Dave Dawson at Dunkirk

by Robert Sidney Bowen

The utter sadness and remorse in the officer's voice touched Dave deeply. He reached over and took hold of the Lieutenant's arm and pressed hard.

"That's okay, I understand, Lieutenant," he said. "Forget it. Look, we'll be stuck here forever if we don't do something. Let's try and get off to the side. I'll get out and push them aside, and you keep the car in low gear. Okay, take it easy, Lieutenant."

Some of the anger faded from the Frenchman's eyes and the corners of his mouth tilted in a faint smile.

"At your orders, mon Capitaine," he said. "Yes, you get out and warn them away, and I shall drive the car to the side of the road."

Dave returned his smile and slid out of the car. No sooner had his feet touched the road than he felt as though his body had been caught in the roaring torrent of a rampaging river. Like a chip of wood he was picked up and swept along, and it was several seconds before he was able to regain his footing and force his way back and around to the front of the car. There he put out both his hands and started waving the steady stream of babbling refugees to the left and to the right.

It was tedious, heartbreaking effort, and a hundred times he came within an ace of falling flat on the road under the crawling wheels of the Renault. But for his young strong body pushing and shoving this way and that Lieutenant Defoe would not have been able to move the car forward an inch. As it was the car did not travel more than fifty yards in a good half hour. By then Dave was drenched with his own sweat. His hat was gone and his clothes were slowly but surely being torn from his back.

Suddenly he saw Lieutenant Defoe at his shoulder and heard the Frenchman's voice shouting in his ear.

"It is useless, mon Capitaine! It is madness. We will not get any place with the car. The town of Beaumont is but a few kilometres ahead. There is an army post there. I shall request a military car and a driver. Ah me, I am desolate that this should happen. Here! Watch what you are doing! You! Let go of me, my old one! Attention!"

At that moment the French officer had been caught in the river of people. He struggled and he fought but he was relentlessly swept along and away from Dave's clutching hands. In almost the same moment Dave, himself, was caught up by the moving mass. It was either a case of moving along with the stream or stumbling to his hands and knees and being trampled under foot, or being run over by the heavy wheel of an ox cart or wagon. It was absolutely impossible, and an act of sheer suicide, to buck that packed throng.

And so Dave took the only course open to him. He moved along with the stream of refugees and inch by inch worked his way to the edge of the stream and into a clear space. There he paused for breath and strained his eyes for a glimpse of Lieutenant Defoe, but the Frenchman was nowhere to be seen. He had been virtually swallowed up by the stream of humanity moving relentlessly and blindly forward. Dave thought of the troops and the long lines of army cars he and Defoe had passed since leaving Paris, and shuddered at the thought. When the army and the populace met what would happen? Who would give way, or would anybody? In his mind's eye he pictured other French officers like Defoe striving to force the refugees to abandon their mad flight and return home. It was not a pretty picture to imagine. It was not a nice situation to contemplate. Troops with tanks and guns moving forward to meet the enemy but instead meeting thousands and thousands of their own flesh and blood.