Dunkirk The Men They Left Behind

Product Description

At 2am on the morning of the 3rd of June 1940, General Harold Alexander searched along the quayside, holding onto his megaphone & called ? Is anyone there? Is anyone there?? before turning his boat back towards Engl&. Tradition tells us that the dramatic events of the evacuation of Dunkirk, in which 300, 000 BEF servicemen escaped the Nazis, was a victory gained from the jaws of defeat. For the first time, rather than telling the tale of the 300, 000 who escaped, Sean Longden reveals the story of the 40, 000 men sacrificed in the rearguard battles. On the beaches & sand dunes, besides the roads & amidst the ruins lay the corpses of hundreds who had not reached the boats. Elsewhere, hospitals full of the sick & wounded who had been left behind to receive treatment from the enemys doctors. & further afield ? still fighting hard alongside their French allies
- was the entire 51st Highland Division, whose war had not finished as the last boats slipped away. Also scattered across the countryside were hundreds of lost & lonely soldiers. These ?evaders? had also missed the boats & were now desperately trying to make their own way home, either by walking across France or rowing across the channel. The majority, however, were now prisoners of war who were forced to walk on the death marches all the way to the camps in Germany & Pol&, where they were forgotten until 1945.