To the beat of the drum, thousands of men, middle age and elderly, in their Sunday suits with clicking medals, marched through the streets of Dunkirk. Every spring, these veterans of World War II return to the French Coast to remember their dead comrades, and to commemorate one of the greatest defeats, and one of the most extraordinary triumphs in British and French history. It was May 1940, that the world was changed and the course of history altered forever.

            On May 10th, 1940, the power of Hitler's War Machine fell upon France. German armies swept into the Ardennes Forest, fortified positions. The situation seemed hopeless and the capture or death of the Allied forces imminent. However, against all the odds, against every prediction, 220,000 British soldiers, 110,000 French and a few thousand Belgium were safely brought across the sea to Britain. These men became the nucleus of the new alliance that, five years later, won the second world war.

On May 26, 1940 thousands of British, French, And Belgium ships retreated  to Dunkirk. The Germans bombed the city, and Dunkirk was badly damaged. From late May to early June, Allied ships began evacuating Dunkirk. They headed for England. The vessels included cruisers, fun boats, destroyers, minesweepers, and many other boats. The evacuation was one of the best planned movements of military troops in history and has sometimes been called the miracle of Dunkirk.

           Dunkirk did much more then instill spirit and confidence into the Allied nations. Maybe even more importantly, Operation Dynamo rescued a substantial number of worthy combat troops from the capture of death. Without these men, the course of both the African and European wars may have been drastically altered.

          Dunkirk and "Operation Dynamo" was much more than a retreat followed by a heroic evacuation. It changed the entire balance of the war. The men who had been saved from the clenches of the enemy, would now attack the German and the Italians and many points. Without the experience and determination of these men, victory for the  Allies may have been an impossibility.

         It would be a mistake to say that Dunkirk was the main reason the United States became militarily involved in World War II. It took a Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor and German declaration of war to commit the US to full scale involvement. However, Dunkirk did bring the United States closer to the war by giving then a deep respect for the character and determination of the British people. The results was a large increase in supplies and materials shipped to Britain to fortify their country.