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| The port of Dunkirk in WWII Jan Hyrman |
| Today, it is a busy port, the third largest in the country, with an annual volume of 50 million tons of cargo, and an industrial centre, its inhabitants numbering over 70,000. Its industries include steel, food processing, oil refining, shipbuilding and chemical industries. It has a regular ferry service to the English ports of Ramsgate and Dover and, as we will shortly find out, it became long ago a part of world history that within days hundreds of thousands of people could be moved between the two coasts. |
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| Operation Dynamo The evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from France, May-June 1940. |
| Photos by courtesy of Maria Khayutina |
| Belgian border is only ten kilometres away, cutting through the coastal waters and stretching to southeast. The local harbour, dating back to the 8th century, opens into the English Channel and a distance of just over 70 kilometres separates it from the ports of Dover and Ramsgate. The English, the Burgundians, the Austrians, the Spanish, the Dutch - all of these once held or coveted the port. After a three-year period of English domination, the port was bought off by the French in 1662 by Louis XIV, entering a long period of prosperity, also supported by career pirates and privateers, such as the local hero, Jean Bart. Dunkerque also became one of several French cities fortified by Sebastian le Prestre de Vauban (1633 - 1707), an important figure of French military engineering (his other fortification projects in the neighbourhood included Gravelines and Bergues). During the First World War, Dunkerque witnessed the landing of the British Expeditionary Force in September and October 1914. Throughout the war, it was a seaplane base and later an American Naval Air Service base. Several French military hospitals were based here and the 8th Canadian Stationary Hospital was stationed here from November 1918 to April 1919. It is estimated that 7,500 bombs and artillery shells fell on the town during the Great War, but it did not seriously disturb shipbuilding or other port activities. |
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| The Atlantikwall The Atlantic Wall, the western frontier of Hitler's Fortress Europe. |
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| Clearing the Channel Ports One of the lesser-known campaigns of Northwest Europe in 1944, the struggle to capture French ports cost many lives of Allied soldiers, particularly Canadians. |
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| Czechoslovaks at Dunkirk 1944-1945 It was not exactly the place where the members of the Czechoslovak Independent Armoured Brigade Group would want to get stuck for the rest of the war, but many different reasons caused the unit to retain the mission of sieging the ruins of the port till May 1945. |
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| Sources The Atlantic Wall, the western frontier of Hitler's Fortress Europe. |
| ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the Tourism Board of Dunkirk (Office de Tourisme, Dunkerque), who very kindly provided me with a number of interesting leaflets about the port and its history. Thank you. |