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

fall back at round 4.30 p.m. that afternoon. For this action, he was awarded
the Victoria Cross.
The RAF continued to send fighters over to cover this last stand. Both
Cocky and John Dundas flew over Dunkirk this first day of June; John
managed to hit a Heinkel 111. Cocky and the rest of 616 Squadron had been
over the port by 5 a.m., this time along with three other squadrons, although
their efforts could not prevent a heavy toll on the ships below. Four had
been sunk before 7.30 a.m., including the destroyer HMS Keith. More
followed: the destroyers Basilisk and Havant, while Ivanhoe was also hit,
killing a number of men already loaded on to her. Sid Nuttall, who was still
stuck on the beaches, saw the attack on Keith, Basilisk and Ivanhoe. One
dive-bomber, attacked from the sea, finished up low over the dunes, where a
number of soldiers took pot-shots. ‘We saw a piece of plane fall off,’ says
Sid. ‘He veered off and crashed into the ground beyond the town.’
Sid had been helping as a stretcher bearer since arriving at Bray Dunes,
although mostly this had been at night. Nearby, the casualty clearing station
at Malo was heaving with the wounded. He found it quite difficult
lumbering these men out on to the boats, even with three others to help.
‘We’d wade into the sea and had water up to our chests before a boat could
reach you,’ he says. ‘Then you had to pass this wounded chap inside the
boat.’ He now had a thick line of salt around his battle dress. With no
watch, Sid had lost all sense of time. He had no idea what day it was or
when it might be his turn to leave; all he knew was that he’d now been on
the beach at least three days. An eternity.
By mid-afternoon, the Canal Line was crumbling; Bergues, after a heroic
defence by the Loyals, was finally given up at 5 p.m. Alexander had already
accepted that morning that the evacuation would not be completed that
night, but hoped that with the help of the French to the west and south of
the town, his last few thousand fighting men might be able to maintain a
small perimeter around Malo and ensure the remaining 39,000 British might
yet be able to get away. The French were also defending equally heroically
and putting up greater resistance than Alexander had anticipated and so, in
agreement with Abrial, he decided to continue the evacuation through the
night of 2/3 June.
Yet there was no doubt that the end was now near. Later that day, Sid
Nuttall saw some French troops reach the beaches then spotted a German