"The Darkest Hour" only talks about the tenacious defenders of Calais

Armando 2021-11-25 08:01:26

There have been too many descriptions about Churchill's great achievements! This article just wants to talk about the little people who sacrificed for the good work!

Please allow me to reprint it directly, because that would be more conducive to your reading:

Three thousand warriors defending Calais

It seems that behind the emergency evacuation of the large forces on the battlefield, there is a tragic sacrifice of a small team behind.

The famous "Dunkirk Retreat" is just like this,

In this crucial operation in the UK.

There are not only hundreds of thousands of soldiers who have evacuated hard, but also the brave and fearless common people, and Churchill who has turned the tide.

There is also a group of British defenders who have resisted to the end, they are ordered to carry out an order that may be impossible to survive.

But in order to hold Calais, this maritime transportation hub in northern France, the last barrier of Dunkirk,

At the cost of their heroic sacrifices, they won time to retreat for the main force of the British and French coalition forces...

However, people only seem to know their key role in the Great Retreat,

However, many people know what these people have experienced from the time they were ordered to the evacuation of the large troops...

JOHN JAY, the child of one of the soldiers of this brave team,

But even as his father’s closest family member, he knew nothing about his father’s past.

It was not until the death of the veteran that John finally opened his father’s dusty archives.

Next, let’s listen to him, what kind of predicament the "death squad" faced...

I just finished watching "The Darkest Hour" by Gary Oldman, and I was holding back my tears at the moment.

But apart from the historical facts, what makes me sad is a telegram from Churchill,

He said to the Brigadier General who remained in Calais:

"Every hour you insist on is a great help to the British Expeditionary Force. You should fight to the end. Your perseverance will definitely win unparalleled praise and you are not allowed to retreat."

I know that in that team that can't retreat, there is my father, Alec Jay...

When my father was still alive, I was very estranged from him. He was irritable and impatient.

I only know that he was only in his 20s at the time of the Great Retreat. He paid a huge price and left a long shadow.

But for those specific experiences, he never mentioned it, nor did I want to understand...

He passed away in 1993 at the age of 73.

The moment I really lost him, I regretted that I had too little communication with him.

I began to organize his belongings and found a pile of dusty paper bags.

There are records of his participation in the war, letters written with his teammates, wartime news reports...

There is also a note showing that he once wanted to write all his experiences into an autobiography,

Unfortunately, I only wrote 7 pages and never opened these files again...

I read them while getting to know my father again,

It turns out that he is not the weird old man in my mind, he is a hero,

He fought in Calais to the last moment, until he was taken away by the Nazis,

He was a Jew, and he fought with the Nazis in concentration camps in order to hide his identity.

From 1940 to 1945, he tried to escape 5 times and eventually became a freedom fighter.

I was completely shocked by these dusty past, eager to know more details,

For this reason, I conducted many years of research, followed his notes and went back to Europe to visit his old friends,

In this way, I finally understood my father for the first time...

In 1938, he joined the British army,

Out of a strong hatred of fascists and racists, he volunteered to enlist even if he was not called up.

When Hitler’s army bloodbathed Belgium and France, he followed the army to leave the motherland and cross the strait.

At that time he had realized that this was equivalent to a "suicidal" assignment, and wrote in his notes:

"With a one-way ticket in my hand, there is no way to return it."

In May 1940, on the eve of the Great Retreat,

He was ordered to join thousands of soldiers in Calais against the elite German troops of more than 20,000.

Under the enemy’s frenzied bombardment, the troops retreated steadily.

But unlike the French soldiers who fought together, they raised the white flag "weakly" in the smoke.

And Britain refuses to surrender...

In fact, my father also arrived on the shore of Dunkirk with the team and saw three destroyers of the motherland on the sea.

But there, there is no evacuation order that belongs to them,

Everyone knows what happened later, they can’t leave...

My father later wrote:

"I turned my back to the sea and never looked back. Our battle is not over yet."

The Calais in front of him has corpses all over the field, and the area still occupied by the British army is no more than the size of a school playground.

Father’s team no longer has any illusions that they can be rescued, the only thing they can do,

Just try my best to defend the last fortress...

His brigadier general rejected the German surrender twice. Faced with the German lobbyists, the soldiers said in unison:

"If the Germans want Calais, then they can only seize it by battle."

They don’t even know that it’s only a matter of time before the German occupation of Calais.

But on the battlefield, time means not only sacrifice, but also victory.

Even if this battle could end an hour later, there would be more hope for the hundreds of thousands of soldiers in Dunkirk...

However, after the last difficult counterattack, his father’s troops were still captured.

His gun had run out of bullets, and the Germans watched him proudly announce:

"Sorry guys for bringing you such bloody despair."

There is no way, he can only choose to surrender...

For some of his teammates, such a surrender is not shameful.

They did fight to the last minute, fulfilling Churchill’s orders and covering the large forces.

But this has become an unforgettable event in my father's life, he wrote in his notes,

Surrendering is an eternal shame in his heart, and the five years after being captured is a lingering shadow...

On his first night as a prisoner of war, he slept in a cemetery, full of frustration and disappointment,

But this is just the beginning. It’s still nearly 3 weeks away from France to Germany.

During the march of the team, if the prisoner accidentally falls, what awaits him is either a shot or a violent beating.

Even stopping to pee is punished...

Father and teammates can only endure injuries, drink the water from the stinking ditch and eat the weeds.

Only barely survived to Germany...

Upon entering the country, angry Nazis stood on both sides of the street.

They shouted "British loser is coming!", while spitting at the father and the group.

Although the soldiers were exhausted, they still whistled,

Humming the music of the motherland, expressing unyielding...

When I was young, my father was even more arrogant than I remembered.

As a prisoner of war, a defeated general with a Jewish family background,

He was supposed to survive and hide his life experience low-key, but he said he had no choice...

Before leaving Calais, his father buried the documents that could prove his Jewish identity.

But because in the concentration camps, the Nazis and the captives often fought and killed people because of language barriers.

Once, seeing the Nazi’s gun hit the teammate’s forehead,

My father had to use fluent German to intercede to the Nazis, which quickly aroused suspicion.

Later, an anti-Semitic British directly reported him to the Nazis,

A high-ranking official rushed into his father's camp with a gun and shouted:

"Where is this bastard Alec Jay? Come out for me!"

Fortunately, his teammates stood in a circle without hesitation, protecting his father tightly.

His sergeant even went directly to the senior officials and shouted:

"I don't care if Alec is Jewish or not, as long as he is wearing a British uniform, you can't possibly take him away unless you shoot us all"

There was instant silence in the concentration camp, just before the Nazis hadn’t reacted.

When my father had an idea, he politely stepped forward and explained to the senior officials that he had only learned German.

If the SS does not "dislike" it, instead of continuing to confront it like this,

It's better to use him as the translator among the prisoners to mediate contradictions...

The Germans grudgingly accepted...

During the 5 years in the concentration camp, dangers like this happened again and again.

While my father worked hard to protect himself and his teammates, he also had to do a lot of hard work.

He works in a quarry and is often injured, but he has never received treatment.

He was severely malnourished and weighed 88 kilograms.

He even learned from the news from his hometown that his childhood sweetheart fiancée had changed her heart, and the marriage contract was gone...

At that moment, my father almost thought that he could no longer hold on...

He tried a total of 5 escape plans,

Once he pretended to be a Czech immigrant worker and ran all the way to within 50 miles of the border.

But in the end he was arrested by the Gestapo and they beat him frantically with truncheons.

He also forced him to dig a grave for himself...

In 1945, my father’s escape plan finally succeeded.

He and his 6 teammates escaped to the Czech Republic over the mountains, and finally saw a little hope.

They were forced to join a local anti-German guerrilla.

In the next 6 weeks, my father changed from a British soldier to a "freedom fighter" wandering in the forest.

He and his teammates blew up a German freight train and attacked the police station.

He also participated in the Prague Uprising and witnessed terrorist attacks on many innocent Germans.

Of course my father hates fascism,

But this guerrilla experience has become a terrible memory he doesn't want to mention again:

"They not only slaughtered the Nazis, but also massacred German civilians. This is something I still cannot accept."

But at least, the real freedom that belongs to him has finally come...

In 1945, my father finally returned to London,

Unlike the soldiers who went home during the Dunkirk retreat, there were no people waiting to welcome him along the way.

There are no flowers or applause. People don’t even know if it’s not for the soldier and his team in front of them,

The great retreat of the year may not be so successful...

But my father doesn’t seem to mind these, he just wants to return to a normal life as soon as possible.

He became a stockbroker, trying hard to forget everything in the concentration camp,

But reality is always cruel, and the shadow of being imprisoned has been hanging over him.

And the atrocities he witnessed that drowned him completely:

"I always wake up in the middle of the night, thinking of my dead teammates, thinking of the bodies of the Nazis."

What happened later did not get much better.

Five years later, he married his mother and gave birth to three children.

His image in the hearts of children is always frosty, and his "inexplicable" anger affects every one of us,

After understanding my father’s life, I realized that he is not mad at us, he is mad at himself,

As a survivor, guilt, anxiety, depression, and nightmares haunt him like demons,

He is angry about why he can live in this peaceful age, but the teammates who fought side by side have no place to bury...

His family didn’t understand him, and the army didn’t help him. He had to pluck up the courage to go to the doctor.

He tried every means to relieve the pain in his heart, and even once returned to Calais to force himself to face the past.

But unfortunately, until death, he and the sense of guilt in his heart failed to coexist peacefully...

It’s a pity that I can only get to know my father in this way,

As the defenders of Calais, their story is far more heartbreaking than the movie...

ref http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5346201/My-dad-heroe-sacrificed-Churchill-save-Dunkirk.html

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Very skinny and cute little girl Liang: I'm glad I was born in a peaceful age

cece_circle: Ah, I only really understood this paragraph when I saw the darkest moments. It was a written sentence before.

The girl is dead: since childhood, the wish is world peace. Some people think it's so vague and a distant dream. But it is closely related to everyone. In short, from other people's stories, in those scenes I haven't experienced, I hate war.

Summer in Ginkgo Garden: Finally, I thoroughly understand the last paragraph of "Plucking Wei". Tribute to the hero.

Elwing-Heart of Middle-Earth: The warriors of Calais should be remembered. Without them, Dunkirk would not know what it would be like

overtherainbow121: The British version of the submerged and rescued.

View more about Darkest Hour reviews

Extended Reading
  • Marcel 2022-03-22 09:01:33

    Very traditional, the scene in the subway is extremely politically correct. But revisiting the most difficult choice in history at this moment is still very moving, very encouraging, and crying. "No matter how terrifying, win."

  • Mabelle 2022-04-24 07:01:04

    Churchill should be worshipped as a god in the MLM industry.

Darkest Hour quotes

  • Winston Churchill: I'm getting the job only because the ship is sinking. It's not a gift, it's revenge.

  • Winston Churchill: My poor judgement.