Dunkirk Remembrance

[curiouswombat]

It is the 75th anniversary of the Dunkirk Evacuation. As part of the research I've been doing in the newspaper archives of Manx National Heritage for the 'human' side of life on-island during WW2 I have been looking at some of the relevant stories - and was fascinated to find this -

Comments

[tx_cronopio]

Lovely (although very sad) story, thanks! I think the best respect we can pay is to remember.

[curiouswombat]

Fortunately Uncle Eric's story was a much happier one in the long term - he lived into his late 70s.

But I felt so sad reading of 17 and 18 year olds- too young to enlist, but old enough to be serving on the Steam Packet vessels and so requisitioned along with their ships. I think they were allowed to refuse - but wouldn't, they saw it all as 'terribly exciting' to quote one of them.

[shirebound]

Such tragic stories. Such men are without a doubt worthy of remembrance.

[curiouswombat]

As an island nation we are very close to our boats - I bet 99% of the current population can tell you the names of at least one of the current Steam Packet vessels - and so I think that losing the vessels was almost as shocking as losing the crew members, to be honest.

So the anchor of the Mona's Queen is a memorial to both the vessels and their crews.

[petzipellepingo]

Very sad but it's good that those men have never been forgotten.

[curiouswombat]

Yes - they are not forgotten - Mona's Queen's starboard anchor was raised a couple of years ago and is now a memorial down the south of the island.

[mrowe]

I always find it interesting to read such snippets of history; thanks for posting!

[curiouswombat]

I love them too, so you can imagine that I was fascinated when I realised that the headline 'Ramsey Man Tells Of His Experiences at Dunkirk' was an interview with my uncle.

[engarian]

How fascinating! It's wonderful to have such a direct connection to the pivotal events of the war like Dunkirk. It makes it seem like it happened next door instead of far away. Thank you for sharing this, it was really interesting.

- Erulisse (one L)

[curiouswombat]

Yes - being able to really relate to the story (or in my case be related to it!) makes it much more real.

It hadn't occurred to me to actually search for him, as my project is more related to the villages in the south of the island, including the one that was a women's internment camp, and the one that was an internment camp for married couples. So it was a surprise to find this article more or less by accident.