Sun – Moon & the Narrow Exit

Dunkirk [Dunkerque] 13 May 2025

A good heart, Kate, is the sun and the moon— or rather the sun and not the moon, for it shines bright and never changes, but keeps his course truly.

(Henry V, William Shakespeare, ca. 1599)

The decision is made…after a few years talking about how…the obvious answer is delivered. With little time to spare we want the most of the day…no rentals…no petrol…no becoming lost…no worry about parking. I could go on.

Having conceived of the idea based on our taxi ride with Leo from Lille to Ieper…it becomes obvious. Book Leo for Dunkirk…and at long last 13 May 2025 we have our day. It does not disappoint. I ride in the front – waiting for a road sign to capture the closeness of our journey…I want to see Dunkerque. I attempt to memorize the directions, but it will be to no avail. Methinks a return journey will work using this same Leo tactic…but next time a few days or more…I already anticipate coming back and I’ve not yet arrived…

Our start is at the Dunkirk Museum, Bastion 62, where I step through the exhibits coming into contact with that which was Dunkirk 1940. Soon we will have the sand, the channel, the mole. Visuals and experience with the sun shining brightly our day is well met. The trek begins. Following our museum visit we climb up the nearby hilltop as sky cranes in behind maneuver the day’s work.

We look in all directions and then on towards the mole – the greatest walk – knowing of the proceeding footsteps here, with menace from above and from advancing enemies. Then the return path and along the beach – the English Channel lapping at the shoreline – waves cresting and breaking while on the horizon the sails of little ships hint at what once was here. One can only imagine in this place.

Walking some considerable distance upon these sands of conflict, the moon rhythm of the tide reminds me, like the Hourglass Memorial, of time’s passage. The dunes with their scrub, the places of thinking soldier souls – waiting their turn…their turn for home or perhaps not to be.

We return along the promenade. Along its length it is hard to escape the largeness of the Dunkerque sign…the largeness of this place…once filled with confusion but this day, now filled with playful wanders within the shoreline, as water laps at bare feet, as persons rest and absorb the sun, children fill their toys with sand and visitors acquire ice cream.

Postscript: The Narrow Exit

The enemy attacked on all sides with great strength and fierceness, and their main power, the power of their far more numerous Air Force, was thrown into the battle or else concentrated upon Dunkirk and the beaches. Pressing in upon the narrow exit, both from the east and from the west, the enemy began to fire with cannon upon the beaches by which alone the shipping could approach or depart. They sowed magnetic mines in the channels and seas; they sent repeated waves of hostile aircraft, sometimes more than a hundred strong in one formation, to cast their bombs upon the single pier that remained, and upon the sand dunes upon which the troops had their eyes for shelter. Their U-boats, one of which was sunk, and their motor launches took their toll of the vast traffic which now began. For four or five days an intense struggle reigned. All their armoured divisions-or what Was left of them-together with great masses of infantry and artillery, hurled themselves in vain upon the ever-narrowing, ever-contracting appendix within which the British and French Armies fought.

(We Shall Fight on the Beaches speech, Winston Churchill, 4 June 1940)