Book Review Dunkirk

BOOK REVIEW

DUNKIRK BY JOSHUA LEVINE

 

William Collins, 2017 London

 

The huge black and white photo of an

officer dawning a military uniform

dominated my grandmother's room.

Who was he ? The photo remained an

inexplicable conundrum. It seemed sad.

It was in keeping with this ancient grey

granite town Dunfermline which had

known better days as the former capital

of Scotland where the palace now

stood in ruins and a plaque at a tower

reminded tourists of how ;

'The King sits in Dunfermline town,

Drinking his blood red wine. '

I asked my grandmother "who was

the man in the photo ? " only to be

told he was Uncle Alan and shown some

old mementos . My mother told me

not to keeping asking questions as

it upset my grandmother. He had met

a premature death.

It was my Uncle Jim who broke this

long tense silence. He told me :

"Your uncle was sent as part of the

British Expeditionary Force to fight

the Germans and he and his chums

got stuck in Dunkirk. They were asked

to guard the retreat to the beach by an

officer. After placing a machine gun

at the top of a road they looked back

only to discover the rest of the soldiers

and their officer had fled. So they also

did not wait around and ran away. They

ended up on the beaches of Dunkirk

being bombed by Stuka dive bombers.

When one plane dived to drop a bomb

they ducked for cover. When your

Uncle rose he called to his friends but

they did not get up! They were all dead.

Well, your Uncle jumped into the sea to

a ship in the far distance and swam to

it. When he got there he was exhausted

but taken aboard. He was taken back to

England."

I now grasped my Grandmother's

reticence. Of course, I had heard a lot

about Dunkirk but not in concrete detail.

So I was pleasantly surprised to come

across a well written, readable and

intriguing book :' Dunkirk ', by Joshua

Levine. It was fascinating! I could hardly

put it down. It took me just two days to

read it. The reason it is captivating is that

the book attempts to see Dunkirk not

through the eyes of a scholar or one

authoritative source but the soldiers,

sailors and airmen who were there. The

book also boasts of an exclusive

interview with the Film Director Chris

Nolan who made a recent film about it.

 

For anyone unfamiliar about Dunkirk the

basic narrative was that the Germans

launched an offensive, on 10th May 1940

through the Lowlands and into France

against the combined forced of the

French and British. The French

presumed that their Maginot line was

impregnable and that they would

easily repel any attack. However, the

Germans launched operation Sickle

Stroke where they poured 1 million

soldiers and 1500 tanks through the

Ardennes forest at break net speed.

They side stepped the Maginot line

splitting the allied forces in two even

surrounding them. The British decided

to evacuate their army and successfully

rescued 340,000 British and French

troops from the 26th of May to the 4th

of June 1940. However, the losses were

still staggering . Nine allied destroyers

and 200 civilian vessels were destroyed.

Many soldiers were taken prisoner, lost

and equipment abandoned.

 

Levine attempts to put the whole war in

context and covers the historical

background to the war. I learnt a lot of

new facts about this event. The author

argues that everyone has their own

narrative of Dunkirk and we should not

be too judgmental. Levine records

soldiers cracking up, taking off their

clothes to commit suicide by running

into the sea and some soldiers digging

themselves into sand dunes to escape

the reality of war. One of the most

amusing incidents is how some soldiers

were seen sailing aboard a door with

bottles of wine to refresh themselves.

When the rescue plan Operation

Dynamo was conceived, the High

Command estimated they would be

lucky enough it they could save 40,000

soldiers. In fact, they ended up saving

almost ten times that number.

Levine explains why. He tells of how

soldiers and sailors improvised piers,

soldiers repelled German attackers and

the Royal Air Force did a lot to keep

the German planes from attacking

those on the beach. The rescue

operation was helped by so many

civilians in small vessels as well as

destroyers.

What emerges from reading the book is

the chaos, confusion and panic of the

retreat from the Germans. There was also

a lot of paranoia which led to an innocent

British airman who had bailed out being

shot as suspected German spy and so

many others. Levine mentions how the

resentment against the R.A.F. was not

justified as they were fighting against

German planes far from Dunkirk to stop

them taking off . The soldiers on the

ground could not see how their action

was imperceptibly saving lives. One

poor airman who was stuck on the

beach was not allowed to board a ship

because of this anger. He spent the rest

of the war as a prisoner of the Germans.

Levine who worked as a history

consultant on Nolan's film Dunkirk

writes: 'One of the things that stuck

Nilo Otero as he worked on the film was

how semi religious Dunkirk was as an

experience for the British people. 'It

was the first time anything went right

in this fucking war', he says. 'It literally

was a miracle . An actual miracle. And

I think the British people took it as a

sign that this could go right.'

Bemused British soldiers returning to

Britain who expected to be scolded by

the public found instead they were

welcomed home as heroes and given

free food, drinks and compliments by

complete strangers. Churchill

reinterpreted Dunkirk not as a defeat

but a moral and spiritual victory! The

army had survived to fight another day .

Levine quotes a survivor George Wagner

state: "We wanted to survive as a

country. It was about comradeship and

everyone together helping".