Careful preparation of a battlefield tour involves walking familiar ground all over again, thinking practically about the logistics of where coaches can park, starving schoolkids can eat etc etc.But in the midst of the logistics, Jeremy Banning (www.jeremybanning.co.uk) and I had the time and space to think about the events of 1940. Both of us spend most of our time on WW1, and the tour we're planning for Single Step will take in the Ypres Salient, but the fact that we will be based at Dunkerque means that it is an opportunity for us to tie in the events of WW2.
There are some who see the struggle against Hitler as an extension of 1914-18 - in other words, one long World War, stretching over the first half of the twentieth century. The Kaiser and the Fuhrer were very different men, of course, but the roots of conflict go back to the relative imbalance of power in Europe. Germany, as the growing force at the centre of the continent, was restless. The Kaiser wanted his "place in the sun". Hitler wanted "lebensraum". Same difference?
Preparing a school battlefield tour of the Dunkirk area took us to the beautiful Memorial (see the picture), whose panels are filled with the names of 4,500 men who have no known grave. We also called in on the excellent Dunkirk museum (http://www.dynamo-dunkerque.com/en/) - a place that packs an awful lot into a small space - as well as the beach itself. A view across the level sands towards the Bray Dunes from the Mole is immediately populated by thousands of khaki figures and abandoned trucks in the popular imagination, such is the power of the Dunkirk myth three generations later. Close your eyes and you can hear the satanic screams of the Stuka bombers. Over 338,000 men were lifted from this area in 1940 in one of the most remarkable operations of any war. The Admiralty thought they might be able to rescue about 45,000. Although, as Churchill noted, wars are not won through evacuations, the "Miracle of Dunkirk" meant that Hitler could not assume that Britain was out of the war just yet. Cue graphics and theme tune from "Dad's Army".
