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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