Silence Over Dunkerque by John R. Tunis Page B

were soldiers, exactly like his regiment; the dependables, the casual ones, the shirkers, the timid youngsters trying not to show it, the youthful lieutenants, the older non-coms, the graying officer. It was interesting—and frightening, too.
    He thought they would never reach the end of that column, every second he expected the officer to call out an order sharply and arrest them. Finally they came to the end. As they did, the dog half stood on the shaking cart, leaned back, and gave a lusty, hoarse bark. It was a perfect gesture of contempt toward the invaders.

PART IV
THE END OF OPERATION DYNAMO

CHAPTER 19
    I T WAS CHAOS and confusion on the Admiralty Pier at Dover those early days of June. Round the clock, soldiers of every regiment debarked. The men were quickly fed at the long tables in the rear and soon put on trains that were shunted away to make room for newer arrivals.
    The twins, those days, were all over the place, early and late. “Dad’s coming back,” they told each other, “he’s bound to come back. He’ll come back all right.” They knew from their neighbor, the Cap’n, that the Sergeant had been seen on the beach with his men. So they were determined to be on hand to greet him.
    Searching the long files of weary soldiers slouching along the jetty, watching carefully the faces of men leaning from the windows of the departing trains, they sought their father, continually on the lookout for the shoulder flash of the Wiltshires. Many Wilts had indeed debarked, but nobody could give them any news of the Sergeant. Yet day after day they ranged the crowded piers, sure that eventually he would be landing.
    “Those lads there. They were about here yesterday and the day before. They’ve no right inside the barriers, y’know. Who are they?”
    The MP with the red band around his peaked cap, trim, neat, clean, and shaved, in a well-pressed uniform, stood out in contrast to the debarking fighting men off the boats. He watched the Williams twins dart through the throng of soldiers, asking an occasional question, their faces upturned and anxious. The policeman to whom the question was addressed stood next to the MP and chuckled. He knew military policemen were not popular on that pier. The previous day he had seen one MP tossed into the harbor, because he wouldn’t allow troops to debark soon enough.
    “Ah... those lads! Yes, they’re local boys; their mother runs a boardinghouse up on the Folkestone Road. That’s her, the lady coming toward us with the coffeepot in her hand. The boys’ father is a sergeant with the Wilts, and they come down every day hoping to find him. I should leave them alone if I were you.”
    Wooden barriers had been erected at the end of the jetty to hold back the townspeople. Every one of those anxious women standing there with children beside them had a son, a father, a brother, or a husband with the B.E.F. They crowded against the fence ten deep for long hours every day. Others climbed boxes or barrels behind to survey the passing troops.
    “You there... Northamptons! Have you seen my Bill! Corporal Bill Manners?”
    “Sorry, couldn’t tell you, missis. But there’s more of our lot coming across later.”
    “Coldstreams! Coldstreams! Where is K Company? Is K Company off the beaches yet?”
    “They’re on a destroyer, love. Right behind us. There, see, that’s them docking in the Basin now.”
    Occasionally you’d hear a cry of grief and despair as bad news was given or, less occasionally, a cry of joy.
    “Tom!”
    “Daddy!”
    Then a weary, beaten man, often wrapped in a blanket in place of an overcoat, would stop short at the sound of that voice, peer hard at the waving arms and the faces behind that barrier, then run across and throw his arms around someone on the other side. It didn’t happen often.
    Mrs. Williams, helping with the sandwiches and tea for the starving troops, got past the barricades in her Red Cross uniform. She stayed from early in the morning