WHAT DUNKIRK SPIRIT REALLY MEANS
EIGHTY years ago on Tuesday a hastily assembled fleet of fishing trawlers, pleasure craft, and lifeboats set sail for northern France.
Hitler’s army had driven the depleted British Expeditionary Force back to the port of Dunkirk and they faced obliteration.
But, over six days, those 800 little ships rescued 380,000 men. And Churchill dubbed Operation Dynamo “a miracle of deliverance”.
Lewis Earl, a 20-year-old gunner was one of the last men off the beach having held the line in a bloody rearguard action. And I had the privilege of meeting him on his 100th birthday last week.
Lew is still sharp as a tack and lives independently so he is isolating alone during lockdown.
And he smiled wryly when I suggested the Dunkirk spirit could get us through this pandemic.
“I know you mean ‘grit your teeth and get on with it,’” he said.
“But there is really no comparison to what we went through in 1940.” Then he told me of the horrors he had witnessed and how he hid in sand dunes under German fire, until one last fishing boat arrived.
“We just buried our heads and hoped for the best,” he said.
“It’s amazing really, the way you got used to death – to seeing mates getting knocked off.
“It was brutal and bloody and a lot of lives were lost. But someone must have been smiling on me.”
On the anniversary of that miracle deliverance, Lew will toast the comrades who never made it home.
And I will raise a glass to a man who taught me the true meaning of the Dunkirk spirit.