The 9 Days Britain Expected to Lose Its Entire Army

WW2, from the records. https://warshelf.com/ May 26, 1940, three minutes to seven in the evening. The signal reaches Dover: Operation Dynamo is to begin. In a tunnel under the castle, Admiral Ramsay is told he has about two days, and he hopes to lift forty-five thousand men. Nearly all of Britain's trained army is in the pocket around Dunkirk, and the men who can't be lifted are expected to be killed or captured. Rundstedt's panzers have halted fifteen miles out, and Hitler confirms the halt because Göring has promised to finish the job from the air. Calais holds to the last. Gort, on his own authority, sends two divisions north to plug the gap the Belgians are leaving. The first full day brings out 7,669 men. Then Captain Tennant puts ships alongside the East Mole, a breakwater never built for it, and close to two hundred thousand men walk out along its planking. Destroyers go down at the Mole and in the dark, and the small boats ferry men off the beaches to the ships in deeper water. In London, Churchill refuses to ask Hitler for terms. On June 2 Tennant signals three words: BEF evacuated. When the Admiralty closes Dynamo on June 4, the count is 338,226 men. Churchill had hoped for twenty or thirty thousand. The army came home without its guns, its tanks or its vehicles, but it came home.