Tradition tells us that the dramatic events of the evacuation of Dunkirk, in which 300,000 British servicemen escaped the Nazis, was a victory snatched from the jaws of defeat.
As the propaganda wheels turned, there was no room for tales of a poorly trained army, for stories of the drunken soldiers who refused calls to leave the cellars, or for details of the 2,472 guns, 75,000 tons of ammunition and 162,000 tons of petrol that were abandoned on the shores.
While the people of Britain celebrated, 68,111 men would not make the return journey across the channel. Thousands were dead, wounded or missing, but a staggering 40,000 British soldiers were alive and being marched off into a captivity that would last for five long years.
Sean Longden uses extensive new material from interviews he has conducted with veterans to finally tell the story of these forgotten soldiers; the true heroes of Dunkirk. Chapters cover the 51st Highland Division who fought on bravely after the boats had sailed; those who managed to evade capture and were faced with trying to make their way home; the round-up of troops, their mistreatment and humiliation, the murders and massacres carried out by their German captors; and the long and brutal march hundreds of miles East into captivity, surviving on little food and subjected to casual violence from their guards. Herded into Prisoner of War camps, the PoWs worked twelve-hour shifts, seven days a week, on a diet of watery soups and hard, dry bread for the next five years.
The book follows their ordeal through to the end of their captivity in 1945 and looks at how the men adapted to freedom and life back at home in a Britain celebrating victory; a Britain that had forgotten the sacrifices these soldiers had made to make the monumental escape at Dunkirk in June 1940 possible.
Sean Longden studied history at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London. After graduating, he worked in a number of photographic archives. Working with Second World War photographs sparked his interest in this period and inspired him to look beyond standard military history and into the untold stories of the soldiers themselves. Over a series of books, including the acclaimed To the Victor the Spoils and Hitler’s British Slaves,
Longden has challenged the established mythology of WW2. He lives in Surrey with his wife and two children.
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