We Sailed To Safety

My eyes began to focus on the hazy horizon that lay before me. I could almost, nearly, barely make out the silhouette of small ships, dancing their way towards us, being carried by the gentle tide. First a few, then some more, until the entire view before me was filled with vessels of every shape and size: men ringing bells to announce their arrival, waves of roaring voices, a sea of waving arms. The first glimpse of home we had for months. Tears immediately came and betrayed my stoic sensibility. This makeshift navy of ferries and fishing boats became our savior, and the men around mustered a modicum of energy to cheer and embrace the faces that were pursuing the shore. Myself and five other men clambered our way onto a fishing boat, gratefully chiming our “thank you” and “bless you” to our host, winching as the salt water made its way into our existing wounds. A flask of tea was carefully passed around the trembling men, who huddled together under blankets and sheets of tarpaulin; each grateful recipient vigilant not to spill a single drop. My fingers flinched at the feeling of the hot container; I hadn’t felt something that wasn’t freezing sea water, or desperately damp sand in some time. The change in temperate was alarming. Bringing the small cup of tea to my lips, the smell of sugar rose into my nostrils and made my mouth water. The dilemma was whether to daintily sip, or greedily guzzle the creamy, comforting liquid. My eyes drifted their way to the shoreline at Dunkirk, that was growing further and further from my focus.

The day had began like any other on the beach barricade. The sound of shouting rang through my ears as the reverberating rattle of gun fire from the nearby town threw screams into the mix that I was unfamiliar with. A woman’s voice? A child?  From further down the shore I could see men battling with hidden mines, covering bodies that littered the beach in fresh blankets of sand that was periodically thrown into the air. The constant dread of buzzard-like humming from German aircrafts that passed the shore, stalking their prey from the sky, stayed within our minds. Always alert. The paranoia kept us from any sleep our bodies threatened to give us. My squad, or what was left of it, was waiting for word to board Her Majesty’s Navy Carriers that would come towards the dock every few days. Or weeks. Time seemed to blend together on that shore line. My squadron was riddled with disease and plagued by injury; we were classified as category 1 of evacuees. It had been some time since a ship appeared; the last one was attacked by German planes, the crew and Commanders forced to take shelter with us on the beach. The beach had become crammed with bodies; both dead and alive. Often I would play dead with the bodies around me to avoid catching the attention of any German’s peering eyes from this sandy grave. It was a prison for so many, and in the most desperate, private moments I would wish for death.

At first we would naively make plans of escape and evasion. We would fantasize about following the shore line until we found a cave, and shelter there for however long was necessary. Protected by stone and rocks; our haven tucked away from the devastation that surrounded the shore and surrounding town. We would pontificate, in quieter moments, about the danger of crossing the enemy lines further up the beach, but the reward of safety that would find us once we were in this cave we were sure was just beyond our eyesight. My fellow daydreamers would cast shapes in the sand with their worn, filthy fingers; using small pebbles to represent our men, fragmented seashells to suggest the enemy. We would plot pebbles bravely along a ragged, clumsily fingered shoreline, and would advance the menacing seashells inches towards them. The seashells would encroach the pebbles space, but they would always find a way around it: hiding behind mounds of sand, darting into buildings on the coast, hiding beneath upturned boats that had been momentarily replaced by the lid of my canteen. The blind optimism of desperate men is something that is unparalleled, so we agreed that morning to make the journey along the shore in hope of safety. Anything was better than waiting on the beach to be slaughtered.Our already injured limbs tingled in pain as we dragged them along the beach. I held the remains of a solider’s jacket to my thigh, that had been injured some days ago in an attack. The blood wasn’t clotting, despite my best efforts with minimal first aid equipment, so I would often find my own blood betraying my location as it pooled slightly around my thigh as the forming scab would become dislodged. But not today, I wouldn't allow our location to be traced thanks to my own ailment.

We limped on, blood shod, our strength fading with every step, until we could see enemy lines a few hundred meters ahead of us. Sand bags piled up reaching the full diameter of the beach, our feet brought us to a halt and we surveyed the scene carefully in front of us. We would see ant sized men in dark uniforms patrolling the shoreline, makeshift watch towers built from discarded palettes and planks of wood, the watching eyes of German soldiers peering their way into the distance. “Lads, move! Get behind that” a gruffled voice, peppered with fear, came from the man to my left as he motioned for us to carefully make our way behind a half buried vehicle that sat in the sand. Clambering, careful not to cause too much visual disruption to the landscape and alert the enemy of our presence, we skirted our way and collapsed behind the body of the car.  My wound cried out for attention, but I could do nothing more than press the khaki material pathetically against it. “Don’t do this, not now” I mumbled towards my throbbing leg, as if that would make a difference.

“We can’t just sit here” a member of our group pleaded desperately, “we’ve come this far!” He was right, and we all nodded in agreement that was full of regret for our actions.  Emerging from behind this car would alert our presence to the enemy, who was waiting just beyond the us on the shoreline. They had the safety in their numbers, the home territory advance, a wealth of weapons that we could see menacingly poking out from beneath the blockade of sandbags. I wondered why we ever thought this was a good idea. Sighing faintly into my hands, as I huffed into them despairingly to generate even a fragment of heat, my eyes turned towards the shore line. That’s what I saw them. Pin pricks in the distance, barely visible unless you squinted. I lifted my filthy, blood stained hand and gestured gingerly towards the water. A sign of life, a sign of rescue. There wasn’t even enough time to communicate our actions; we forced our weary legs up from behind the car and, with no regard for our safety from the German’s that were metres away, ran for our lives.