Saviour of the French
From David Ramsay Sir: As Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay, who directed the Dunkirk evacuation, Operation Dynamo, was my father. I was interested to read Nigel Buxton's article (Dunkirk spirits', 6 March). He wrote of 'a cruel necessity that compelled Admiral Ramsay finally to call off any further rescue attempts, when thousands of mainly French troops were waiting on the quays'. To the contrary, after the remaining British troops had been evacuated during the night of 2-3 June 1940, my father extended Dynamo for one further night to bring off more French troops, who had been engaged in a counterattack at Bergues, four miles from Dunkirk.
In his message to his crews, my father wrote, 'I hoped and believed that last night would see us through, but the French who were covering the retirement of the British rearguard had to repel a strong German attack and so were unable to send their troops to the pier in time to be embarked. We cannot leave our allies in the lurch, and I must call on all officers and men detailed for further evacuation tonight to let the world see that we never let down our ally..
On the night of 3-4 June, his destroyers and other naval vessels and the crossChannel ferries, whose crews had all performed so magnificently and were near to exhaustion, sailed once more for Dunkirk and brought off 26,175 French troops. In his book, The Nine Days of Dunkirk, David Divine wrote that the last British destroyer to leave Dunkirk, HMS Shikari, sailed at 3.40 a.m. on 4 June with the sound of German machine guns close at hand'.
My father noted that of 338,226 troops rescued during Dynamo, 129,000 — or 38 per cent of the total — were French.
David Ramsay
Indian Wells, California
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