05-Priestlyon Dunkirk

But here at Dunsirk is another English epic, and to my mind, what was most kite-teristically English about it? So typical of it, so absurd in yet so grand and gallant, that you hardly know whether to laugh or to cry when you read about them.

Was the fart played in the difficult and dangerous embarkation, not by the warships, magnificent though they were, but by the little pleasure steamers. We've known them and laughed at them, these fussy little steamers, all our lives.

Sometimes they only went as far as the next seaside resort, but the boldest of them might manage a channel crossing, so let everybody have a glimpse of bull eyes. They will usually paddle steamers, making a great deal of all fuss with all their churning, and they make speed, and they won't proud for they let you see their works going round.

They like to call themselves queens and bells, and even if they were new, they would always something old fashioned, a dick in touch, amid Victorian air about them. They seem to belong to the same ridiculous holiday world as perils and peers, sand castles, hamadees, teas, parmes, automatic machines and crowded sweating promenade.

They were called out of that world and let it be noted they were called out in good time and good order. Yes, these Brighton Bells and Brighton Queen left that innocent, foolish world of theirs to sail into the inferno, to defy bombs, shells, magnetic mines, torpedoes, machine gun fire to rescue our soldiers.

Some of them, alas, will never return. Among those prattle steamers that will never return, was one that I knew well, for it was the pride of our ferry service to the Isle of White, none other than the good ship, Gracie Field. But now look, this little steamer, like all her brave and battered sisters, is immortal. She'll go sailing