Dunkirk by Harris John;

Author:Harris, John;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Canelo Digital Publishing Ltd
Published: 2021-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

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Despite the disaster, the armed boarding vessel King Orry still tried to get in. She had already been bombed and set on fire on the way across, but the fire had been put out and it was decided to make the attempt. As she entered, a direct hit on her stern wrecked her steering gear and she swung out of control against the mole, putting it temporarily out of action. On the other side of the mole, Fenella was a wreck and Grenade was still blazing furiously. As King Orry smashed into the mole, tearing a gap in it, the destroyer’s magazines exploded and she was riddled with fragments and showered with pieces of metal, stone and wood. As her crew struggled to clear the debris, it was discovered that her rubbing strake had come to rest on one of the timbers of the mole as the tide had gone down, and it took two hours to get her clear. Her officers had been intending to beach her but suddenly, in the early hours of the next morning, she listed to starboard and sank.

With the harbour blocked, evacuation switched back to the beaches. At La Panne, Colonel Viner, the beachmaster, had long since given up all hope of getting any sleep. At high tide, he beached Dutch skoots and barges full of rations and ammunition, which, as they settled, were unloaded by a working party of Guardsmen. The French on the beach at this point were in a poor state, some of them panicking, and on one occasion he was nearly shot. British discipline remained excellent, however, and there was no queue jumping, although one lieutenant-colonel of a Territorial artillery unit snapped suddenly and pushed ahead of his own men. Viner stuck his pistol in his stomach, called a military policeman and ordered him back to his place. Another officer arrived with golf clubs, tennis rackets and several trunks.

‘What are you going to do with that lot?’ Viner asked.

‘I’m taking them to England,’ he was told.

‘Over my dead body,’ Viner said.

Viner had been on the beach a long time now and another lieutenant-colonel was sent to replace him, but as he arrived they were attacked by a German plane. Viner saw the bomb falling, shouted a warning and flung himself down. The bomb blew his replacement into a crater from which he was rescued, suffering from concussion and sent home on a stretcher.

When Trooper Gillam of the 12th Lancers arrived in La Panne, with a transit camp in the surrounding woods and GHQ in the nearby chateau, there were soldiers, lorries and a surprisingly large number of staff officers with their cars parked everywhere. As shelling started, everybody dived for cover and he saw the missiles land in the ornamental pond of GHQ, sending a spray of water into the air with lumps of concrete and clods of earth. He was very proud of his regiment. To other regiments, the 12th Lancers were ‘The Dirty Dozen’ and to

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