Dunkirk: a British gunner facing his own guns

31 May 1940. On the thin tongue of dunes and sand that forms the Dunkirk perimeter, what remains of the British Expeditionary Force is falling back toward the sea. For days the pocket has been tightening: the Luftwaffe swoops down on the beaches, the German guns search for the range, and the columns of men stretch out in patient lines down to the water, waiting for the destroyers and the motley fleet of little ships come over from England. Operation Dynamo is in full swing, but no one knows how many hours the bridgehead will hold.

You serve a field battery, somewhere in this maze of shattered villages and clogged roads. Your pieces have fired as long as they could; there are still shells left, but the rear line has given way and the order to embark is going round. The quays and the mole take only a fraction of the men at a time, and the line grows longer faster than the ships can come alongside. Everything the battery has dragged along since Belgium — tractors, limbers, heavy guns — suddenly carries a different kind of weight.

The captain is waiting for your move. What you decide commits your comrades, the order that reigns over the port, and what the army will find again on the other side of the Channel. The rumble is drawing closer and the tide does not wait. You must decide now.