After Dunkirk Lee Jackson AFTER DUNKIRK Copyright © 2020 by Lee Jackson. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. Severn River Publishing www.SevernRiverPublishing.com This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. ISBN: 978-1-64875-028-1 (Paperback) ISBN: 978-1-64875-029-8 (Hardback) Contents Also by Lee Jackson Prologue Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Chapter 34 Chapter 35 Chapter 36 Chapter 37 Chapter 38 Chapter 39 Chapter 40 Chapter 41 Chapter 42 Chapter 43 Chapter 44 Chapter 45 Chapter 46 Chapter 47 Chapter 48 Chapter 49 Chapter 50 Chapter 51 Chapter 52 Chapter 53 Chapter 54 Chapter 55 Chapter 56 Epilogue Join the Reader List You Might Also Enjoy… Thanks for Reading Next in Series Read Eagles Over Britain Author’s Note Acknowledgments About the Author Also by Lee Jackson The After Dunkirk Series After Dunkirk Eagles Over Britain The Reluctant Assassin Series The Reluctant Assassin Rasputin’s Legacy Vortex: Berlin Fahrenheit Kuwait Target: New York Never miss a new release! Sign up to receive exclusive updates from author Lee Jackson. AuthorLeeJackson.com/Newsletter Join the newsletter list and receive free bonus material from The Reluctant Assassin series as a thank you. Robert Gordon Hall You were one hell of a pilot. Your family and friends are proud of you and miss you. RIP “We really ought to be waterskiing!” Prologue June 9, 1940 Sark Island, Guernsey Bailiwick, English Channel Islands The Dame of the tiny island of Sark in the English Channel hurried from her home onto Rue de la Seigneurie for a better view of the northeastern horizon. Far out over the water, black smoke rose to the sky in huge billowing clouds. She knew fully what caused them: the good citizens of Normandy had blown up their oil storage tanks, an early act of resistance to the armies of Adolf Hitler, Führer of Germany. Five days ago, the British Royal Navy, in a herculean effort, had evacuated the British Expeditionary Force, commonly called the BEF, and large units of the French army in a ten-day evacuation of over three hundred thousand troops at Dunkirk. They had faced overwhelming pressure from Nazi forces that had flanked the Maginot Line and descended into the north of France in a blistering blitzkrieg. The German divisions pushed south along the Atlantic coast in a wide swath to overrun and control the northern and western regions of France, and threatened Paris. Hitler would no doubt set a priority on occupying Sark and the other islands belonging to Great Britain in the Channel simply for the propaganda value of taking British territory. And Normandy was only twenty-five miles across the waters. 1 One day earlier Dunkirk, France Jeremy Littlefield held his breath, a near-impossible feat after crawling in whatever shallow ground he could find in the low hills and dunes above Dunkirk’s flat beaches. He scrunched under a small outcropping of sand held in place by protruding roots of scraggly vegetation, willing his body to meld into the space he had hurriedly carved at its base. Just as he pulled in his legs, his back to the crumbly wall of sand whose grains already worked their way between his sweat-soaked blouse and skin, he heard men above him speaking in German. He could not make out how many there were—at least two, maybe three—but they did not seem to be searching for him. On the contrary, these soldiers he had barely avoided seemed to be casually looking out to sea. Jeremy had used every bit of cover and concealment in his headlong flight to the beach for one purpose: survival, ahead of the German behemoth that pursued the escaping British and French armies. Out of ammunition, the bolt of his rifle broken, he had lost the weapon as he lunged from one hiding place to the next through a wretched night of crackling small arms fire, blasts from tanks obliterating another of their opposite number, brilliant flashes from artillery breaking the darkness, and then the whistle of projectiles followed by ear-splitting concussions until he emerged at dawn among the dunes and furrows leading down to the shore. Spread before him, the carnage of war assaulted his senses with sights of dismembered bodies, separated arms and legs, animals caught in unworldly repose, crumbling rooftops, cratered roads, and every sort of vehicle cast at odd angles amid the stench of torn and scorched flesh, all under an overcast sky. Jeremy’s hope, one he expected to be futile, was the same as that of thousands of soldiers who had protected the evacuation and fled to the beach for want of any other alternative to avoid capture: maybe there’s one last boat to take me home to England. Now, despite the voices overhead, curiosity overcame him to see what remained of the British and French armies that had been trapped there. Far in the distance along the shore, lines of abandoned cars, trucks, tanks, and field artillery vehicles were set in well-ordered ranks stretching into the gently lapping wavelets, with some buried halfway up their wheels in the sand. Rifles leaned against cars and trucks. Boxloads of ammunition had been stacked in neat rows, the machine guns they accompanied still looking menacing. As the murmur of voices above Jeremy continued, he looked across the vast expanse of sand marked with the patterns of huge formations of soldiers who had waited anxiously to be rescued over nine hair-raising days while being shelled by Hitler’s armies or strafed or bombed by Hermann Göring’s air force. For indiscernible reasons, Hitler had stopped his ground forces short of finishing off the escaping British and French troops of Operation Dynamo, and he had held back as the flotilla of small boats, yachts, and warships loaded desperate soldiers onto their decks and sailed
