Fall of France and Dunkirk · Chapter 8 of 9
The People in the Retreat: Civilians, Soldiers and Prisoners
Behind the arrows were families on the roads, soldiers who held a position long enough for others to leave, men taken prisoner and crews who kept returning across the Channel.
British troops and Belgian refugees on the Brussels–Louvain road, 12 May 1940. Imperial War Museums, via Wikimedia Commons (public domain). Source record · Archive record · Public domain — Commons PD-UKGov / PD-scan declaration. Thumbnails may be cropped; open the full image to see the complete frame.
The road was somebody's home
A retreat is usually drawn as an arrow. On the ground it occupied a road, and that road was already full of people. The German advance through the Low Countries and France displaced civilians on a vast scale. Families fled with bedding, food, clothing, children and older relatives. Some had vehicles; others walked or used bicycles and carts. What looked from headquarters like a route for reinforcement could be, to a family, the only direction in which safety still seemed possible.
The presence of refugees affected military movement, but describing civilians merely as an obstruction misses the human event. They were responding to invasion, bombardment, rumor and the experience or inherited memory of an earlier German occupation. Their decisions were made with less information and fewer choices than those available to any general. A soldier could receive an order to fall back. A civilian had to decide whether to leave a house that might never be seen again.
Dunkirk itself was a working port and a town before it became a name for an evacuation. Bombing and fire devastated the place in which the operation took place. The soldiers waiting at the water's edge were not standing on an empty stage. Residents, emergency workers and the town's built environment were caught in the same destruction. Photographs of burning buildings and oil installations should be read with that civilian setting in mind.
Who gets remembered on the beach?
The familiar British version of Dunkirk often moves from the retreating BEF to the little ships and then to a grateful homecoming. Each element belongs in the story. None is sufficient on its own. French soldiers formed part of the armies in the pocket and the forces defending its shrinking perimeter. Many were evacuated; others were captured after holding positions while embarkation continued. The evacuation's final phase cannot be explained without them.
Belgian resistance also mattered to the time and space available to the Allied armies. The Belgian surrender on 28 May created an immediate military crisis, but it did not mean that Belgium had done nothing before that date. Its army had been fighting since the invasion of 10 May. National stories written backward from defeat can make allies seem like convenient supporting characters. A better account asks what each force could see, what it had already endured and what options remained.
The Allied forces in France were also more varied than the best-known photographs suggest. The French army included men from its colonial empire. British forces and their support services likewise belonged to an imperial military system. The National Army Museum identifies a contingent of about 300 Punjabi Muslim soldiers at Dunkirk, part of Force K6 of the Royal Indian Army Service Corps, led by Major Mohammed Akbar Khan. Transport and supply were part of the army’s work, and these men belong within its history. Their documented presence is a better starting point than an unidentified photograph or a claim that every colonial soldier pictured in France stood on the Dunkirk beaches.
Courage did not always end in escape
Rear-guard duty created a brutal bargain. A company held a canal crossing or village so that another formation could withdraw. Engineers destroyed a bridge after the last friendly troops had crossed. Gunners fired until they had to abandon equipment they could no longer move. Such actions might be essential to an army's survival while giving the men performing them a smaller chance of getting away.
Captain Harold Marcus Ervine-Andrews of the 1st Battalion, East Lancashire Regiment, supplies one carefully documented example. On 31 May–1 June, his company defended the Canal de Bergues. The citation for his Victoria Cross describes an increasingly exposed position, continued resistance from a barn, the removal of wounded men and the escape of his company’s remaining men through deep water. It is a story of fighting and withdrawal together: holding long enough to preserve a position, then bringing people out when the position could no longer be held.
Lieutenant Richard Wallace Annand of the 2nd Battalion, Durham Light Infantry, had earned the Victoria Cross earlier in the campaign, on the River Dyle on 15–16 May. His citation describes attacks on German troops trying to bridge the river, continued action after he was wounded and his return to bring out his wounded batman in a wheelbarrow. The location matters: this was a Battle of France action, not a beach rescue. Annand and Ervine-Andrews help show what the retreat demanded at different stages. Their citations record remarkable acts; they do not supply a complete picture of every soldier’s experience.
Captivity, and the crimes within the campaign
Many men did not reach a ship. Some were cut off during the advance to the coast; others were overtaken on the retreat or captured when a defended locality fell. For them the campaign continued as captivity: disarmament, marching, separation from comrades and uncertainty about home. An evacuation total counts those brought away. It cannot, by itself, describe the people left behind.
At Le Paradis on 27 May 1940, German SS troops murdered 97 Royal Norfolk and other BEF soldiers after they had surrendered. The Royal Anglian Regiment’s account of the memorial identifies the dead as unarmed prisoners. This was a crime against captured men, not simply a casualty total from confused fighting. The distinction should remain explicit: a general description of a hard campaign cannot absorb the deliberate killing of prisoners into an ordinary battle loss.
Memorial records bring that crime into the history of the retreat. Retelling it responsibly means keeping the place, the men and the circumstances distinct. There is no need for invented last words. A map showing a successful evacuation can conceal different endings a few miles inland. The people brought away and the people left behind belong to the same account.
A homecoming with an unfinished ending
In Britain, rescued men passed through ports, railway stations, reception centers and hospitals. Food, tea, dry clothing and a place to sit could matter as much in the first hours as a public speech. The images of smiling troops are real evidence of relief. They do not establish that every man was cheerful, unhurt or ready to fight again the next morning.
An army had to account for its people, reunite units, replace lost weapons and transport, and prepare for the possibility of invasion. Wounded men needed treatment. Families of missing soldiers needed answers that might not arrive quickly. French evacuees faced their own decisions and orders as fighting continued in France.
The scale of Dunkirk becomes clearer when these individual experiences are allowed to remain different. Deliverance, grief, humiliation, gratitude, exhaustion and captivity all belonged to the same campaign. Calling it a miracle expresses the astonishment of escape. Following the people shows the work, sacrifice and loss inside that word.
Questions from this chapter
What happened to civilians during the campaign?
The invasion drove civilians onto roads already crowded with military traffic, exposing families to bombardment, separation and uncertainty. Towns and villages suffered destruction as armies moved and fought through them. Refugees were not a background detail: their displacement shaped the experience of the campaign and complicated transport, supply and movement for everyone involved.
Why should refugee photographs be included?
They show that the campaign transformed civilian lives as well as military positions. A column of refugees can reveal displacement, possessions carried, transport and the proximity of armies. Captions must identify the place and date supported by the archive, rather than labeling every fleeing family as French or every road scene as the retreat to Dunkirk.
Were troops from Britain's empire present in France?
Yes. Britain's war effort included personnel from across the empire, and Indian service units were among those deployed in France. Their roles included transport and support work essential to an army's functioning. The evacuation story should recognize such personnel without assuming that every imperial formation served in the same sector or followed the same route.
Read the evidence
- National Army Museum — Defeat in the West, 1940
- French Ministry of the Armed Forces — campaign and memory records
- Victoria Cross and George Cross Association — Ervine-Andrews and his citation
- National Army Museum — The Indian contingent at Dunkirk
- Victoria Cross and George Cross Association — Richard Annand and his citation
- Royal Anglian Regiment — the Le Paradis memorial and the murdered prisoners
Archive photographs carry their own source and rights links. The maps are explanatory schematics. Routes, city markers and unit locations are approximate; they are not a reconstruction of every front line.