Free Dunkirk: The Men They Left Behind by Sean Longden

skin of the men walking these streets. They could smell nothing but the heavy smoke. Indeed, the retreating soldiers could taste the very air around them as they advanced through a rain of burning embers towards the port and its waiting ships. By contrast, burst water mains sent water pouring into the streets. It mattered little that the water mains had been shattered; there was no one left to put out the fires.
    In scenes that had become chillingly familiar throughout the retreat, the corpses of men and animals lay unattended where they had fallen. No one troubled to cover the dead or record their names. The swollen forms of the horses that had pulled French gun carriages into Dunkirk lay beside the wreckage of their weapons. Taking no notice of the stench of death, the soldiers marched onwards, stepping over the corpses. As he looked around, in streets lit only by the fires, with tangled trolley wires above his head and twisted corpses beneath his feet, Bill Holmes couldn’t help but compare the scene to Old Testament tales of the wrath of God. It seemed that Dunkirk must be facing the vengeful wrath of its maker.
    Yet this was a human tragedy, not divine intervention. This was the work of the Luftwaffe and the German gunners. On every corner, in every street, the evidence of their ferocious assault could be found. The rubble of fallen buildings filled the streets. Glass crunched under every footfall of the weary soldiers and clouds of hot dust were kicked up from beneath their boots. Amid scenes worthy of Armageddon, drunken soldiers roamed the streets, their boots crushing the shop contents strewn across the cobblestones. Leaderless and uncertain of what they should do, drunken looters raided shops, carrying away radios, clothing, food and drink. In the chaos, small groups of men sat around eating whatever they could find – one group, who had not eaten for days, gorged themselves on a combination of bananas and tinned beetroot.
    In the last days before the fall of Dunkirk, anarchy reigned. Officers took little notice of drunks or looters. When terrified soldiers refused to leave their basement shelters and make their way to the port, officers simply ignored them. Instead they devoted their energies to those men who wanted to be saved.
    Territorial anti-aircraft gunner and former City of London office worker Leslie Shorrock was one of the thousands whose fate was determined on the beaches. Since having been given the order to destroy his vehicle and head to the coast, he had trudged across ploughed fields, clambered through hedgerows, stumbled in and out of ditches and crossed canals on makeshift wooden bridges. All the time he had walked in virtual silence, hardly passing a word with the men around him. It was as if each of them had been consumed by his own personal drama.
    Upon arriving at the coast, Shorrock saw thousands of soldiers filling the beaches that spread eastwards towards the flames of Dunkirk. He later wrote of the scene:A vast queue of men, three or four abreast, stretched from the top of the beach down to the sea, a distance of hundreds of yards. It was a very warm sunny day, with a clear blue sky, the sea appeared very calm and immediately in front of me, approximately one quarter of a mile from the beach, a large ship was slowly sinking bow first … As I stepped on to the beach at the top I saw immediately in front of me, lying on his back in the sand, a dead British soldier, partly covered with a gas cape and on top of his chest his army pay book, with his name written thus, Driver Barraud RASC. 14
     
    In the hours that followed he watched as officers were forced to draw their weapons to control crowds of soldiers all intent on rushing to gain a place on the departing boats. The scenes of chaos and desperation convinced him there was little future in the operation. Subsequently he fell asleep and lost contact with his mates. What followed would influence the course of the next five years of his