It could have been one of the biggest military disasters of the Second World War, but against all odds the British Army was successfully evacuated. When German troops first invaded Holland, Luxembourg and Belgium, the defences prepared by the Allies failed to repel them, and the British Expeditionary Force found themselves in an increasingly chaotic retreat. By the end of May 1940, over 400,000 Allied Troops were trapped in and around the port of Dunkirk. The enemy were just ten miles away.

On 26 May 1940, the British Admiralty launched Operation Dynamo sending every available vessel – from Navy destroyers and troopships to pleasure cruisers and fishing boats – over to Dunkirk. Of the 850 ‘Little Ships’ that sailed, 235 were sunk by German aircraft or mines, but over this nine-day period 338,000 British and French troops were safely evacuated. Drawing on a wealth of material from the Imperial War Museum’s Sound Archive, Forgotten Voices: Dunkirk presents in the words of both rescued and rescuers an intimate and dramatic account of what Winston Churchill described as a ‘miracle of deliverance’.

Introduction by Peter Snow