Customer Reviews

Pillar of Fire: Dunkirk 1940

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I had not intended to read this book but once I started I couldn't put it down. This is a compelling account of the events leading up and including the British Expeditionary Force's evacuation from Dunkirk in late May-early June 1940 -- but that only provides the narrative structure. With this structure the author skillfully weaves many dozens of first-person accounts from the British soldiers and sailors, officers and ranks, as they survive nearly three weeks of mostly retreat, confusion and chaos, the fog of battle, and German attacks. The actual Dunkirk evacuation spanned roughly seven days.

Good command decisions, effective leadership and organization, many acts of individual bravery, and perhaps some luck (e.g., the Channel was calm for much of the period) ultimately permitted the evacuation of over 300,000 British and French troops. In the skies the Royal Air Force contested the airspace despite the Luftwaffe's relatively greater numbers. And, I must add, the personnel, professionalism, and organization of the Royal Navy was essential to pulling off Operation Dynamo, as it was officially named. The British and French troops also fiercely contested the shrinking pocket. At no other time during this early phase of the war did the Allies so effectively bring together the might of a combined arms operation, albeit in a retreat and evacuation.

Thus the BEF largely avoided getting bagged by the Germans, but it did come at considerable cost in men, equipment, ships and aircraft -- under such adverse circumstances an amazing "success" in an overall period of disaster for the Allied Forces. The book allows the reader to reimagine as it was on the ground and sea.