{"id":9613,"date":"2017-07-21T00:25:25","date_gmt":"2017-07-21T00:25:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=9613"},"modified":"2017-07-22T00:26:34","modified_gmt":"2017-07-22T00:26:34","slug":"dunkirk-survivors-terror-didnt-end-when-they-were-rescued","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/dunkirk-survivors-terror-didnt-end-when-they-were-rescued\/","title":{"rendered":"Dunkirk survivors\u2019 terror didn\u2019t end when they were rescued"},"content":{"rendered":"

John Broich<\/a>, Case Western Reserve University<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

In late May 1940, Vic Viner was one of the 338,000 Allied troops on the beaches around the French port of Dunkirk hoping for rescue as the German Army neared and the Luftwaffe circled above. <\/p>\n

At age 99, Viner met with Christopher Nolan, writer and director of a new movie about the evacuation, and tried to give the filmmaker some sense of what it was like to be trapped on those beaches. But, he insisted<\/a>, \u201cYou can\u2019t tell anybody what it was like. You had to have been there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nolan and his collaborators certainly do their best to bring experiences like Viner\u2019s to life for moviegoers. The film \u201cDunkirk\u201d portrays a sequence of terrors: the horrible vulnerability of being prey to a swooping dive bomber; the helplessness of watching a ship list and hurry under the waves; the bitter necessity of pushing desperate men away from an overburdened lifeboat.<\/p>\n

In one scene, the film follows the crew of a small civilian boat as it lifts survivors from the sea off of Dunkirk. One, a Royal Navy sailor whose ship has been torpedoed by a U-boat, huddles on the boat unresponsive.<\/p>\n

\u201cIs he a coward?\u201d one of the boat\u2019s crew asks its skipper, played by Mark Rylance.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s shell-shocked, George,\u201d the captain replies. \u201cHe\u2019s not himself. He may never be himself again.\u201d It\u2019s a foretelling of the reality for many of those who returned, changed from Dunkirk.<\/p>\n

Preserving the voices of survivors<\/h2>\n
\n \"\"<\/a>
\n Hundreds of men of the British Expeditionary Force withdrawn from Dunkirk and northern France arrive in England on May 31, 1940.<\/span>
\n AP Photo<\/span><\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Documenting the reality of those shell-shocked survivors is what London\u2019s Imperial War Museum had in mind when it recorded interviews of scores of veterans in the 1990s and early 2000s. Those interviews show that the horror stayed with many of them long after they were freed from a deathtrap between the German Army, the Luftwaffe and the sea.<\/p>\n

As a WWII historian, I\u2019ve found those tapes \u2013 many free to stream<\/a> \u2013 substantiate the film\u2019s depictions of anguish. But, even more, they add the dimension of time and the long echoes of that anguish which the film can\u2019t capture.<\/p>\n

On his 1999 recording<\/a>, Will Harvey tells how shrapnel from a German bomb tore through his legs as he waited for his chance to board a ship. In the pain and confusion, he mistakenly thought his legs were gone. \u201cYou lost a bit of your senses.\u201d <\/p>\n

His voice cracks, but he covers it up with an out-of-place laugh. These are commonplace in the tapes, along with obvious restraint and overall evasion of grim details.<\/p>\n

Asked about his recovery, Harvey says, \u201cI used to get aggressive, at times, with the blokes, you know. I\u2019d try to control it. I used to get very aggressive.\u201d <\/p>\n

He tried to return to his unit but, suffering from a series of breakdowns from then on, he was soon discharged from the Army. After that, he tried and failed to reenlist in the Marines.<\/p>\n

As a 21-year-old, Al Tyers found himself directing men onto awaiting ships at Dunkirk, ordered to give priority to the Army and male refugees of fighting age over the many civilians who were also trying get away from the oncoming Germans. \u201cAs many as could go on a ship\u2026they packed you in like cattle,\u201d he says. But then, \u201cthey put that siren on, that screaming siren,\u201d just before the German dive bombers would rush over the treetops aiming for the departing ships. Moments like this are depicted with hair-raising effect in the film. <\/p>\n

\u201cA ship would get loaded up \u2013 I don\u2019t know, a thousand or so\u2026 and get half a mile out. And the next thing, you\u2019d see the ship going down.\u201d Tyers fails to hide the emotion in his voice at that; like other interviewees, he diverts from the terrible scene quickly.<\/p>\n

Back in Britain, Tyers suffered from debilitating claustrophobia. He spent three months in psychiatric hospital, but even afterwards newsreels depicting war scenes would send him rushing outside to the open air. Back home, he couldn\u2019t sit shoulder to shoulder with people at meals.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know whether they understood or not.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n \"\"<\/a>
\n Safe in England on June 1, 1940.<\/span>
\n AP Photo<\/span><\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Other voices from the archive<\/a> speak of trouble reintegrating into civilian life. William Machin<\/a>, Charles Mandeville<\/a> and Harry Garrett<\/a> tell of being hounded by nightmares. Ernest Leggett describes<\/a> how he still saw French and Belgian refugees being shattered by German bombers and fighters in his dreams decades later. <\/p>\n

Treating the \u2018sufferers\u2019<\/h2>\n

There\u2019s plenty of evidence<\/a> of Dunkirk survivors being institutionalized. Doctors documented that many evacuees inundating hospitals in Britain were \u201csuffering,\u201d in the words<\/a> of one psychiatrist, \u201cfrom acute hysteria, reactive depression, functional loss of memory or the use of their limbs.\u201d But the wartime government didn\u2019t keep track of the numbers. It wasn\u2019t in its interest to report on it. They also didn\u2019t track veteran suicides, an epidemic among today\u2019s combat veterans. But there\u2019s evidence<\/a> of them<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Suicides on the beaches around Dunkirk were also uncounted, but some are documented. Christopher Nolan\u2019s depiction of a soldier striding into the waves, apparently intending to \u201cwalk home,\u201d is based on more than one<\/a> real incident. Many others wandered off, senseless, to unknown fates. Others shot<\/a> themselves.<\/p>\n

And there are official records of lingering and often debilitating anxiety among the Dover-based crews who braved repeated crossings of the channel with evacuees. A secret memo<\/a> produced two months afterward reported a spike in anxiety problems, with more than one in seven sailors on the station affected.<\/p>\n

Indelible memories<\/h2>\n

For those evacuees, eventually shifting to civilian life was hard. \u201cStarted having psychological problems, you know.\u2026 Almost passing out every now and again. \u2026 Suddenly you\u2019re dropped off a cliff\u2026 You\u2019ve come unhinged,\u201d Reg Dance says<\/a> on his 1999 tape. \u201cIt took an awful long time for that to go. But it did in the end, otherwise I wouldn\u2019t be here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fred Walton made it off the beach, but the paddle steamer he was on was bombed while he was on the upper deck. A man nearby had both legs blown off. The man next to Walton was cut by shrapnel and almost leaped into the sea, panicked. Walton had to pin him down.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow do you forget those sorts of things?\u201d he asked<\/a> his Imperial War Museum interviewer. \u201cDon\u2019t think you can ever be the same, can you?\u201d He breaks off with another of those awkward laughs.<\/p>\n

At the time Walton was interviewed in 2008 tape, 4,000 British troops were still in Iraq.<\/p>\n

\"The\u201cIt\u2019s showing itself again, isn\u2019t it?\u201d says Walton. \u201cThe lads who are coming home now?\u201d<\/p>\n

John Broich<\/a>, Associate Professor, Case Western Reserve University<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

This article was originally published on The Conversation<\/a>. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John Broich, Case Western Reserve University In late May 1940, Vic Viner was one of the 338,000 Allied troops on the beaches around the French port of Dunkirk hoping for rescue as the German Army neared and the Luftwaffe circled above. At age 99, Viner met with Christopher Nolan, writer and director of a new […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":9614,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[2799,1743,716,2225,183,2798,1823],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9613"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9613"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9613\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9616,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9613\/revisions\/9616"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}