After Nazi Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, France and the British Empire declared war on Germany and imposed an economic blockade. The British Expeditionary Force (BEF) was sent to help defend France. On 10th May 1940, Germany invaded Belgium, the Netherlands and France, pushing the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), along with French and Belgian troops, back into Northern France. Commander of the BEF, General Viscount Gort, immediately saw evacuation across the Channel as the best course of action, and began planning a withdrawal to Dunkirk, the closest port of sufficient size for an evacuation. A huge rescue, ‘Operation Dynamo’, was organised by the Royal Navy to get the troops off the beaches and back to Britain. Below, British troops in Dunkirk making their way to the rescue boats:
On the first day, 26th May, only 7,669 Allied soldiers had been evacuated, but by the end of the eighth day, 338,226 soldiers had been rescued by a hastily assembled fleet of over 800 boats. Many troops were able to embark from the harbour onto 39 British Royal Navy destroyers, four Royal Canadian Navy destroyers, and a variety of civilian merchant ships, while others had to wade out from the beaches, waiting for hours in shoulder-deep water (pictured below):
A flotilla of hundreds of merchant marine boats, fishing boats, pleasure craft, yachts, and lifeboats was called into service from Britain. These have become known as the Dunkirk ‘little ships’. They included the Mersey Ferry ‘Royal Daffodil’, and a boat sailed by Charles Herbert Lightoller, the most senior surviving member of the crew from the Titanic. These small craft either carried men directly back to England or ferried them out to larger craft waiting offshore. They were manned by a mixture of military and civilian crews and were, for the most part unarmed, and had to cross the English Channel, operating under frequent aerial attack from the German Luftwaffe. The courage shown by the Allies has been enshrined in the phrase ‘Dunkirk Spirit’.
The BEF lost 68,000 soldiers during the French campaign and had to abandon nearly all of its tanks, vehicles, and equipment. However, if the BEF had been captured, it would have meant the loss of Britain’s only trained troops and the collapse of the Allied morale. In his speech to the House of Commons on 4th June, Churchill reminded the country that “we must be very careful not to assign to this deliverance the attributes of a victory. Wars are not won by evacuations.”
Kippax had at least 10 men at Dunkirk, as well as the four listed in the table below. William Stead and Jack Weston are featured in the Decorated Soldiers section, Ivor Ashcroft and Jack Watts Booth are in the Serving Families section, and John Finneran and Dennis Burton are in the Prisoners of War section.
Below: Two rescue boats make their way across the channel packed with soldiers.
Kippax Roll of Honour 