Soldiers wait on the beach for evacuation, June 1940

Postcard photograph, World War Two, North West Europe (1939-1943), 1940.

By 3 June 1940, 328,000 Allied troops had been taken off the Dunkirk beaches and shipped back to England. This was partly due to the efforts of the Royal Navy and hundreds of civilian ships that had crossed the Channel. It was also due to dogged rearguard actions at Boulogne, Calais and elsewhere, which bought time.

From an album of 28 photograph postcards of Dunkirk, 1940. Compiled in later life by E I Hockey, 3rd Division, Royal Army Service Corps.