THE
WAR
THE
WEATHER
& GOD
by
G.F.
Vallance
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Chapter 2.
We were up against it,
of that there was no doubt. Everybody
felt it in the air, and the Prime Minister confirmed it to us.
Yes! It was Dunkirk week-end.
But the Miracle of
Dunkirk lay in the fact that the bulk of our Expeditionary Force, which even
the Government feared would be lost, was gloriously retrieved by the wonderful
and brave Armada of tiny vessels which plied the Channel constantly against
colossal odds with remarkably few casualties.
The testimony of all
alike who were in those crossings - those who knew it well and those to whom it
was a new experience – was, that the waters were like a millpond the whole week
through, and waters, remember, which usually at that period of the year
were nearly always stormy.
Reference to
illustrations No. l, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 of the Red Cross Booklet, “Home
from Dunkirk” fully confirms this fact.
The Miracle of Dunkirk
was “BECAUSE OF THE WEATHER.” Had those
waters not been as “STILL as a Millpond,” it could never have happened.
But the remarkable
FACT is, that the Nation had been to Prayer the previous Sunday.
We have learned much,
since those critical days of May 1940, concerning their inner history.
On that very Sunday
morning, whilst the Nation was at Prayer, Lord Gort, who was then in charge of
the B.E.F. in France, sent the following message to the War office in
London:-
“I must not conceal
from you that a great part of the B.E.F. and its equipment will inevitably be
lost even in the best circumstances…. No ship can be loaded at the docks at
Dunkirk, and few wounded can be evacuated. There is no water in the town, and very little on the beaches.”
And the following
Tuesday, the War Office replied saying;-
“If you are cut off from us and all evacuation from
Dunkirk, and the beaches has, in your judgment, been finally prevented after
every attempt to open it has failed, you will become sole judge of when it is
impossible to inflict further damage on the enemy.”
In other words, Lord
Gort was given permission to capitulate if he thought fit to do so.
Within forty-eight
hours, however, light began to pierce the dark clouds. When the dykes were opened, to flood the low
ground to delay the German advance, the wind blew in from the sea,
greatly facilitating this important operation, whilst during five out of the
seven days and nights of the evacuation period, the wind blew from the land,
without which embarkation in small boats from that dangerous coast would have
proved impossible.
On June 4th,
l940, in the British House of Commons, the Prime Minister said: “When a week
ago I asked the House to fix this afternoon as the occasion for a statement, I
feared it would be my hard lot to announce the greatest military disaster in
our whole history. I had thought that
twenty or thirty thousand men might be saved from Flanders, but certainly it
seemed that the whole French First Army, and the whole British Expeditionary
Force, north of Amiens and Abbeville, would be broken up in the open field, or
else have to capitulate for lack of food and ammunition.” But actually 335,000 Allied troops were
miraculously saved by way of Dunkirk.
Ninety percent, of the B.E.F. was rescued, after Hitler had announced
that it was surrounded, trapped, and doomed to immediate annihilation! A fog did its helpful work in
screening from the innumerable German aircraft the motley mass of vessels sent
to rescue the men; and the swift current of the English Channel gave way to
calm waters, a happening almost without precedent, at this time of year.
Gen. Sir Beauvoir De
Lisle, said at the Central Hall, Westminster, on 2nd Nov., 1943:
“I
believe this war was won on May 26th, 1940, the Sunday the King
appointed as a Day for National Prayer.”
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But the weather had
interposed on our behalf, prior to May 1940.
In October 1939,
unprecedented heavy rains, lasting the whole month, had caused flooding along
the Rhine and the Low Countries. This was after the conquest of Poland; and
Gen. Ironside, broadcasting in the Spring of 1940, said that if the Germans had
attacked at that time we were badly prepared to hold them. He was accused of indiscretion, but clearly
he was right, though he gave no information why an attack had not developed.
Secondly, severe
weather during the Winter of 1939-40 froze the Danube and canals in N. Europe
for long periods, thus hampering German Transport of oil and coal, and
throwing heavy strain on the railways. Goering, in an outburst of truthfulness,
referred to it, as a “super-natural cold.”
Four months after
DUNKIRK, came other Divine interventions.
September 7th,
1940, saw the commencement of the first big London Blitz, when the London Docks
were set ablaze; and that week witnessed the “Battle of Britain,” which was
gloriously won for “The many, by the few.”
How great these
deliverances were, we do not as a Nation fully realize. Lord Beaverbrook said in New York on April
23rd, 1942 concerning Dunkirk:
“It was just two years ago that we lost everything we
possessed save only our soldiers. We
had to begin all over again. There was
nothing left to us but a portion of our army.
All our weapons had gone. The
cupboard was bare. Not even a rifle.
Guns
were lost by the thousands, vehicles by the fifty thousand. Almost all our
tanks and many aeroplanes. And remember, too, that many valuable and essential
raw materials were cut off when our sources of supply fell under the power of
Germany. Three-quarters of our imports
of iron and steel and all the raw
materials of our aluminium output, most of our wood products, including
newsprint raw materials.
But the biggest disaster was our naval
losses. Forty-seven warships were sunk in operations off Norway and Dunkirk. And when evacuation was over, half our
destroyer fleet lay awaiting repairs in our shipyards.
Yet the Nation
survived. Who kept the German Hordes from our shores at
that time?
Remember the Nation
had been to Prayer!
Of the Battle of
Britain, Lord Beaverbrook said:
“Hardly had we emerged from this peril (Dunkirk) when
we were called upon to fight the Battle of Britain. And I must tell you that when that conquest began, we had in
reserve only five fighter aircraft in the storage units.”
Air Chief Marshall Sir
Hugh Dowding who was in command of the R.A.F. at the time has said,
“I pay my homage to those very gallant boys who gave
their all that our nation might live. I
pay my tribute to their leaders.”
and, as already quoted, he added,
“But
I say with absolute conviction, that I can trace the intervention of God, not
only in the battle itself, but in the events that led up to it.
If
it had not been for this intervention, the battle would have been joined in
conditions which, humanly speaking, would have rendered victory impossible.
Yes, GOD gave us
the Victory.
The Nation had again been praying you see, for there
had been another Day of National Prayer the previous Sunday.
Have we ever thanked
Him for His Miraculous intervention I wonder?
But let us go on.
It is now generally
admitted that the week-end September 16th, 1940, was intended to be
an Invasion week-end, and the Battle of Britain, as we now call it, was to have
been merely the preliminary round. How
far that Invasion was attempted, and how true all the stories about the damaged
Barges and dead Germans on the shores of France are, we must wait for history
to record, but this fact cannot be overlooked, that September 16th
week-end, was the week of the Full Moon, and also the Harvest Moon when, it is
generally admitted, the waters of the English Channel are at their
smoothest. But, again for the first
time in living memory those waters in September 1940 were the roughest ever
known, and a gale of sufficient force to upset any Barges blew during those
days, whether the attempt at invasion was made or not.
IT WAS “BECAUSE OF
THE WEATHER” that Hitler’s well-laid plans were spoiled.
The God who could calm
the waters at Dunkirk, for a Nation who had sought His face in Pryer, was well
able to stir them up, at the
time of the Harvest Moon.
In the second week of
September, 1940, Mr. Churchill with full knowledge of the facts, said in the
House of Commons, that the next ten days would be more critical than any the
country had ever passed through. It is
known that September 16th-20th is the period chosen for
the yearly attempts to swim the Straits of Dover, and that the harvest moon
then prolongs light to a late hour, and it is usually calm weather. Boats for invasion purposes were being collected
at various points on the French Coast, and weather was calm up to the 16th,
but on the 17th a gale blew up the Channel, the sea became rough,
and this lasted until the 29th.
The invasion boats had to be taken into harbours, and their destruction
at Calais and Boulogne by R.A.F. was clearly seen, and heard, on the English
side of the Straits.
The Germans then
announced that Providence had favoured the British twice (the first time at the miracle of
Dunkirk when the sea went calm, and the tide seemed to stand still for us) and
that we were totally unworthy of the favours.
But, said the enemy, we had only to wait for the November or December
fogs (for which the Channel is well known) to get our deserts, but again for
the first time in living memory, there were no fogs that winter
in the Straits.
So much for 1940! But
what of 1941?
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