Dunkirk to D-Day, from retreat to a return: two days of memory

Various post-war histories of D-Day opened with a chapter on Dunkirk, showing their dynamic relationship, explains Dr Sam Edwards

by Dr Sam Edwards, Senior Lecturer in History at Manchester Metropolitan University

It is one of those intriguing coincidences of historical time that this week marks both the 80th anniversary of the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) from Dunkirk (June 4) and the 76th anniversary of the D-Day landings (June 6).

Separated by four years and markedly different in terms of their ‘place’ in the Second World War – Dunkirk at the very ‘beginning’ and D-Day commencing the last act. But the two events have nonetheless become closely connected in our cultural memory – a connection that can be traced back to the war itself.

The evacuation of the British army from Dunkirk (and other French ports) in May-June 1940 was a military catastrophe of the highest order. This force had been despatched to France in the autumn as a demonstration of British support for their French ally, and for many of those in command it was seen as the successor to that valiant predecessor, the BEF of 1914.

Indeed, just like this predecessor, the army’s job was to support Belgian and French counterparts in the event of German attack, and many of its senior officers – all veterans of the First World War – likely anticipated a similarly lengthy residence across the channel. But it was not to be.

Aside from occasional moments of tactical success – notably the Battle of Arras – this 1940 ‘BEF’ eventually succumbed to the sheer speed of the German Blitzkrieg attack, which commenced in early May. Cut off in northern France and increasingly unable to affect the outcome of the Battle of France, a large-scale evacuation was commenced in late May. This evacuation – Operation Dynamo – would eventually return to Britain over 300,000 British, French, Belgian, Polish, and Czech troops.

Fighting on the beaches

For Winston Churchill, this was a “colossal military disaster” that he nonetheless quickly sought to convert into a “miracle of deliverance” demonstrative of British resilience and fortitude. The role of the now famous ‘little ships’ – the yachts, lifeboats, fishing trawlers and pleasure steamers – in bringing the troops back to Blighty received particular attention. Here was an example of ordinary Britons rallying to the cause while demonstrating their characteristic mastery of sail and sea. Meanwhile, Churchill readied the nation to “fight on the beaches” and to “never surrender”.

Fighting on the beaches would remain a preoccupation of Churchill’s for the remainder of the war. Indeed, soon after the British army was brought home from the beaches of France, Churchill was already pondering ways for it to return, and by 1941 he had appointed Commodore Lord Louis Mountbatten – his Chief Advisor for Combined Operations (that is, for amphibious assaults, long a favoured interest of the prime minister). This was the origins of the organisation which in due course would develop into General Dwight D. Eisenhower’s ‘Overlord’ command – the organisation which planned and commanded the Allied Invasion of Normandy in June 1944. In this sense, the very idea of ‘D-Day’ might be said to have been born on the beaches of Dunkirk.

A road to victory

This connection between the 1940 evacuation and the 1944 invasion similarly shaped how the British media framed the D-Day assault. British Movietone News for instance reported the landings in Normandy as “the story of how four years after Dunkirk…Britain came back” whilst The Times declared that “four years ago…the tide of war had flooded from the east into the French channel ports”, but now “the tide has turned”.

Once the war was won, such a connection between the ‘retreat’ and the ‘return’ only consolidated itself further. Various post-war histories of D-Day often opened with a chapter on Dunkirk, whilst the first feature film to focus on the Allied landings (D-Day: Sixth of June, 1956) likewise organised its narrative around this dualism, connecting via certain characters the despair of Dunkirk with the triumph of Normandy.

Ever since, this has remained a powerful dynamic shaping British memory of the war, with D-Day frequently defined by press and politicians – especially in the 1950s and 1960s – as the redemption of Dunkirk. Put differently, in our popular memory, D-Day performs a vital function for it asserts that what happened at Dunkirk was not, ultimately, a ‘defeat’ but instead a setback on the road to victory.

Present day

But what does all this mean for how we might understand these two events now, this very week? The on-going crisis connected to COVID-19 has already seen the Second World War past mobilised by various individuals and communities across the globe.

In our popular memory, D-Day performs a vital function for it asserts that what happened at Dunkirk was not, ultimately, a ‘defeat’ but instead a setback on the road to victory.

The predilection of the current occupant of Downing Street for all things ‘Churchillian’ suggests that perhaps Dunkirk and D-Day might be pointedly invoked to call for continued resilience and national solidarity – though the latter is hindered in being a 76th anniversary as round number commemorations tend to receive far more political interest.

And then of course there is that alternative reality, that world which can’t now be, but which historians occasionally like to ponder and imagine. For in a world in which COVID-19 didn’t emerge, I can imagine a Britain embarked this week upon a fraught ‘memory war’ over the meaning of these Second World War events, and especially their relevance to that thing now so overshadowed by the global pandemic: Brexit.

For in a nation not distracted by the daily death count of a cruel disease, much might have been made – on both sides of the political spectrum – of a British ‘retreat’ from Europe followed four years later by a heroic ‘return’. But whilst allowing for the fact that this reality – this COVID-19less world – does not exist, we might still see similar meaning this week.

Separated by four years, and profoundly different in how they were lived and experienced, the connection in time and also in our memory between Dunkirk and D-Day hints at a persistent binary in our relationship with those across the channel. Put another way, our history is marked by various ‘retreats’ from Europe only to be followed later by a ‘return’. For me at least, this is the meaning – and hope – I shall choose to see this week as I reflect upon the anniversaries of 1940 and of 1944.