20. The Little ships of Dunkirk
Great Britain declared war on Nazi Germany on September 3, 1939, just days after the German invasion of Poland. On September 4, 1939, Lightoller’s youngest son Brian was killed while flying with the RAF over Wilhelmshaven. (another son, Roger, was killed in the last months of the war, serving in the Royal Navy). With the rest of Britain, Lightoller sat out the so-called Phony War as the German Wehrmacht prepared itself for the invasion of France. When the Germans did strike, avoiding the Maginot Line and sweeping through the Low Countries, the British Expeditionary Force retreated rapidly before them.
By late May 1940, the British were pinned down along the French coast of the British Channel, with little air cover protecting them from the relentless attacks of the Luftwaffe. Primarily remembered as the evacuation from Dunkirk, the British were in reality removed from several Channel locations. German aerial attacks led to the losses of several destroyers of French, British and Polish origin, and troops forced to load aboard ships at the Dunkirk mole, or wharves and piers at other locations, slowed the withdrawal. At the end of May, the British Admiralty began to commandeer small craft to ferry soldiers from the beaches to large ships, or across the Channel to England.