Reich Marshal of the Belkan Reich

RM Vol 4: War – Chapter 39: Case Yellow (Day 13 – Evac from Dunkirk)

Combat rages around Dunkirk's city walls. After the obliteration of the EEF's outer perimeter by the Sunburst rocket strike, the Belkans are stopping shy of breaking through the EEF's last bastion through sheer overwhelming force. In the time when the moon is soon ceding its place for the coming morning, the Belkans should have no trouble bringing down that wall in front of them. Yet, as if fortune has smiled at them at last, the Eruseans and Ustians on the walls find themselves suppressed, yes, but not immediately eliminated as they expected. The Belkans sling heavy firepower at the soldiers and emplacements on the walls of Dunkirk, though not nowhere near enough to overwhelm the defenders, weakened as they may be.

Despite the movements of tanks and aircraft all over the scorched terrains, with gunfire aplenty, the Belkans always stayed 500 meters away from the walls. It's as if the Belkan Army is being held back by an unseen hand. A thought that is true, in a way, although not wholly accurate if the Allied forces came to learn of the undercurrent.

Regardless, even with the defenders still holding strong, the shadow of fear and doubt have again been cast on the hapless evacuees by Dunkirk's expanded harbor. The looming terror of an early sun prior caused many inexperienced soldiers to freak out, thinking that the inner city areas of Dunkirk would be struck next. In their eyes, all the 25-pounder guns in the world won't be able to conjure a light and commotion so bright that wakes up even the heaviest of sleepers in an underground bunker. When the devastating news that nearly all of the Territorials assigned to Dunkirk's outer perimeters were gone, it took the Allied officers half an hour of spits flying everywhere to stop the ranks and files from descending into mania. Still, the circumstances have forced Lord Gort and other shot callers in Dunkirk to kickstart the plan early. The EEF can't wait until daytime, not anymore with how the Belkans could bring forth such a level of firepower.

Lord Gort ponders how could the Belkans conjure such a devastating weapon, or God forbids magic. He has no idea what the weapon's capabilities are, nor does he know how long it will take to reload or if it can be fired again. The thing about fighting an unknown enemy is that you don't know what to expect, and the Belkan Reich is the worst opponent one can face. What Lord Gort does know is that staying any bit longer will further the likelihood that something will go wrong. It's almost a certainty that the Belkans still have many tricks up in their armory of tricks and magic. As such, flares and optical signals are used to communicate with off-short vessels to start the evacuation process. Lord Gort hopes that things will go well and that Frankforce on the walls can buy enough time to get at least half of the EEF out of Dunkirk. That said, he knows that things won't be that simple.

Though the Grand Fleet signals back a positive answer, they do warn the EEF of committing a mass exodus without the sun shining above them. There's currently a low-hanging fog by the harbor with many makeshift piers, accidents will no doubt happen due to the low visibility. Yet, it's one of the few risks that Lord Gort is willing to take, it does beat sitting around and being bombed. The Commander of the EEF dispatches the first group to be boarding the ships out of Dunkirk, some 20000 men strong. Obviously, they will need a lot of vessels to carry that many of a number. To fully evacuate the EEF that is in the hundreds of thousands, it will take around a full week at the earliest. Lord Gort was counting on the buffer zone to buy him at least a couple of days but that plan fell apart in an instant. Now, it's a true race against time.

As for the twenty thousand Erusean soldiers, they have long been told to gather with nothing but their lightest of gears, meaning their rifles and some munition pouches. Anything too heavy for one man to carry is left at the armories and depots for the defenders to use. To accommodate the sheer scale of the evacuation, just the harbor structure, expanded as it may be, won't be enough. As such the evacuating troops form lines and formations on the nearby beaches where the makeshift piers are built. Though they won't be able to berth any large tonnage vessels, smaller transport or commandeered civilian crafts can still use them, or they can just come into the beach directly. Floatplanes are also used, more specifically the Royal Navy Air Arm pitches in with American-made PBY Catalina flying boats. They don't offer much room, but any available evacuation slot counts at this point.

At first, things seem to go well for the pull-out effort. Civilian vessels like fishing boats and sailing yachts come and go constantly. Larger warships, primarily troop transports, and destroyers, seem to gobble up lines of Erusean soldiers deep into their steel hulls. If even those are full, they're told to stand freely on the decks. The Royal Navy ships, in particular, have the soldiers packed like they're in sardine cans. Floatplanes also come and go, with around a dozen of them positioned by the shoreline at any given with many more flying to and from Dunkirk. The whole evacuation site is lit up like a midnight barbecue party with how many searchlights are shone about by the vessels and aircraft. The shadowy shapes of Erusean soldiers, when viewed from above, look like a bunch of black ants in the headlights. The wide variety of methods being used to carry these soldiers out does ensure that a sizeable chunk of the 20000 men is already out of Dunkirk in the first quarter of an hour.

Still, it takes but a moment for things to start going wrong.

Due to poor visibility and the light refractory that temporarily obscures the vision of a Catalina pilot, a floatplane overshoots its intended stopping point and wades deeper into the beach. When he realizes the mistake, the Catalina pilot tries to compensate, yet the left wing's pontoon is snagged by an underwater sand dune, causing the plane to jerk hard to the left, heading straight for one of the constructed piers. Seeing a big plane with dead rotors coming straight at them, the soldiers crowd on the pier panic and start running away from the danger. Some soldiers that are already on board an evacuation boat even jump directly off the thing just to escape.

Unfortunately for them all, the makeshift pier the soldiers are running on hasn't been built to withstand much of anything, really. Cobbled up using available scraps and materials scavenged in Dunkirk, the pier starts breaking when heavy footfalls keep battering it. The pier predictably collapses entirely into the sea, and along with it, the panicking Eruseans. Some are lucky enough to fall close to the short, needing only a short swim to escape the danger. Others, more unfortunate ones have to take a nosedive at the further end of the now-destroyed pier. The evacuation boat, having been tied to a counterweight of the pier, nearly got flipped when that counterweight fell to the bottom of the sea. Fortunately for everyone involved, a quickwitted soldier used his knife to cut the rope tying down the boat. The Catalina pilot also manages to rein in his unruly floatplane just in time. No direct casualties were caused by the Catalina, but of those that fell into the sea, some failed the landing checks and needed to be rescued by more able swimmers.Nôv(el)B\\jnn

This jumpscare incident, however, won't be the last. There are many more accidents like a boat beaching itself or a yacht sinking by somebody's mishandling of a grenade. The fog doesn't help in preventing or resolving these mishaps either. Still, the fog should help conceal the evacuation effort from Belkan aircraft and vessels, right?

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