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When I was about 15 years old, I wrote a screenplay about the Dunkirk evacuation.
I'd first learned about this incident in my ninth grade world history class, and it was essentially my first introduction to how so much history has been a result of pivotal points which easily could have produced a drastically different outcome. Instead of being a humiliating defeat where the bulk of Britain's army was captured on the shores of France, the successful evacuation of hundreds of thousands of soldiers from Dunkirk provided a surprising boost of morale and resolve even as it represented a low point for the Allies in World War II.
I wrote the script because I was surprised to find that there were practically no films that addressed this episode from the war. I haven't looked at this work in years, although I seem to remember that it's packed with cheesy war movie tropes and cliches. At the same time, I tried my best to do a historically accurate portrayal of the evacuation, referencing several major events from the multi-day process.
When I found out Christopher Nolan was directing a movie on the Dunkirk evacuation, I was thrilled. I saw it on opening weekend, and believe it was done exceptionally well. It's been received pretty well by critics and audiences as well, although the Internet age also brings hordes of people who pick apart movies and shout their flaws to the heavens.
Personally, I thought the main drawback to Dunkirk was that it didn't exactly show the scope of the evacuation. Nolan is famously adverse to CGI, so the film is largely reliant on real fighter planes, ships, and thousands of extras. It looks amazing, but it also looks like the British are desperately trying to evacuate a few thousand people with a handful of boats instead of hundreds of thousands with substantially larger flotillas.
Having researched the evacuation and tried my hand at writing a screenplay on this topic, I know it's a really tall order to try to put the incident in its proper context, show the variety of different events occurring at the same time, discuss how the evacuation was organized and carried out, and portray some of the most important events that took place while the Dunkirk beachhead was open. Still, there have already been some other analyses of the historical accuracy of Dunkirk, and it gets pretty good marks.
The Miracle of Dunkirk by Walter Lord and The Sands of Dunkirk by Richard Collier give a good overview of the evacuation, and I wouldn't be surprised if they were some of Nolan's reference material. A few scenes in Dunkirk hint at the larger story, or at individual incidents that actually happened:
Leaflets make good toilet paper
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The first scene of Dunkirk shows a group of British soldiers walking through a deserted village as German leaflets demanding surrender drift down. One of the soldiers, Tommy, collects a few of them. We later see him go over to a secluded part of the beach, pull his pants down, and abandon this would-be toilet after noticing another soldier nearby.
The soldiers at Dunkirk faced a number of critical supply shortages, including water and food. Toilet paper was also in scarce supply, so the leaflets were greeted with something less than dread. Lord writes, "In the 58th Field Regiment, most men treated the leaflets as a joke and a useful supply of toilet paper."
The death glare of the French
Under fire from advancing German troops, Tommy is nearly killed by his own allies when he comes upon a defensive line around Dunkirk. The French soldiers at the barricade wave Tommy through, but give him a few withering looks as he enters the beachhead.
One criticism of Dunkirk is that it doesn't show enough of the French actions at the evacuation, but this scene sums it up pretty nicely. The French were instrumental in holding the line around Dunkirk to buy the British enough time to evacuate, but weren't exactly pleased that their allies were leaving the European continent. By the end of May, Lord writes, "Paris was full of rumors and recriminations...mostly to the effect that the British were running home, leaving the French holding the bag."
Thousands of British troops were also involved in the rearguard at Dunkirk, and the evacuation effort also rescued more than 100,000 French soldiers (many of whom weren't able to be redeployed on the Continent before the fall of France). But some 40,000 French troops were captured after the Germans finally took Dunkirk, compared to a relative handful of British soldiers. The evacuation that inspired the "Spirit of Dunkirk" in England also caused some resentment among the French, who had made considerable sacrifices to help the British get home. It didn't help that the British bombarded a French fleet in Algeria about a month after the evacuation in order to prevent the ships from falling into enemy hands.
The "Jericho trumpet"
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Soon after Tommy arrives at Dunkirk, a squadron of Stuka dive bombers attacks the men on the beach. There's a standard dive bomber sound effect that's been used in plenty of films, and it was apparently derived from a recording of the Stuka. But instead of using a common sound effect which is also used for falling anvils in cartoons, this scene in Dunkirk is accompanied by a nightmarish shriek as the planes hurtle toward the ground and unleash their bombs.
The Junkers Ju 87 Stuka was able to plunge in a near-vertical dive, allowing the pilot to drop bombs with deadly accuracy. During one upgrade of the bomber's design, someone came up with the idea of incorporating a psychological warfare element into the Stuka. The plane had sirens, driven by propellers, which produced a distinctive terrifying sound during a dive. The demoralizing effect was further enhanced by the simple addition of toy whistles to the bombs, which gave off their own piercing noise as they plummeted toward the earth.
The sirens were nicknamed "Jericho trumpets," and helped ensure that the Stukas were a much-feared aircraft during the early part of the war. However, the sirens also had the effect of reducing the bomber's airspeed, and they became less effective psychologically as soldiers became more accustomed to the sound. It also helped that the Stukas were less suited for the aerial combat of the Battle of Britain; the same plane that had menaced the British at Dunkirk was soon being knocked out of the skies with relative ease.
Not taking it lying down
During the Stuka attack scene, a few soldiers start taking potshots at the dive bombers with their rifles. One soldier shows a bit of stiff upper lip by simply lying on his back and blazing away. The photo above shows how this was a fairly common practice; the troops on the beach had little to attack the Luftwaffe with, but that didn't stop them from shooting back with small arms fire. There were at least some claims by soldiers that they had managed to down a German plane with a lucky rifle or machine gun shot.
In some scenes in Dunkirk, suspiciously silent antiaircraft guns are visible. According to Lord, an order was sent to have the AA gunners and batteries active throughout the evacuation efforts while any wounded were to be sent off. The instructions were muddled, with an officer mistakenly believing that the gunners were to evacuate; rather than leaving the guns to be captured by the enemy, he reasoned, it was better to destroy them. The AA guns joined an enormous collection of abandoned and destroyed Allied war materiel on the beach.
Attack on the mole
Early in Dunkirk, an officer named Commander Bolton desperately tries to keep a hospital ship from sinking next to the harbor's mole. The effort isn't quite successful, and the funnel and masts of the ship are visible poking out of the water in a few subsequent scenes.
First, a quick word on what a mole is. This refers to a pier or causeway used to protect a harbor. Since the harbor at Dunkirk had been rendered useless by enemy bombing, the mole was left as the most useful pier from which troops could embark on larger ships.
It's not to say the mole didn't endure significant attacks during the course of the evacuation. The worst one occurred on May 29, 1940, when German bombers found several ships clustered at the mole and managed to destroy or damage several of them. The destroyer Grenade had to be towed clear before she exploded, and hundreds of soldiers died when the paddle steamer Crested Eagle was set ablaze.
Two ships, the packet steamer Fenella and trawler Calvi, were sunk at their berths. Collier's description of the Calvi sounds similar to the image of the sunken hospital ship: "Still above the water, her masts and funnel protruding, Calvi's white ensign of battle streamed, a last gesture of defiance." Another packet steamer, the King Orry, sank not far from the mole after being critically damaged by near misses, leaving the following scene:
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The "little ships" of Dunkirk have rightfully been praised for their bravery and usefulness in ferrying troops off the beaches, but in truth most of the soldiers were evacuated from the mole. Of the nearly 340,000 who made it to England, some 240,000 boarded ships at the East Mole, which extends about a mile out to sea. Although the May 29 attack caused serious damage and the sunken ships made the mole more difficult to use, soldiers continued to use it until the bitter end; according to Lord, a lifeboat carrying 30 men managed to escape from the end of the mole even as German soldiers began rounding up prisoners from the landward side.
"Torpedo!"
Tommy, along with fellow soldiers Alex and Gibson, have plenty of bad luck in their efforts to get onto an evacuation ship that actually floats long enough to bring them to England. In one of the more harrowing scenes, their destroyer rapidly fills with water after it is torpedoed. Tommy and Alex only survive because Gibson has managed to stay on deck and opens a hatch, allowing some of the men inside the doomed vessel to escape.
This scene seems to reference one of the more disastrous episodes of the entire Dunkirk evacuation. The destroyer Wakeful was returning to England on May 29, 1940, with a full load of troops when she was torpedoed by the S-30, a German torpedo boat. The torpedo blew up the ship's boiler, causing her to break in half and sink within 15 seconds. Only one soldier survived, since he was on deck sneaking a cigarette, while another 639 died.
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Unfortunately, the sinking of the Wakeful was only the start of a calamitous evening. Other British vessels came to the site to lend assistance. A German submarine, the U-62, also happened to be in the area and put a torpedo into the destroyer Grafton. After spotting a small boat in the darkness, the British vessels thought the torpedo boat had lingered at the scene and began opening fire on it. The minesweeper Lydd, eager for revenge, bore down on the boat and cut it in half.
It turned out that she had destroyed the Comfort, a friendly vessel which had managed to rescue 16 survivors from the Wakeful. Only five of those on board, including four Wakeful survivors, came out of this ordeal alive. The Grafton, meanwhile, had been damaged badly enough that she was scuttled the next morning.
In response to the heavy losses that accompanied the efforts to rescue those from the Wakeful, a new order was issued by the Royal Navy: ships taking part in the evacuation of Dunkirk were no longer allowed to stop if they encountered other ships in distress.
Piers of trucks
The British arrived at Dunkirk in a variety of tanks, trucks, and other vehicles, and virtually all of this heavy equipment was abandoned on the beaches. Christopher Nolan's film gives some attention to one ingenious method employed to make the junked vehicles useful again: turning them into makeshift jetties.
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When the "lorry jetties" first showed up in a scene, I figured it would be an interesting piece in the background. However, this mechanism is actually explained, and the scene showing the arrival of the small ships includes a brief shot of troops being offloaded from the trucks.
These piers were quite an undertaking. The trucks were weighted down with sandbags and had their tires shot out to prevent movement. The trucks were topped with timbers and planking from wrecked ships to create a more walkable surface. Lord credits the lorry jetties with helping to swell the numbers of men offloaded from the beaches, since they allowed the small vessels to directly take on soldiers.
The Clan Macalister
Perhaps this is just a coincidence, but when I saw a large smoldering ship on the beach in the background of one scene later in the movie, my mind immediately went to a brief paragraph in Lord's account. One large vessel, he says, proved useful even after being knocked out of the fight. "She sank upright in the shallow water off the beach, and for the next several days the Luftwaffe would waste tons of bombs on her deserted hulk."
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This was the Clan Macalister, a cargo liner and one of the victims of the May 29 aerial attack on Dunkirk. The ship was crippled by bombers, forcing her crew to abandon the vessel. But the Clan MacAlister had not only succeeded in delivering a number of badly needed landing craft to help evacuate troops from the shallow water of the beaches, but also still seemed to be afloat when seen from above. The ship essentially served as a dummy target for several days; German pilots, unaware that the ship had already been destroyed, eagerly continued to bomb the enormous vessel.
"Where were you keeping them?"
One of the three storylines of Dunkirk involves Mr. Dawson and his two sons taking a small boat to Dunkirk to participate in the rescue effort, where they rescue Tommy, Alex, and dozens of survivors from a sinking minesweeper. When they arrive in Dover, an officer at the port jokingly asks where they were keeping all of the soldiers on such a tiny vessel. This line harkens to a connection between the Dunkirk evacuation and the Titanic.
Charles Lightoller, the second officer of the Titanic, was one of the few crew members to survive the liner's 1912 sinking. He went on to command a destroyer during World War I and, while in retirement, participated in the Dunkirk evacuation with his personal yacht, the Sundowner.
Lord's account of Lightoller's participation in the evacuation almost reads like a summary of the portion of Dunkirk labeled "The Sea." Like Mr. Dawson, he agreed to the Royal Navy's request to requisition his vessel but insisted that he and his son (and an 18-year-old Sea Scout) take her to the beaches. Lightoller was able to take on some soldiers who were waiting to board a destroyer, he managed to fit 130 men onto the 58-foot Sundowner. As in the film, one of Lightoller's sons was an airman who had discussed evasion tactics with his father before he was killed in the war, and Lightoller was able to put one of these tactics to use to evade a fighter plane on the return journey.
Upon seeing the vast number of soldiers pile out of the Sundowner after her return to the port of Ramsgate, one bystander exclaimed to Lightoller, "God's truth, mate! Where did you put them?"
Spitfires land on the beach (and fly again decades later)
The section of Dunkirk dubbed "The Air" follows a squadron of Spitfire pilots as they battle German fighters and bombers over the English Channel and Dunkirk, trying to protect the ships and soldiers below. At the end of the film, a pilot named Farrier who has opted to stay beyond the capacity of his plane's fuel tanks makes an emergency landing somewhere on the shores of France, then sets fire to the aircraft shortly before he is taken prisoner.
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Both the Allies and the Germans lost plenty of planes as the Royal Air Force tried to keep the Germans from attacking the men and ships involved in the evacuation. Some British planes did indeed wind up crash-landing on the beaches. Squadron commander Geoffrey Dalton Stephenson was forced down near Calais (several miles west of Dunkirk) on May 26, 1940, and spent the rest of the war as a POW. His plane was not seen again until 1986, when it was revealed by shifting tides and recovered. After restoration, it was once again capable of flight.
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Similarly, a pilot named Peter Cazenove wound up being captured on the Calais beach after his Spitfire was shot down by a German bomber. The fighter was also rediscovered, in 1980, just a few weeks after Cazenove's death. It too was restored to flying condition.
Both planes are the only surviving Mark 1 examples of the Spitfire, a version of the famous fighter that was operational during the Dunkirk evacuation. Stephenson's plane was donated to the Imperial War Museum, while Cazenove's was auctioned off for 3.1 million pounds. John Romain, director of the Aircraft Restoration Company, not only helped with the restoration of Stephenson's plane but also provided aircraft for Dunkirk and was one of the pilots involved in the dogfight scenes.
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