‘Youngsters don’t realise how close we came to becoming German’ says one of the last survivors of the Dunkirk evacuation as new film tells story of miraculous escape
Ahead of Hollywood blockbuster one of the last men to get out of northern France tells his story
IT was the ultimate triumph over adversity, a “miracle” rescue that summed up our wartime spirit.
Trapped on the beaches of Dunkirk and at the mercy of German bombs, more than 300,000 Allied troops escaped Hitler’s clutches against all odds as the Navy and civilians combined to bring them home.
One of the last men to get out of northern France was George Wagner.
Last night the bravery of the Royal Engineer and other British military men involved in the World War Two evacuation — codenamed Operation Dynamo — was remembered in London’s Leicester Square at the world premiere of the film Dunkirk.
Released next week, it stars Tom Hardy, Kenneth Branagh, Mark Rylance and Harry Styles as some of the heroes who helped snatch a morale-boosting victory from the jaws of defeat in late spring 1940.
George was awarded the Legion D’Honneur, France’s highest military medal, after the operation, and last night got to walk the red carpet with Prince Harry, who he met earlier in the day at a special reception at Kensington Palace.
For George, the Christopher Nolan epic movie is more about getting the younger generation today to see the sacrifices made by so many men and women during the evacuation.
The 96-year-old told The Sun: “It’s good they’ve made a film about Dunkirk. Youngsters do not realise how close we came to being a German satellite. We might have been a different country altogether.
“It is important to remember the sacrifices that were made. I hope it never happens again.”
When Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain announced in September 1939 that Britain was at war with Germany, the then 19-year-old George was caught up in the “fervour” and saw it as an “adventure”.
After first initially being deployed to Belgium, he recalled that “people came out of their offices to welcome us” when he arrived in Brussels.
But when German tanks punched through French defences in the Ardennes forests on May 10, 1940, the British Army was forced into a hasty retreat north towards the coast.
George, who as a sapper was used to repairing river crossings and clearing mines, was instead blowing up bridges and laying explosives to slow the German advance.
Within a week, plans to evacuate Allied troops were being drawn up — although no one told George’s section.
He said: “I just did what I had to do. It was a caper to me.
“We blew up the biggest bridge over the Albert Canal in Brussels. I don’t think they were so welcoming when we started to blow stuff up during the retreat.”
However, things soon got serious for the desperate troops on the road to Dunkirk as the Nazi onslaught intensified.
George, from Birmingham, recalled: “The shelling got very close to us as we were walking back. Debris hit one of the other soldiers in our section.
“There were a lot of refugees on the road. It was harassing. There were planes overhead bombing. They would whine as they started to dive. I jumped over a wall to get away.”
The men had no food or drink so George stole a pig and a crate of beer during the journey.
Arriving at De Panne, just across the border from Dunkirk, they were targeted by German mortar fire.
George said: “I had never heard anything so loud in my life.”
Eventually crossing into France and with Dunkirk in sight, the truck George was in had to be dumped.
Despite millions of pounds worth of equipment being left in the rush to get across the Channel, he was reprimanded for stealing an overcoat from the lorry.
George said: “The sergeant major said to me, ‘It will do to bury you in’.” With the Germans surrounding Dunkirk, the only port left for an Allied withdrawal, military chiefs expected to get just 45,000 soldiers off the continent when Operation Dynamo began on May 26.
At first, George enjoyed his taste of beach life, riding a motorbike across the sand for a “lark”.
There are accounts of troops playing cards, drinking bubbly and forming orderly queues for prostitutes.
But with the evacuation under way, his sergeant major’s words nearly rang true for George. As his section tried to build a makeshift pier out of abandoned trucks, they were targeted by mortar fire.
He said: “We carried bridging equipment and laid planks on top of the lorries so people could walk on them, so they could get on the boats.
“It was just late evening. All of a sudden shells came over and one or two of our fellas were killed. We lost one of our sergeants as well.
“I ran as fast as I could. I had already dug a sand hole and I dived down. I had my equipment in there. It’s there to this day for all I know.”
George then took cover in a cellar in the town but he felt his best chance was going back to the beach to look for a boat. But he had missed the chance to escape on one of the hundreds of Little Ships, tiny leisure and fishing boats crewed by civilians, which arrived on May 31 and, with the Navy, formed a 900-strong flotilla.
In desperation some soldiers attempted to swim home. On the shoreline George saw the corpse of one who had drowned trying.
Salvation arrived for George late at night. He said: “I saw a Navy lifeboat and waded into the water. A naval rating asked, ‘Can you row?’ So I said ‘yes’.
“It filled up and we rowed out to a minesweeper. I took all my clothes off because I was dripping with sea water and they gave me a blanket.
“They cut up bread and cheese and that was beautiful. I hadn’t anything to eat or drink for a couple of days.”
Stepping back on home soil was “lovely” and the Army received a heroes’ welcome, despite its humiliating defeat on the battlefield.
Around 68,000 of our troops were killed, wounded, missing or captured, and we lost six Navy destroyers, 145 planes and abandoned most of our 445 tanks. But between May 26 and June 4, 338,226 soldiers were rescued in what new PM Winston Churchill described as the “miracle of deliverance” as he rallied the nation with his “we shall fight them on the beaches” speech.
While stationed in Northumberland George met his late wife Annie at a dance, before serving his country again during D-Day in 1944.
George, who later worked as an engineer, had never been to a film premiere before and was excited to meet royalty, saying: “It’s all go.”
- Dunkirk is in cinemas on July 21.
The stars who play the heroes
THE incredibly tense film takes on the struggle for survival by our boys on land, sea and in the air. Its A-list cast includes:
TOM HARDY as Farrier, an RAF Spitfire pilot who shoots down the Luftwaffe in edge-of-your-seat aerial battles.
HARRY STYLES, who takes on the role of Alex, a soldier forced to swim for his life as Nazi bombs fall.
MARK RYLANCE as Mr Dawson, a civilian sailor who is part of the Little Ships flotilla.
KENNETH BRANAGH, who stars as Commander Bolton, the officer responsible for getting troops out of Dunkirk.
And CILLIAN MURPHY as an un-named soldier stranded on the hull of a sunken ship before being picked up by Dawson.