Christopher Nolan’s movie Dunkirk, opening Friday, recounts a remarkable episode from the Second World War, the “miracle” that allowed for the evacuation of almost 340,000 trapped and beleaguered Allied troops from the French port city’s beaches as the German army advanced.

The battle has been justly celebrated in Britain — and worthy of Nolan’s cinematic treatment — though less well remembered on this side of the Atlantic. Allow us to refresh your memory.

Between May 26 and June 4, 1940, a massive evacuation effort called Operation Dynamo sent a flotilla of 222 ships, including four Royal Canadian Navy destroyers, and as many as 800 civilian craft — among them fishing boats and pleasure craft — to bring Allies troops back across the English Channel to safety.

Though Canadian troops joined the British Expeditionary Force in late 1939, there were not large numbers in France in May 1940. The Historic UK website notes some Canadians were evacuated from Dunkirk, along with French, Belgian and British troops.

Among the best-known Canadian heroes during the evacuation was Vancouverite Robert Timbrell, then a 20-year-old sub-lieutenant stationed at Whale Island, Portsmouth, who was given command of the Llanthony, an expensive but barely seaworthy yacht owned by Lord Astor of Hever Castle.

Timbrell’s crew consisted of a Royal Navy petty officer, two civilian diesel engineers from London Transport and six sailors from Newfoundland.







Despite being bombed and losing five crew members on one mission, the Llanthony rescued some 280 troops from Dunkirk, while four fishing trawlers placed under Timbrell’s command rescued another 600. For his efforts, Timbrell, who later rose to the rank of Rear Admiral in the Royal Canadian Navy, was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross.

In a 1980 interview with the CBC, Timbrell spoke of the hazardous conditions at Dunkirk.

“It was a very shallow beach and at low tide, the water went out a long way. We were being shelled by the Germans, the town was in flames,” Timbrell said.

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“Our last trip was the tightest. The Germans had started to enter the town and to close the ring around Dunkirk. There was no way we could return anymore.”

As he recounted in a 1980 Toronto Star story, Norm Dale left the Royal Canadian Air Force and joined Britain’s Royal Air Force in 1936 on the advice of Canadian First World War ace Billy Bishop.

Dale’s plane was shot down as the Germans closed in on the Allies, but he survived.

“We walked 60 miles to Dunkirk and I spent three days on the beach,” Dale recalled.

In the same story, Scarborough resident George Grundy, a former Royal Engineer, recalled arriving in Dunkirk to see pillars of flame and smoke, and spent three days ferrying soldiers on the beach to awaiting craft offshore.

“It was like driving on the 401. It’s always worse watching traffic than being in it,” Grundy told the Star in 1980.

Veteran reporter Gregory Clark, who earned the Military Cross during the First World War battle of Vimy Ridge in 1917, covered the war for the Toronto Star, accompanying the 1st Canadian Division during its time in France, eyewitness to a number of front-line battles.

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Clark was back in England during the Dunkirk evacuation, describing the effort to Star readers as “an incredible armada of everything from a battle cruiser to a 30-foot Muskoka cabin cruiser.”

Clark, whose younger son, Lieutenant Murray Clark, died in action near Calais during this period, was awarded the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for his wartime reporting.

“Three hundred ships now twist and curve off Dunkirk’s shores to try to take off the ‘last-ditchers,’ while 15 German divisions are being hurled across marsh and sand in fury, to put an end to this great miracle. For the miracle is not merely the rescue of four-fifths of the British army, but the heartening of the British nation at a time when the Germans counted upon its being wholly disheartened,” Clark wrote in the Star.

Oshawa resident Bart Collins, who returned to Dunkirk to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the evacuation, told the Star in a June 7, 1965 story: “Twenty five years ago, we were a broken army. We lived to fight again. Dunkirk was a miracle.”

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