Among them, Colonel Tennant specially cut the three letters SNO from the tin foil in the cigarette case and pasted them on the steel helmet to indicate that he was the highest naval officer responsible for directing the retreat, and he led 12 officers and 150 soldiers to lead the organization of a sea retreat of 800,000 people.

On the first night of Operation Dynamo, thanks to the efforts of the Navy, the first batch of 1,312 people, mainly logistics troops, successfully left Dunkirk and returned to England. As soon as the retreat began, there could be no more secrecy, and with the urgency of the situation, the British Admiralty began to requisition ships along the coast and along the Thames, and even called on the radio to all those who owned ships to go to Dunkirk.

The owners understood very well what it meant for Britain to withdraw the expeditionary force, so they responded to the Admiralty's call and sent barges, tugboats, cargo ships, passenger ferries, fishing boats, motorboats and even private yachts to Dunkirk.

A total of 1,693 British ships and 368 French, Dutch and Belgian ships, a total of 2,861 ships of various kinds, joined the rescue process, mainly from six ports in the south of England, namely Hillness, Magath, Dover, New Haven, Folkestone and Ramsgout, and returned to Britain after receiving British and French officers and soldiers at Dunkirk.

On the morning of May 18, the Dunkirk area was covered with fog, and the Luftwaffe, under Goering's strict orders, disregarded the influence of bad weather, dispatched two bomber groups, and after arriving in Dunkirk, they were finally forced to return with bombs due to poor visibility.

The British army, on the other hand, took advantage of this opportunity to organize the retreat of the officers and men, and because the port was seriously damaged and the role of the beach was getting bigger and bigger, the officers and men went into groups of 50 people, each group was led by one officer and one sailor, and they went down from the beach in small groups, waded through the gradually deepening water, boarded small boats, and then took small boats to ferry to large ships far from the coast, and withdrew to Britain.

In the afternoon, the Germans continued to carry out disruptive air raids on Dunkirk in small formations of 3 to 5 aircraft in an attempt to disrupt the retreat of the British army.

But the British soon found that the German air raids did little damage, most of the bombs fell into the sea and open areas, and even if a few bombs exploded near the soldiers' assembly site, the soft sand could absorb most of the energy of the explosion, and even the explosion around them was only a shock, splashing mud and sand.

Seeing this, the soldiers waiting for the retreat came out of their hiding places one after another, some played football and cricket on the beach, some bathed in the seawater, and some even leisurely played with sand sculptures.

At night, there seem to be thousands of fireflies flying in the night sky on the beach - it is a spectacle of thousands of soldiers waiting to retreat smoking, and the flashes of cigarette butts are spectacular! Throughout the day, 17,804 people were evacuated, as civilian boats began to arrive and play a role in the public appeal.

On May 19 of the same year, slightly better, the 3rd and 2nd air forces of the Luftwaffe launched a large sortie and carried out a heavy bombardment of the port area and beaches of Dunkirk, dropping a total of 15,000 high-explosive bombs and 30,000 incendiary bombs, Dunkirk was almost razed to the ground, and the British Air Force took off 200 fighter planes from the mainland to cover the boarding points on the beach and the ships on transport missions.

Although the British planes were not able to stop the German planes' air raid on Dunkirk, they dealt a heavy blow to the German planes, and the German 2nd Air Force alone was shot down 23 planes, 64 air crew members were killed and 7 wounded, and the losses exceeded the original ten days combined! Therefore, this day was called "a day of disaster" by the German army.

The British lost 11 planes and killed more than 2,000 people, which looks good, but if you want to kill 800,000 British and French troops, will you blow up to the Year of the Monkey - oh! The naïve and arrogant Marshal Goering, **** grew up, cute.

The British Navy also went all out, dispatching 1 cruiser, 8 destroyers, and 26 other ships to come, which was the first time since the beginning of the war that the British Navy used a warship to transport personnel. Only 37,669 people were evacuated throughout the day.

On May 20, 1940, the British army learned from the experience of three days and took many measures to speed up the boarding, especially at the east embankment, in order to overcome the tide level difference of up to 4 to 5 meters, all the planks and beams that could be found, and even the wooden goalposts of the goal were used as temporary springboards, and the British army also sank trucks one after another on the beach as a temporary trestle extending into the sea.

In the afternoon, the weather began to clear, and the Luftwaffe launched a major attack, with a posture of making up for the losses of several days, the German planes carried out a concentrated attack on the target of large ships, sinking 3 destroyers and 21 ships, including 5 large ferries, and severely damaging 7 destroyers, forcing Ramsay to transfer the 8 most advanced destroyers participating in the retreat back to the mainland, so as to avoid the loss of these new warships and affect the future operation against the German invasion of the British mainland.

Despite the heavy losses of the British army, the speed of the retreat was greatly increased by the large number of civilian ships that joined the retreat, reaching a record two thousand men per hour! A total of 47,310 people were evacuated throughout the day, the highest in several days.

That night, German naval submarines, torpedo boats, and minesweepers also flew out from the newly occupied ports of Holland and Belgium in an attempt to attack the retreating British ships under the cover of night. Hitler also rescinded the order for the Panzer Corps to halt its advance, and the most feared Panzer Divisions of the Anglo-French forces were once again in battle.

Hitler then remembered Rommel and Guderian, two men who dared to disobey orders, and on the night of the day Hitler ordered his troops to continue the attack, Hitler summoned Rommel and Guderian, but this was already the third night that Rommel had arrived at Army Group A.

Rommel and Guderian were cold for three days, Rommel took Arras a few days earlier than in history, and the encircled Anglo-French troops were also doubled, but they were all wasted by Hitler, and the Anglo-French troops had retreated more than 100,000 people in these three days.

It was impossible to get Hitler to admit that his orders were wrong, but Hitler could not continue to embarrass Rommel and Guderian, and Hitler summoned Rommel, who assumed the posture of an elder and told Rommel cordially:

"I'm all very worried about your safety! So gather you here. ”

Of all the division commanders, Rommel was the only one who enjoyed such a "special honor". After all, it was his order that was wrong, so Hitler only had a brief conversation with Rommel, and then Hitler gave Rommel and Guderian a knight's Iron Cross each.

Rommel and Guderian returned to their forces, but the situation had changed dramatically. Because Rommel attacked and then abruptly halted the attack, so that the Anglo-French army was well prepared, and they had already laid out several strong lines of defense along the La Basi Canal.

You must know that at this time, there are at least 700,000 British and French troops in the Dunkirk area, and they have enough troops to rely on the canal moat to build several defensive lines that are easy to defend and difficult to attack. For Rommel, if it is not easy to fight, he must fight, and he cannot watch the seven or eight hundred thousand Anglo-French troops escape, otherwise there will be great trouble in the future.

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