Photo of the Day

It is June 4, 1940.

Prime Minister Winston Churchill is speaking in the House of Commons.

The nine-day operation to rescue British, French and Belgian soldiers

from the beaches of Dunkirk has concluded.

Rescued soldiers near Dover.

Eight hundred vessels braving German aircraft and underwater mines

have brought 338,000 men to safety in England.

Thousands have been lost.

Thousands more have been left behind, to become Nazi prisoners.

German soldiers examine a destroyed British ship beached at Dunkirk, June 1940.

Nine large vessels and two hundred small ones were also lost.

The Dunkirk beach after the evacuation.

And the armies’ equipment —

guns, tanks, cannons, trucks, motorcycles, ammunition, fuel and supplies —

was left behind.

‘It was a colossal military disaster,’ Churchill says.

Aftermath of German attacks against Allied positions in Belgium.

He tells the House the Allied armies defending Belgium were faced

with a sudden German assault

which severed their ammunition and food supply lines.

It was like ‘an eruption which swept like a sharp scythe

around the right and rear of the Armies,’ he says.

German forces on the march in Belgium.

‘And behind this scythe plodded the dull brute mass

of the ordinary German Army and German people,

always so ready to be led to the trampling down in other lands

of liberties and comforts which they have never known in their own.’

German troops inspect a temporary pier into deep water which British Royal Engineers built from scavanged materials to enable troops to reach large rescue vessels offshore.

Rescuing these men by sea was their only hope of survival.

So, the armies withdrew to Dunkirk and waited for the English armada.

It was a very dark time.

But Churchill, defiant champion of a righteous cause,

declares that Britain will not shrink from confronting the Nazi tyrant.

‘We will go on to the end, whatever the cost,

and outlive the menace of tyranny,’ he says,

‘even if we must do so alone.’

What is required, he says, is ‘for all to do their duty, with nothing neglected.’

Survivors from a ship destroyed in the Dunkirk evacuation approach another rescue vessel in a lifeboat.

There would be no compromise with evil.

Ever.

I’ll see you tomorrow.

— Brenda