Dave Dawson at Dunkirk

by Robert Sidney Bowen

"A red letter day for you two, what?" he beamed.

Dave gulped for air and slowly came back to earth.

"Boy oh boy!" he breathed. "What do you know! A salute from a General! Gosh! Say, Captain, could we have some food, and our clothes, now, maybe?"

"All the food you can put in your stomachs," the medical officer said. "But jolly well no clothes. You two young heroes stay in bed for a few more days, at least. Mind you, now, that's an order. I may not be a general, but I'm jolly well in charge of this hospital!"

And the medical captain meant exactly what he said. Both Dave and Freddy begged and pleaded to be allowed to get up. They had found that the hospital was terribly short handed, and they were both anxious to do what they could to help. Besides, staying in bed thinking and talking, and talking and thinking was slowly driving them crazy. Regardless of what the General had said each nursed the tiny fear that they had arrived too late with their information. They now knew how far the German hordes really had smashed through toward the coast of France and Belgium, and even to their untrained minds it held horrible and terrible significance.

But the medical captain stuck to his order, and would not let them go. On the second day after the visit by General Caldwell they were allowed to get up and wander about the hospital wards at will. It was then they discovered that every one in the hospital had learned of their brave and courageous work, and the wounded soldiers heaped praises upon them from all sides. Yet, underneath the praise and the attempts by the soldiers to be cheerful, there was a note of worry, and strain, and a sort of breathless waiting. Dave and Freddy caught the feeling at once and it served to add to the doubt and fears in their own minds that all they had done, and all they had suffered had gone for nought.

Everybody was waiting, waiting. Waiting for what, they did not know. Or if they did they kept it to themselves. News of the battles sifted gradually into the hospital wards. Some of it was true, and a lot of it was false. But all of it rasped nerves and cut deep into the tortured minds of men.

And then, on the third day, it happened!

The news flew from lip to lip, and a pall of misery and bitterness hung over the entire hospital. Belgium has quit! The Belgians have thrown down their guns and given up! The whole left side of the British Army is now exposed to the Germans racing down out of Holland! On the south the French and the British have been split by a German wedge driven straight across France to Abbeville on the Channel coast. The entire British Army, and part of the French, is surrounded on three sides. There is only one door of escape left open. That door is Dunkirk!

The instant they heard the news Dave and Freddy rushed to the office of the medical captain. They found there a very worried and very harassed man. He was just hanging up on the telephone when they burst in. He saw them, started to wave them outside, but suddenly checked the motion.