‘Disaster’ movie

The recent film on Dunkirk rightly pays tribute to the many small craft and their crews who so greatly assisted the evacuation, but it leaves out most of the inconvenient facts.

Dunkirk was an utter disaster on an unimaginable scale. Yes, 338,226 troops were evacuated, two-thirds of them British. But they had been sent to France to fight the Germans. Instead they ran away, abandoning 2,472 guns, 63,879 vehicles and an incredi- ble 76,097 tons of ammunition. This was not an orderly retreat but a mad scramble to get away. Many arrived on the beaches without as much as their rifles.

Even Winston Churchill was obliged to state in the Commons that it was far from a victory but a defeat, and indeed one of the worst in the history of British warfare.

What I found even more disappointing in the film was therewasnotasmuchasa“ps” pointing out that for ten days after the evacuation was completed, the Highland Division, alone and deserted, continued to fight the might of Rommel and his panzers in the Falaise Peninusla, but I suppose that almost hidden truth doesn’t fit in too well with the myth.

JOSEPH G MILLER Gardeners Street, Dunfermline