The Battle of Britain Five Months That Changed History, May—October 1940 by James Holland (z-lib.org).epub

artillery, while holding the line indefinitely would be impossible because
already those manning the bridgehead were suffering appalling casualties
and running out of ammunition. Abrial was being urged to make this
pointless stand by Weygand, who was even more out of the loop than Abrial
was in his bunker. Calmly, Alexander instead proposed holding on to the
existing bridgehead for the next day and then pulling out completely on the
night of 1/2 June. Abrial, however, baulked at this suggestion and
threatened to close the port entirely if Alexander did so. Already, it was
time for Alexander to invoke his appeal.
By noon on Friday, 31 May, 165,000 men had been lifted from Dunkirk, as
Churchill cheerfully told the French War Council in Paris on his latest trip
there. It was an incredible number, achieved in part because of the still
intact east mole, but also because of the determined resistance around the
perimeter, and because the Luftwaffe had been far less effective than had
been imagined by either side.
For the pilots and crews of the Luftwaffe, the poor weather the previous
day had provided them with something of a respite. Most were now
exhausted. ‘I don’t know what day of the week it is,’ scribbled Siegfried
Bethke the day before. He had just completed his fiftieth combat mission.
He had now flown a number of sorties over the port. ‘Dunkirk is all one
firebrand,’ he noted. ‘Many ships on the beach, bombs, fires, anti-aircraft
fire, Stukas.’ All pilots were now familiar with the indelible images of
destruction and carnage below. Julius Neumann, in 6/JG 27, was flying his
seventh mission over the beaches around midday on the 31st. ‘I could see
Dunkirk from many miles away,’ he says, ‘the smoke from the oil tanks was
burning continuously.’ Cocky Dundas was also now all too familiar with
the sight. That same day, he flew his sixth sortie there. ‘The black smoke
rose from somewhere in the harbour area, thick, impenetrable, obscuring
much of the town,’ he wrote. ‘As it rose, it spread in patches, caught up in
layers of haze and cloud. But still the greater part thrust upwards to a height
of between twelve and fifteen thousand feet, where it was blown out in a
lateral plume which stretched for many miles to westward, over Calais and
beyond, down to the Channel.’
After the terror and exhilaration of his first combat sortie, Cocky was
now finding these missions increasingly frustrating. The Squadron always
seemed to arrive just before or just after an enemy raid. Sometimes he saw