The Clarity of an Outsider

As dawn broke, the streets of Dunkirk grew noisy. Logan glanced out through a half-collapsed window and saw a squad of British soldiers with rifles hurrying past. Perhaps they were trying to find the perpetrators of last night's massacre at the Expeditionary Force headquarters. But Dunkirk was now flooded with at least 100,000 Allied soldiers—British, French, Belgian, even Dutch—belonging to hundreds of units, many of whom might not know each other. Finding the unseen saboteurs in this chaos was harder than finding a needle in a haystack!

In the room, which had lost its roof and one wall due to German bombing, the paratroopers were taking turns resting. Though they hadn't slept all night, few could actually fall asleep. Grote was satisfying his nicotine craving with an unlit cigarette, Tobias was nibbling on biscuits while fiddling with the clattering typewriter, and Steffenberg was happily playing with his new gift from Logan—Lord Gort's sidearm. Most of the men seemed to have recovered from the grief of Enke's death. Perhaps they had already grown accustomed to the cruelty of war!

"Alright, everyone, when we go out later, make sure to act like outsiders. What happened last night has nothing to do with us! If we run into enemy inspections, don't panic. Everything will work out!" With that, Logan rolled his tongue and uttered a word completely unlike his Scottish accent: "Noblesse oblige!"

Half the paratroopers smiled knowingly.

Logan straightened his collar. "Let's go! See what other mischief we can stir up!"

The paratroopers, sitting or lying down, stood up and helped each other check their uniforms and weapons. After last night's battle, they now looked more like a group of Allied soldiers retreating from the front lines!

Last night, stars had been visible, but now the port was shrouded in fog, seemingly reflecting the uncertain future of the Allies. However, as the German meteorological station in Norway had warned, this weather was unfavorable for air raids!

After walking nearly two blocks, Logan and his men indeed encountered no inspections. He also noticed that the Allied soldiers retreating to the beach showed only simple fatigue and worry. Asking a few random soldiers, he confirmed: no one knew what the gunfire from the castle last night was about.

It seemed the British had suppressed the news of the headquarters attack and the deaths of Lord Gort and others to avoid further demoralizing the troops.

In the daylight, the beach was indeed packed with people. From a distance, it looked like a field of dark shrubs! In the port, several sunken ships were visible, with only their decks or masts above water. Near the outer channel, the half-capsized black ship was undoubtedly their handiwork from last night. Though the Black Sprite hadn't completely blocked the channel, it still significantly hindered ships entering and leaving the inner harbor.

Logan smugly looked at the black ship, but soon after, a British warship flying the St. George's Cross swiftly passed by it and entered the inner harbor. The Allied soldiers on the beach and breakwater erupted in cheers.

"What's there to cheer about? You'll be crying soon enough!" Logan muttered to himself. Before coming, he had specifically discussed Dunkirk's layout with General Student, especially the two breakwaters. Logan vividly remembered that the British had successfully used the breakwaters as makeshift docks, allowing large numbers of Allied soldiers to board ships despite intense German bombing!

Though Student agreed with Logan's analysis, he was, after all, just the head of the Luftwaffe paratroopers. Few in the entire Reich could persuade Göring, so even going through high-level channels, the chances of success were slim.

With the port facilities mostly destroyed by German bombs, the British warship couldn't dock directly. Instead, it stopped several hundred meters from the pier and sent lifeboats to ferry soldiers from the shore. The sailors seemed inexperienced, and the soldiers were even less accustomed. Sometimes, they crowded to one side, capsizing the boats. Other times, overloaded boats either ran aground or sank. By the time they finally boarded the rescue ships, the lifeboats were nearly done for!

"Hmph, even the mighty British Empire has come to this!" Logan thought disdainfully. Before the first batch of soldiers could board, the shrill air raid siren sounded again. This time, the Anti-Aircraft fire came quickly, and the buzzing, fly-like noise of aircraft rapidly approached.

Logan looked up. Despite the poor visibility and lower-than-usual clouds, he spotted several black dots in the eastern sky. In no time, the scene on the beach changed drastically: the Allied soldiers now looked like ants on a hot pan. Those with a chance to board eagerly pushed forward, while those without desperately retreated. Officers anxiously called out to their subordinates, and soldiers blindly sought shelter.

Meanwhile, the soldiers in the port and city also panicked. The few anti-aircraft guns deployed on the outskirts couldn't stop the German bombers. Their hopes rested on Royal Air Force fighter squadrons from across the Channel and the intangible "luck."

Looking around, Logan saw almost no calm faces. He found a small, secluded spot away from the crowd and led his paratroopers to "observe" calmly: the black dots in the sky grew larger, soon distinguishable as fighters and bombers. The twin-engine planes with white undersides were likely Ju-88s or Do-17s. They flew brazenly at low to medium altitudes, leisurely dropping strings of bombs. Each explosion shook the ground, sending up massive plumes of sand and water, forming inverted cone-shaped spectacles. The white seawater rose like giant mushrooms before scattering like blossoms in the wind!

Watching the port filled with flames and smoke, especially the British warship slowly sinking, the German paratroopers might have thought the Allies were finished. Yet, as the German bombers left and the smoke gradually dispersed, they were surprised to find that "a thousand sails pass by the sunken ship, and ten thousand trees sprout before the withered wood." The rising smoke columns seemed to guide the distant ferries. Soon, new ships squeezed through the narrow channel into the port. Outside the breakwater, even smaller boats began taking on soldiers wading through the water!

Tobias nudged Logan's arm again, gesturing northwest. "Those are British fighters, right?"

The black dots appearing in the north didn't chase the retreating German bombers. Instead, they circled the port repeatedly. Encouraged by the softer, gentler buzzing, the Allied soldiers in Dunkirk quickened their pace. In just half an hour, several more batches of Allied soldiers, mostly British, had boarded the ships!