MIRACLES OF DUNKIRK
To The Editor
Sir, —As many of the readers of your paper are interested in the miracles of Dunkirk, I am sending a brief account of them, most of which appeared in a recent number of The Reaper. On Sunday, May 26, the King called his subjects to prayer, and the churches everywhere were thronged. However, a few days later, some of those who had spent Sunday in sport and pleasure laughed and said that the prayers of people had not been answered because they had not been answered immediately. But “God never is before His time and never is behind,” and He answers true prayer in His own good time and in His own way. A definite answer was received in the evacuation of the Allied armies from Dunkirk.
Mr Winston Churchill, in reviewing the achievement, said that more than 335,000 Allied troops had been brought “out of the jaws of death by a miracle of deliverance.” Mr Churchill and many others had expected only 30,000 to escape. ‘The men had to march eight to 12 miles to the port and the Germans were bent on their destruction. While waiting on the beach the men were open to enemy bombing. The strange armada of hundreds of ships, battleships and small boats, was surely a good target for the foe, and it must be admitted that the evacuation of such a large army was humanly impossible. C. B. Mortlock tells of two wonders on which turned the fate of the troops. He say&: “I have talked to officers and meri who have got safely back to England, and all of them tell of two miracles. The first was the great storm which broke over Flanders on Tuesday, May 28, and the other was the great calm which settled on the English Channel during the following vital days. Such a calmness has seldom before been experienced. Those who are accustomed to the Channel testify to the strangeness of this calm; they are deeply impressed by the phenomenon of nature by which it became possible for tiny craft to go back and forth in safety.”
So the two miracles made possible what seemed impossible. In the darkness of the storm and the violence of the rain the troops were able to move up on foot with scarcely any interruption from aircraft, for aeroplanes were unable to operate in such*turbulent conditions. A fog so dense rolled over the Allied armies in the process of evacuation that it seemed like a repetition of the experience of Israel in Egypt. And the pillar of cloud came between the camp of the Germans and the camp of the Allies. It is encouraging for us to know that the officers of high rank _ do not hesitate to put down the deliverance of the British Expeditionary Force to the fact that the nation was at prayer on May 26. The consciousness of a miraculous deliverance pervades the camps in which the troops are housed in England. Shortly after their arrival a concert was arranged for their en-
tertainment and at the request of the men the chaplain conducted a short thanksgiving service consisting of a hymn and prayers and a few simple words. After that night all the following F.N.S.A. concerts in that camp were followed by short services of prayer and thanksgiving.—Yours, etc., M. BROWNE. September 16, 1940.
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Southland Times, Issue 24233, 17 September 1940, Page 3
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564MIRACLES OF DUNKIRK Southland Times, Issue 24233, 17 September 1940, Page 3
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