a couple of seconds at most the air-to-air combat that took place to try and stop the germs from getting to the beach was seven miles in land so would have been out of the line of sight of the of the guys on the beach anyway they were there perhaps not over the beaches but a bit farther in land or out to seas you had this extraordinary standoff and of course at the time in the battle of britain the entire attitude to the raf changed and they became the nation's heroes as german divisions pressed in on the perimeter of dunkirk the bef were on the verge of annihilation their fate balanced on a knife edge i'll tell you something when we're around all that far on the beach i don't think there are any atheists i'd never stop playing a lot of them might have changed their minds when they got off but we just had a saying we used to dig these small trenches which he called slick trenches and they used to say there were no atheists in the slit trench you know what i mean when all this nasty stuff was coming so that's just my personal opinion it was wonderful to see so many men praying that they told me not playing since but i did a lot we were in the center for a week and they brought out baskets with the rosaries in and we all had to have a rosary we all stood there and prayed my mother was very courageous she said if we get through dunkirk we'll get through anything and she was right on the 27th of may 1940 senior naval officer captain william tennant arrived at dunkirk to coordinate the evacuation realized okay we don't have the port but what we do have is this long break water this long arm called the mold was never intended for a ship to come alongside never at all it was just to stop the sand running into the harbor and silting it he immediately saw the prospect of tying ships up alongside this mall and using it as a keysight from which troops could then embark onto the vessels what he did was to bring one ship alongside the mall to see you know will this work and it did an armada of ships crewed by the royal navy and civilian volunteers sailed through the treacherous waters of the channel many would face scenes they had never witnessed before it's terrible there's something i've never seen before pete was getting children these days coming there and being warmer all the time it wasn't organic to me i can understand the emergency just get over there get what you can push it back over the majority of the little ships that came over were actually commandeered boats that were taken across by members of the royal navy and these members of the royal navy very often didn't even know how the boats work a lot of new things one boat had 60 people when it come and it was up there when it shook you the boat was right down about two foot from the gunnel the purpose of little tips was to take people from the beaches onto the bigger ships offshore so you know they might do this time and time and time again [Music] i went in about nine o'clock and come out about four well done about two quick back and forward picking up people you kept going out to see charlie getting the ball they always filled up before we got to them i'm getting one of those i slept on the table i can't go back again i was let's dive in we stood on that mountain we waited ages together oh my god we kept waving to ships asking them to stop for us a lot of them passed mommy had a nightie she's kept waving stopping i'm british [Music] [Applause] the sailors came under merciless attack by the luftwaffe ships were being destroyed left right and center so it was hell that you were going into a third of the ships that took part were destroyed or put out of action so it was a hugely dangerous undertaking it was kind of horrible we're always doing just swimming about in the water with no legs no feet and putting them [Music] the dangers were many for a start you had to know where the minefields were they were minefields that had been laid by admiral ramsey but they were enormous you could be run over by a boat that couldn't see you or you could find that the sea was a fire because when any of these large boats go down the engines explode and the diesel ends up all over the surface we could easily be shot a lot of the people on the boats that came back dead had been shot by german aircraft or they were being bombed out of the water a lot of people didn't survive the crossing as the first boat started coming in they lifted the boom up and watched a boat come in half of whom were dead i come into dover and the blokes were shooting us up okay tell them stop falling were english and there was four reflect out at 12 [Music] as the battle raged in land across the sky and into the sea all hands worked to the absolute limits of their endurance nobody talked to each other when he was in full uniform i just waded out out of my neck in water because i saw this ship and it was a paddle streamer i got horrible rope we pulled on board and that was the last thing i remember i just passed out when i come to they'd carried me downstairs where the boilers were in my uniform soaking wet drying out powder boilers we saw a coaster and it was on its side and it appeared to be on fire there's all smoke coming from it but we saw some people getting on it and so we went and explored they were burning all the rags to make how it was on fire so we got on the boat and this boat must have been used for taking cold it was all cold us every time a shell bomb burst all this cold dust came out and there i saw you was looking like the black and white menstrual cup everybody was trying to get out somehow and then the little ships came over picked up a lot of people come on you blokes next stop stover we were absolutely thrilled and you then prayed and prayed and prayed to get back to dover we got to the mall and eventually we got to a fishing trawler called the lord grey and he counted us on and he said that's enough now off you go so laid down went asleep straight away we got on the boat full of russians got 10 rounds in pocket the coat was wet and the ammunition was wet so i put because on top of the engine works the hot bits in the ship and uh forgot it and i went to sleep when i woke up we were halfway over the chapel the chap on the boat said anybody got any ammunition so that reminded me i called was on top of the heating stuff i thought you'd go off any minute and i went in and catched it out it nearly burnt me i was straight quick my mother hadn't said she said we're not going for the big [ __ ] because they were bombing them like lilia so we've got this little oil tank before this button we had the captain's cabin and we were told we could be bombed any minute it was so dangerous to get through all this debris and everything we had to go through fire to get out the bombs were coming down and the machine's going to be fired at us all through some concern some guys bobbin torment dominant tommy you cannot believe hell that you can be if you're ready and with all the bologna in there what people are saying about not being scared you can't help being scared and you then prayed and prayed and prayed to get back to nowhere what happened we got back it was wonderful wonderful wonderful so good luck daylight we were shattered absolutely shattered but what a feeling it was that you know we're back in england and when you say it was a miracle and we're just happy to be alive our company was 107 strong and it was just 31 overall over 107 the british army who had left the shores of france in the depths of despair were welcomed home as conquering heroes [Music] we just lost a battle but these people in england were treating us like heroes the thing that i could still say to this day doesn't sound very much i know but it was amazing as we came into harris there were hundreds of women on the docks and they'd all obviously been told as soon as the ship started coming up grab a soldier and look after him standing on the key so i have all these lovely ladies and they all wanted to get hold of the wounded hero me and i was in more trouble from these ladies from the wbs and any bloody german they were all trying to grab me the medical officer said you're still warm you'll do it some lady got hold of my arm took me into a hangar gave me some tea and sandwiches my co-driver he survived and he was telling everybody that i saved his life well i didn't really i was driving the lorry he was in a back drunk and i got him to the beach and got him out before we decided to load so in a while i suppose you could say i saved him but not really when we finally reassembled i was surprised at how many of my battalions managed to get back there was a miracle we got out the people were very good when we got to england they helped us out gave us clothes we had nothing yet we stripped and crashed and tuned fumigated god knows what duncan to me was an epic of absolute bravery i went through hell to get out of hell i got back safe and sound that's how i feel [Music] operation dynamo was the biggest military evacuation in history the campaign narrowly avoided a surrender to hitler and was a major turning point of world war ii but to the soldiers who returned in 1940 it represented failure the british soldiers who were evacuated back saw themselves as a sort of battered remnants of a defeated army they've been part of a terrible defeat they came home ashamed well evacuation we got on a boat and that was it these were heroes because they'd survived and it meant that we had a future in britain what dunkirk did was it enabled the british to stay in the war it was a triumph in that they managed to get away far far more people than they thought they would it was amazing you know how many they showed they were only expected to achieve a maximum of 45 000 troops they were managed in the end to reach out and save over 338 000 men the british army had survived [Music] the mood of national euphoria captured the british public [Music] the smoke of battle hangs over dunkirk that brought just across the channel from which thousands of men of the bef are coming home magnificent rearguard action carried out by the british and french armies in the north is only equaled by the splendid work of the navy in covering their embarkation and bringing them home the soldiers return aboard warships and vessels of all kinds they've been fighting unceasingly for two weeks and the whole world has marveled at their tremendous courage and unshaken discipline under brilliant leadership and never in the whole history of her defeats and her victories has britain been prouder of her fighting son glad to be it would be a long road to eventual victory world war ii would continue for another five years but the events at dunkirk made the next step in that journey possible a lot of guys went off on leave for a few days just to recover you were all given that three goals station wall monster came in and he said i'm afraid chapter valley here is at six o'clock but seeing that you were at dunkirk you can get up at half past seven or eight o'clock and have a breakfast and that's it the men of the bef have been enjoying some respite from danger after their heroic withdrawal from flanders here in a rest camp they dust themselves down sort themselves out and indulge in a little music my pal and i we were together all through the war we both survived dunkirk but when we went out to the boat we sort of somehow went different directions and i assumed that he'd either killed or taken a prisoner and he thought the same about me and next morning when i was walking up the street to get a breakfast and walking down in the opposite direction was my pal ginger and he suddenly spotted me and came and put his arms around me with a lot like long lost lovers and um we both thought the other in paris i mean the sculpture i had was absolutely amazing ginger and i were in there cinema i can't believe what the film was called but we were in there and um got hit by a bomb and there's over 500 people killed in it and him and i walk out just covered in dust operation dynamo has been the subject of multiple films the 2017 release of christopher nolan's dunkirk focused the world's attention once again on the events that changed the course of world war ii i just think it's one of the great stories in human history i am very excited to have some of the veterans who are actually there participating in the events we screened the film and it was one of the most daunting things i faced as a filmmaker to stand in front of those people who were really there who are now well into their 90s and show them you know our version of their story we went to the first showing of dunkirk i was on the red carpet up there leicester square and they were coming along doing their cup [Applause] it was standing here it was a good film the only people realized what they've dunkirk spirit was with people who were there no one else can imagine what it was like i thought it was very good there was a couple of little minor things that i could have folded but in general it was it was pretty accurate i sat on my backside watching the baloney i thought it's going to be a load of american rubbish and i was quite pleasantly surprised i thought it was pretty accurate it wasn't my walk how can you make what we went through you cannot do it prince harry invited me to the palace what a marvelous man that he is but i was only the second oldest man [Music] [Music] this lady she pushed me for a little while and someone came up in the palace and he said to me do you know that was i said no he said that was kate well i didn't know it was because she was at the back of me he was so charming prince harry he came down and chatted to us all he was very very nice i couldn't get my shoes on because my feet swell and i had to go in my slippers i said to prince harry i apologize for having the slippers on he said at least the royal blue very much indeed i would say we were heroes and i thank god you

Channel: Timeline - World History Documentaries

Views: 124,339

Keywords: History, Full Documentary, Documentaries, Full length Documentaries, Documentary, TV Shows - Topic, Documentary Movies - Topic, 2017 documentary, BBC documentary, Channel 4 documentary, history documentary, documentary history, dunkirk, battle of britain, operation dynamo, ww2, british history, britain in the war, finest hour, winston churchill

Id: RrY-I0iyPhU

Length: 72min 34sec (4354 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 27 2021