The Roll of the British railways in the evacuation of Dunkirk in 1940, World War 2 – Railway 200

I would love to begin a great big shout out of gratitude to the railway workers in the UK in WWII. In the same year we celebrate ‘Railway 200’ marking the invention of the steam train, and 85 years since the evacuation of troops from Dunkirk and other beaches, why do people still not know about the role the railway companies and workers played in saving so many men?

The railways played as important a part as the small boats, and this is where we realise the influence of propaganda on history.

Shouting about the involvement of the small boats, was a good way of showing Hitler and his military staff that Britain would rally, that the British were resilient and civilians would stand together to fight and save each other. Where as, when it came to the involvement of the railways, they did not want the Germans to know where the soldiers who had been saved were, the did not want to risk the Luftwaffe bombing camps and killing our soldiers who the country had invested so much effort in saving. So, propaganda did not shout about the role of the railway workers, and history has therefore simply forgotten.

You generally don’t realise what you don’t know until you need that knowledge, and to write the second book in The Great Western Railway Girls series, I needed to know what happened on this side of the channel after the evacuations of the allied forces. The 85 years recognition happened this summer, and if you watched the documentaries about the evacuations, they all focus on what happened in Flanders and France and take you up to the moment the men find a route to get home on a ship or small boat. I wanted to know about what people did here and where the men went when they got home. My characters would not even have known what was going on abroad at that time, apart from what could be seen and heard from this side of the channel.

It took a lot of hunting to find out, and actually most of the information I found was shared by the women who supported the planning of the evacuation in England and helped the soldiers when they arrived in Dover. The press were mostly silent about what happened when the troops made it home.

My first discovery, was a personal account from a WREN who had been working in the War Tunnels in the cliffs of Dover, helping to organise the evacuations, requisitioning boats and ships and planning the movements of those and the navy vessels. She wrote about coming out from the tunnels with colleagues, to go down to the harbour at Dover and help the men who were arriving. She said they arrived in a terrible state, some even completely naked, and most of them had neither eaten nor slept for days because the Germans had raced through France so quickly. They had been running for their lives for days, retreating to get to the coast without being killed or captured by the Germans, with no time for rest.

It was in a 1940 GWR company magazine in Swindon’s STEAM Museum records that I began discovering the role the railways played. All the British railway companies were involved in the planning of Operation Dynamo which was done in a matter of a few days. Every train in the country and every trainline was involved in getting as many carriages to Dover and away from Dover as quickly as possible, then returning with cleaned carriages to collect another load of men. This included hospital carriages to move the wounded as well as normal carriages which were packed full using every inch of space.

It was as important to get the men away from the English coast as it was to remove them from France, otherwise they would have been sitting ducks for the Luftwaffe to fly over the channel and end what they had begun on the other side.

In those few days of planning, camps had been set up all over the country to receive the men, at locations that were kept secret. I discovered one of those was close to Swindon, at the army camp near Chiseldon. However, I don’t describe Chiseldon camp in the book, The Great Western Railway Girls Do Their Bit, because Chiseldon camp had a railway station and I’d read a more dramatic option. I found a personal record from a woman who was helping out in a camp who said that the men had to march five miles from the station to the camp, in the condition they’d arrived at in Dover. It was miraculous really that they were able to do it, and I wanted to put this in the story.

You should also remember, The Government’s plan had an expectation of saving around 35,000 men. They had therefore planned to move 35,000 men on the railways and receive 35,000 in the camps. But their plans had to ramp up several gears in a matter of hours when the plans were put into action, and the men returning flooded into Dover, 350,000, ten times the number they’d planned to process at the port and move in land.

The GWR magazine recorded that on one day alone during the period of the evacuations from France, 200 trains ran out of Dover, moving the men away from the port, which meant that many staff had to volunteer to do jobs on the trains they were not normally involved in…

All great information for me to be able to write my characters into these events.

But why are we in the year of Railway 200, and 85 years since Dunkirk, not telling the story of the part the railways played in saving hundreds of thousands of men. So whenever you have opportunity, tell others and get the story out there!

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Learn more about The Great Western Railway Girls novels here -> The Great Western Railway Girls

Why do we remember and celebrate Shakespeare’s birthplace?

William Shakespeare died over 400 hundred years ago and yet today most people know who he is and where he came from, not only in the UK, but across the English speaking world and beyond. Why?

Earlier this year, I decided to visit Stratford upon Avon, birthplace and home of young and old William Shakespeare, a preserved treasure of Tudor England. I didn’t actually stay in Stratford Upon Avon for the Shakespeare experience; I am a life-time member of the National Trust and there are lots of historical properties to visit locally, as well as the town being a lovely place to stay with lots to see without having to get in a car. And, you know me, I love a historical setting – so the prefect place for a little holiday. I have so much to say about Stratford upon Avon my mind is brim-full with blogs and I’ve been holding on to them for ages and not had the time to write them up. But it means I am going to have to be careful to get my dyslexic/dyspraxic brain to stick to one theme per blog and not take you down lots of different, muddled rabbit holes.

So for today, I am going to answer the above question, an answer I discovered during in my stay, and was really surprised by because I’d assumed that Stratford upon Avon was a destination place from Shakespeare’s lifetime onwards. No …

The first hint that there was something I didn’t know about the history of the pilgrimage Shakespeare’s fans make, references my last post including my fascination with graffiti. On the first day of our stay, we walked along the bank of the river Avon and came across Holy Trinity Church where Shakespeare is buried, and was baptised.

Before we entered the church I spotted on the riverside wall a lot of graffiti. It’s actually very unusual to see historical graffiti on the outside walls of a church. I’ve never seen it before… My husband and I, however, noticed that a lot of carvings were from the 1800s onwards. This was also unusual.

Then I read about the Shakespeare Jubilee established by David Garrick, a successful and famous actor in Georgian England. https://www.shakespeare.org.uk/explore-shakespeare/shakespedia/david-garricks-shakespeare-jubilee/. “In 1769, David Garrick threw a party that put Stratford-upon-Avon on the map as a tourist destination for Shakespeare fans.”

Shakespeare’s birthplace had not been celebrated until David Garrick put it on the map as a place to be seen. Though, his idea failed at the time – an outdoor display of theatre was washed out by the weather. But his initial desire was followed through as King George III was succeeded by his son as Prince Regent who became King George IV. In the Regency period of ‘romantic’ fashions what could be more romantic than treasuring the man, Shakespeare, who created such wonderfully romantic and powerfully dramatic works!

While Garrick’s original festival was a bit of a disaster, the idea stuck. He used the material of his planned celebration in theatres across Britain and Europe and then… “In 1816 Stratford held an organised commemoration of Shakespeare’s death for the first time. The festival was closely modelled on Garrick’s Jubilee and was organised by the sons of those committee members who had been involved with it,” and, “In 1824 the Shakespeare Club was founded in Stratford.” This, therefore, alluded to why so much of the graffiti on the church wall of Shakespeare’s burial place came after this era. “Three years later the 1830 Jubilee attracted nationwide interest and even received Royal Patronage.”

A medal struck for the 1816 Shakespeare Festival in Stratford-upon-Avon

Stratford upon Avon then became one of the most ‘romantic’ and ‘fashionable’ places to visit. Celebrities of the time, all the romantic poets, are recorded as visiting the town in the 1800s. It became a pilgrimage destination for writers and painters alike.

What I think is particularly wonderful about this adulation for Shakespeare’s home town that began in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, is that it meant Stratford upon Avon was saved from being completely dressed in Georgian architecture. What I mean by this is shown in the town where I live…

The Castle Town of Devizes, like many towns in Britain, in appearance is full of properties built in the Georgian period…

But behind the scenes…

Because the Georgians, in the 1700s, travelled the world, and were inspired by European architecture, they wanted their properties in our towns to look like the grand places they’d seen in Europe – resembling Roman and Greek buildings. They wanted the outside of their properties to be an architectural artwork, with blind pilasters, balustrades and carvings. Of course, rebuilding would cost a lot of money, so often, the Georgians just built a new front wall, literally face-painting our medieval towns. This is most apparent in the pictures top left in the above two galleries, the wooden framed walkway is behind the front door of Parnella House in Devizes marketplace. But because Stratford upon Avon was being celebrated for its historical beauty in remembrance of Shakespeare’s life, the Georgians restrained this desire and left much of the Tudor and earlier architecture untouched…

So, we have David Garrick’s 18th century failed jubilee and then Stratford upon Avon town Corporation’s investment in continuing this theme, and lastly those who established Stratford’s ‘Shakespeare Club’ in 1824, to thank for preserving the historical buildings in the town, and for it’s recognition as the home town of Shakespeare. That is why so many people still visit Stratford upon Avon today.

“In the words of Mrs Hart – a descendant of Shakespeare and one time custodian of Shakespeare’s Birthplace, ‘People never thought so much of it till after the Jubilee’.”

Quotes taken from – https://www.shakespeare.org.uk/explore-shakespeare/shakespedia/aftermath-jubilee/

There’s lots more for me to say about the things I discovered, and the places I visited in and around Stratford upon Avon, so follow my blog if you don’t want to miss a post.