It is 10.35 Sunday 27.03.2011 and I trying to accomplish a number of tasks today in preparation for a short trip next weekend. It proved to be a relaxing day during which I accomplished all the task.
It is 12.35 on Monday 28,03.2011, the first day of the campaign to reduce my weight my at least one stone, 14 pounds from the present 17 and a half before the clocks go back again. Today although I woke before the alarm it was necessary for the alarm to go off again before I rose, toileted and got to the pool by 6.15, travelling in the darkness once more. As I left the pool after a double sauna I came out along the back lane to the fish and chips kiosks on either side opposite the machine arcade and noted a vehicle directly across my path and for a moment in looked as if there was no one in the vehicle, fortunately there was space in the entry lane to the passage way and then I had to swerve to miss a well groomed sixth former in the uniform of Monkwearmouth who I noted in my rear mirror then got into the car and I remembered I had seen this happen before. Looking up Monkwearmouth School I found that it is no longer a comprehensive but an Art College in association with the Arts Council and other cultural bodies for 1200 11 to 16 year olds with a new Sixth Form College, St Peters. 650 places on the University Campus site. I also learned that the House at the top of the Hill along Sea Lane is up for Sale at just under £80000. Alas I did not win the lottery yet again! I enjoyed a double sauna after the 50 lengths and did some good shopping visiting Morrison’s Asda and Lidl’s and not returning home until after 9.30. I forgot to post the Census return which meant a pleasant walk half way down the hill and back!
On Saturday Night I forgot to do the clocks, moving the time and hour forward as we enter Summer time in the UK and hurriedly did so on Sunday morning while I decided if I would go to the pool as usual or stay a little in bed and then tackle various activities listed for the day.
I settled for a gradual entry to the day and played games on the computer rather than watch the opening Grand Prix of the Formula One motor racing season after a delay because of the correct cancellation of the event in Bahrain due to the fascist response of the authorities aided by the Saudi’s. I suspect a dirty deal between the USA, the UK and Nato to puff without intervening in order for the Arab League to support the toppling of the regime in Libya. I hope I am wrong.
Friday was a good sports evening with a most enjoyable game of Rugby League as Warrington to champions Wigan and beat them 24 6 with a powerful display of creative attacking and the stoutest of defences. This was a very hard game when until the last quarter the outcome remained in doubt. The previous week Warrington had demolish the Harlequins at home 36.6 at half time and 82 6 with the final whistle with 3 tries for Bridges 2 for Solomona and Westwood and the individual scores for Briers, Myler, Evans, Morley, Blythe, Mitchell and Hodgson 15 tries in all of which Hodgson converted all but one. On Friday the four tries all converted by Hodgson were from Blythe and Myler and Monaghan 2. As a consequence they have opened a 2 point gap with Huddersfield at the top of the table and 3 on St Helens who have all played seven games. Wigan remains a threat for if they win their game in hand they will be only 1 point behind. Warrington has scored more than 100 points more than Wigan and 49 more than St Helens, 63 more than Huddersfield.
On Saturday I recorded the boat race and decided against watching the preliminaries. The race was a procession after Oxford won the toss and chose the Surrey bank which meant that if the could hold Cambridge over the first short Middlesex bend advantage they could, as they did strike ahead sufficiently over the long first Surrey bend advantage to chose their water the rest of the way and despite Herculean efforts the Cambridge crew could not make up any ground. Oddly there was no written report on the race although it can be watched in full on the BBC player or various highlights and celebrations. The written piece centred on a 19 year old in the Oxford boat Constantine Louloudis who prefers to be known as Stan and whose performance suggested he was a strong candidate in the British Olympic rowing team for 2012.
I wish I could say something positive about England‘s quarter final defeat in the 50 over world Club against Home side Sri Lanka. The BBC was so disgusted with the result that it has refused to publish the full scorecard on its Internet site freezing the score during England’s innings at 69 for 2. Captain Strauss never a short match player or comfortable with spin failed miserably to get England off to a good star and the side scraped singles here and there to reach 231. Then bowling was awful and Sri Lanka got the runs without losing a single wicket. Yep not one wicket. It was humiliating and just as well I did not watch what seemed inevitable from the way Sri Lanka commenced the run chase.
It also looked as if England’s Footballers would give a similar trouncing to Wales in the European Cup qualifying round in Cardiff on Saturday afternoon. England and Montenegro each have 10 points from their four games with Switzerland and Bulgaria with 4 points and Wales 0, also from four Games. The rest of the game was workmanlike and boring, from the little I saw. On Sunday afternoon, having unintentionally found out the result I also decided to concentrate on Giant with Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson and not young James Dean rather than the Grand Prix recording. I will do a separate writing on Elizabeth Taylor who I first saw in National Velvet when we were both children.
Sebastian Vettel continued where he ended last season with a start to end lead win but the surprise was that Lew Hamilton finished second when the McLaren’s were forecast to have an also run season. The second surprise was a third place Renault with Vitaly Petrov. Jenson finished 6th. Paul De Resta of the Force India Team came 10th, of no interest except that despite his Spanish name he is a British subject and therefore the third British driver in this seasons Formula I racing and last season won the German Touring Car Championship. Jerome d’Ambrosio from Belgian is another new face after driving practice session last year for the Virgin Cosworth Team and finished 14. The third new face is Pastor Maldonado with Williams-Cosworth and Venezuelan
I will also leave the first part of Waking the Dead until the second episode and tie in with the demonstrations against the Coalition in London on Saturday and the political reactions aftermath.
I will mention a film possible two if I have the time. Brothers was released in 2009 and has authenticity from start to finish in what is a harrowing and tense drama thriller and which attracted my attention because the female lead was played by Natalie Portman. Her role is secondary to that of two brothers and their father, played by the excellent Sam Shepherd, a Vietnam Veteran who is proud that one son has become a career soldier with three terms served in Afghanistan and fourth to come.
In saying that Ms Portman’s character is secondary this is not to suggest that she does not have an important role, or does demonstrates her ability to get into character in a convincing way. She is the high school sweetheart wife and now mother of his two children who finds each departure more difficult to cope as do his two daughters. When his helicopter is show down and he is presumed dead her world and that of the family falls apart especially his father, particular because his other son has only recently been discharged from prisoner for armed robbery, drinks too much and generally carries the ship of knowing he failed to live up to his father’s expectations. After the death of his elder brother he attempts to play a more positive role in the family, although continues to have drink and money problems, but through a relationship with his brother’s widow and children he begins to rebuild his life, especially after organising the redesigning and redecorating of the kitchen as much to please his father who commented that it was one thing that bugged him about his other son. Then is one brief passionate kiss between brother and widow but they both instantly know it would both be right.
We the audience know that in fact the husband is not dead and that he and one other crew member survived and were captured and taken prisoner. In order to persuade the two men to make a video denouncing the War they try to get one man against the others and eventually offer the hero husband the choice killing his companion who is also married with a child or giving up his own life. He eventually gives in just before an USA army raiding party find the revels, killing them and find the husband still a prisoner. He returns the hero even more but an introverted man tormented by what he had to do to survive. His predicament becomes worse when the widow of the man he killed seeks information about what happened to her husband.
The man snaps destroying the kitchen which his brother had organised, in part because he believes the two were having a sexual relationship before he reappeared, and after he had been ceremonially buried. he then pulls a gin on himself when the police are called by his brother. He is admitted to a psychiatric hospital where he remains unable to communicate the cause of his pain. Earlier his father had mentioned that he too found it impossible to communicate with his family or anyone outside the military after his return from Vietnam. Natalie Portman visits her screen husband in the hospital and presses him to reveal the cause of his suffering, threatening to lave him and faced with this option he reveals that he had killed his friend rather than die himself in order to get back to her.
The pressures of a wife and child is a sub story in teh excellent Michael Balcon-Leslie Norman film of Dunkirk released in 1958 at a time when the second World War was still at the fore of most families whose men had served, survived or not and also experienced the Blitz themselves.
In this instance Richard Attenborough plays a garage owner who own a small boat, just under 30 feet and moored on the River Thames. he had a wife who finds it difficult to cope with her child and is terrified of being left on her own and by having to place the baby in the special gas mask which was provided for infants in addition to those for children which I remember mine and those for adults. As a garage owner he has greater access to petrol than everyone else and is making money from a small engineering business under contract with the government. His apparent self satisfaction with his position galls Bernard Lee who plays a journalist, who lives in the same community and belongs to the same boat club but which a much large craft. He is pessimistic about the situation and complacency at home during the phoney war.
When Attenborough takes a complacent view of the situation at the local Inn he is pulled up sharp by a Merchant Navy man who tries to educate him about the reality, the posses and that he had been wounded. When all the boats are commandeered and the owners told to take their boats down the Thames to Sheerness his first reaction is to place his craft in the hands of his 17 year old assistant but then decides to take the craft himself much to the horror of his wife.
Having delivered the craft they are told to go to the harbour office where they will get a receipt for the boat and a train warrant to return home. On their way they encounter some of troops being brought back, many wounded and most looking forlorn and exhausted. This affects the journalist who says he wants to take his boat across the channel, and other including Attenborough also support his move. They are told it will not be allowed a being too dangerous but they persist and after the admiralty is consulted it is agreed.
While is happening and the volunteers are told to sleep over and then travel with the dawn, in France we follow the experience of John Mills a Sergeant, left in charge of a small platoon after the officer is killed as they are making their way to find their unit having been on one flank and finding that the order to retreat had been given.
John was a reluctant Sergeant beforehand and he admits to finding the situation beyond his experience but the other men insist that he leads them and tells them what to do. The first challenge comes when they encounter refugees being attacked by the German airforce and John insists that they continue their mission rather than stay and help the wounded and bury the dead from the attack. They then come across a small British gun battery and are given food before being sent away as the senior office has been ordered to hold off he advance German artillery for as long a possible. As Mills and the remaining men make their way from the site it is obliterated by the German airforce. The men comment that the decision to order the battery to remain was akin to murder.
The unit find a deserted farmhouse where they are able to stay the night but then observe units of the German army approaching and they have to fight their way out during which one of the unit is badly injured and Mills takes the decision to leave him to the enemy to assist as they continue to make their way. One has concussion from an explosion and as he is helped across the road they encounter a British vehicle heading for the coast. He gives the unit a lift as far as the outskirts of the town where they are told to disable the vehicle and make their way to beach. Here there are hundreds of thousands of defenceless men waiting on the beaches systematically bombed and fired on by the German airforce.
The unit make their way as ordered as a column into the sea or it may have the Mole to board a British destroyer but this is bombed and sunk and the men escape into the water. Some are picked up by the small boats and taken to larger ships while others including Mills and the remainder of his unit make their way ashore back to where they had been before.
The craft owned by the Journalist is bomber and sunk but he survives and is picket up by Attenborough, but the colleague assisting him is killed. The trio attempt to take more men from the column waiting in the water but the vessel develops a fault and is beached just as Mills and his unit arrive to see if they can get passage. While Attenborough remains with one of Mill’s unit truing to repair the boat, the Journalist and the 17 year old go ashore and experience life on the dunes. The following morning, Sunday, they are again bombed while participating in a service and the Journalist is mortally wounded telling the 17 year old to tell Attenborough to tell his widow what happened. The boat is repaired and Mills and the unit take off but they encounter further engine troubles and drift back towards Calais which is the hands of enemy. Fortunately the decision has been taken by the admiralty to risk more naval warship and they encounter one and return home.
The evacuation of British, French and Belgium troops took place between May 26th and June 3rd 1940. While only 7000 were rescued on the first day a total of 338226 soldiers -198229 British 139997 French were rescued using 43 British Destroyers and 850 small civilian boats of various sizes, the smallest 4.6 meters called the Tamzine and now in pride of place in the Imperial War Museum. There were also a large number of Merchant Navy vessels utilised, Thames barges and 17 Lifeboats of the RNLVR Two. The 850 small boats rescued 22698 men with only the loss of seven boats. No one was left on the beaches but two French Division left to defend the retreated were captured.
However in total 200 craft were sunk including six British Destroyers and the three French. The Royal Navy claimed 35 German planes and the damaging of 21 others. The RAF made just under 5000 missions over the area losing 100 aircraft in the fighting and 177 overall from all fighting against 959 loses during May of which 477 were fighters. Most of he battles took places away from the beaches which led to the troops believing they were left unprotected. The RAF claimed to have destroyed 262 German planes. 2472 heavy guns were abandoned in France with 65000 vehicles and 20000 motorcycles, 377000 tons of stores 68000 of ammunition and 147000 of fuel.
Two French division stayed behind to defend the departure and were captured with their efforts enabling 100000 more men to depart over the 4 days they held out. Controversially about half the French forces who escaped quickly return to France to become prisoners of war. It is estimated that of the 400000 allied forces involve din the battle of Dunkirk only about 34000 were killed or wounded or declared missing at the time, against German forces of 800000 of which it is said 150000 were killed or wounded.
In addition to the 1958 film, the most moving fiction story is that of the Snow Goose by Paul Gallico about a lonely artist who participates in the evacuation and loses his life played by Richard Harris also featured Jenny Agutter. More recently Atonement included a four and a half minute segment of the evacuation shot on the beach at Redcar while in 2004 the BBC produced a television documentary drama.
It is 12.35 on Monday 28,03.2011, the first day of the campaign to reduce my weight my at least one stone, 14 pounds from the present 17 and a half before the clocks go back again. Today although I woke before the alarm it was necessary for the alarm to go off again before I rose, toileted and got to the pool by 6.15, travelling in the darkness once more. As I left the pool after a double sauna I came out along the back lane to the fish and chips kiosks on either side opposite the machine arcade and noted a vehicle directly across my path and for a moment in looked as if there was no one in the vehicle, fortunately there was space in the entry lane to the passage way and then I had to swerve to miss a well groomed sixth former in the uniform of Monkwearmouth who I noted in my rear mirror then got into the car and I remembered I had seen this happen before. Looking up Monkwearmouth School I found that it is no longer a comprehensive but an Art College in association with the Arts Council and other cultural bodies for 1200 11 to 16 year olds with a new Sixth Form College, St Peters. 650 places on the University Campus site. I also learned that the House at the top of the Hill along Sea Lane is up for Sale at just under £80000. Alas I did not win the lottery yet again! I enjoyed a double sauna after the 50 lengths and did some good shopping visiting Morrison’s Asda and Lidl’s and not returning home until after 9.30. I forgot to post the Census return which meant a pleasant walk half way down the hill and back!
On Saturday Night I forgot to do the clocks, moving the time and hour forward as we enter Summer time in the UK and hurriedly did so on Sunday morning while I decided if I would go to the pool as usual or stay a little in bed and then tackle various activities listed for the day.
I settled for a gradual entry to the day and played games on the computer rather than watch the opening Grand Prix of the Formula One motor racing season after a delay because of the correct cancellation of the event in Bahrain due to the fascist response of the authorities aided by the Saudi’s. I suspect a dirty deal between the USA, the UK and Nato to puff without intervening in order for the Arab League to support the toppling of the regime in Libya. I hope I am wrong.
Friday was a good sports evening with a most enjoyable game of Rugby League as Warrington to champions Wigan and beat them 24 6 with a powerful display of creative attacking and the stoutest of defences. This was a very hard game when until the last quarter the outcome remained in doubt. The previous week Warrington had demolish the Harlequins at home 36.6 at half time and 82 6 with the final whistle with 3 tries for Bridges 2 for Solomona and Westwood and the individual scores for Briers, Myler, Evans, Morley, Blythe, Mitchell and Hodgson 15 tries in all of which Hodgson converted all but one. On Friday the four tries all converted by Hodgson were from Blythe and Myler and Monaghan 2. As a consequence they have opened a 2 point gap with Huddersfield at the top of the table and 3 on St Helens who have all played seven games. Wigan remains a threat for if they win their game in hand they will be only 1 point behind. Warrington has scored more than 100 points more than Wigan and 49 more than St Helens, 63 more than Huddersfield.
On Saturday I recorded the boat race and decided against watching the preliminaries. The race was a procession after Oxford won the toss and chose the Surrey bank which meant that if the could hold Cambridge over the first short Middlesex bend advantage they could, as they did strike ahead sufficiently over the long first Surrey bend advantage to chose their water the rest of the way and despite Herculean efforts the Cambridge crew could not make up any ground. Oddly there was no written report on the race although it can be watched in full on the BBC player or various highlights and celebrations. The written piece centred on a 19 year old in the Oxford boat Constantine Louloudis who prefers to be known as Stan and whose performance suggested he was a strong candidate in the British Olympic rowing team for 2012.
I wish I could say something positive about England‘s quarter final defeat in the 50 over world Club against Home side Sri Lanka. The BBC was so disgusted with the result that it has refused to publish the full scorecard on its Internet site freezing the score during England’s innings at 69 for 2. Captain Strauss never a short match player or comfortable with spin failed miserably to get England off to a good star and the side scraped singles here and there to reach 231. Then bowling was awful and Sri Lanka got the runs without losing a single wicket. Yep not one wicket. It was humiliating and just as well I did not watch what seemed inevitable from the way Sri Lanka commenced the run chase.
It also looked as if England’s Footballers would give a similar trouncing to Wales in the European Cup qualifying round in Cardiff on Saturday afternoon. England and Montenegro each have 10 points from their four games with Switzerland and Bulgaria with 4 points and Wales 0, also from four Games. The rest of the game was workmanlike and boring, from the little I saw. On Sunday afternoon, having unintentionally found out the result I also decided to concentrate on Giant with Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson and not young James Dean rather than the Grand Prix recording. I will do a separate writing on Elizabeth Taylor who I first saw in National Velvet when we were both children.
Sebastian Vettel continued where he ended last season with a start to end lead win but the surprise was that Lew Hamilton finished second when the McLaren’s were forecast to have an also run season. The second surprise was a third place Renault with Vitaly Petrov. Jenson finished 6th. Paul De Resta of the Force India Team came 10th, of no interest except that despite his Spanish name he is a British subject and therefore the third British driver in this seasons Formula I racing and last season won the German Touring Car Championship. Jerome d’Ambrosio from Belgian is another new face after driving practice session last year for the Virgin Cosworth Team and finished 14. The third new face is Pastor Maldonado with Williams-Cosworth and Venezuelan
I will also leave the first part of Waking the Dead until the second episode and tie in with the demonstrations against the Coalition in London on Saturday and the political reactions aftermath.
I will mention a film possible two if I have the time. Brothers was released in 2009 and has authenticity from start to finish in what is a harrowing and tense drama thriller and which attracted my attention because the female lead was played by Natalie Portman. Her role is secondary to that of two brothers and their father, played by the excellent Sam Shepherd, a Vietnam Veteran who is proud that one son has become a career soldier with three terms served in Afghanistan and fourth to come.
In saying that Ms Portman’s character is secondary this is not to suggest that she does not have an important role, or does demonstrates her ability to get into character in a convincing way. She is the high school sweetheart wife and now mother of his two children who finds each departure more difficult to cope as do his two daughters. When his helicopter is show down and he is presumed dead her world and that of the family falls apart especially his father, particular because his other son has only recently been discharged from prisoner for armed robbery, drinks too much and generally carries the ship of knowing he failed to live up to his father’s expectations. After the death of his elder brother he attempts to play a more positive role in the family, although continues to have drink and money problems, but through a relationship with his brother’s widow and children he begins to rebuild his life, especially after organising the redesigning and redecorating of the kitchen as much to please his father who commented that it was one thing that bugged him about his other son. Then is one brief passionate kiss between brother and widow but they both instantly know it would both be right.
We the audience know that in fact the husband is not dead and that he and one other crew member survived and were captured and taken prisoner. In order to persuade the two men to make a video denouncing the War they try to get one man against the others and eventually offer the hero husband the choice killing his companion who is also married with a child or giving up his own life. He eventually gives in just before an USA army raiding party find the revels, killing them and find the husband still a prisoner. He returns the hero even more but an introverted man tormented by what he had to do to survive. His predicament becomes worse when the widow of the man he killed seeks information about what happened to her husband.
The man snaps destroying the kitchen which his brother had organised, in part because he believes the two were having a sexual relationship before he reappeared, and after he had been ceremonially buried. he then pulls a gin on himself when the police are called by his brother. He is admitted to a psychiatric hospital where he remains unable to communicate the cause of his pain. Earlier his father had mentioned that he too found it impossible to communicate with his family or anyone outside the military after his return from Vietnam. Natalie Portman visits her screen husband in the hospital and presses him to reveal the cause of his suffering, threatening to lave him and faced with this option he reveals that he had killed his friend rather than die himself in order to get back to her.
The pressures of a wife and child is a sub story in teh excellent Michael Balcon-Leslie Norman film of Dunkirk released in 1958 at a time when the second World War was still at the fore of most families whose men had served, survived or not and also experienced the Blitz themselves.
In this instance Richard Attenborough plays a garage owner who own a small boat, just under 30 feet and moored on the River Thames. he had a wife who finds it difficult to cope with her child and is terrified of being left on her own and by having to place the baby in the special gas mask which was provided for infants in addition to those for children which I remember mine and those for adults. As a garage owner he has greater access to petrol than everyone else and is making money from a small engineering business under contract with the government. His apparent self satisfaction with his position galls Bernard Lee who plays a journalist, who lives in the same community and belongs to the same boat club but which a much large craft. He is pessimistic about the situation and complacency at home during the phoney war.
When Attenborough takes a complacent view of the situation at the local Inn he is pulled up sharp by a Merchant Navy man who tries to educate him about the reality, the posses and that he had been wounded. When all the boats are commandeered and the owners told to take their boats down the Thames to Sheerness his first reaction is to place his craft in the hands of his 17 year old assistant but then decides to take the craft himself much to the horror of his wife.
Having delivered the craft they are told to go to the harbour office where they will get a receipt for the boat and a train warrant to return home. On their way they encounter some of troops being brought back, many wounded and most looking forlorn and exhausted. This affects the journalist who says he wants to take his boat across the channel, and other including Attenborough also support his move. They are told it will not be allowed a being too dangerous but they persist and after the admiralty is consulted it is agreed.
While is happening and the volunteers are told to sleep over and then travel with the dawn, in France we follow the experience of John Mills a Sergeant, left in charge of a small platoon after the officer is killed as they are making their way to find their unit having been on one flank and finding that the order to retreat had been given.
John was a reluctant Sergeant beforehand and he admits to finding the situation beyond his experience but the other men insist that he leads them and tells them what to do. The first challenge comes when they encounter refugees being attacked by the German airforce and John insists that they continue their mission rather than stay and help the wounded and bury the dead from the attack. They then come across a small British gun battery and are given food before being sent away as the senior office has been ordered to hold off he advance German artillery for as long a possible. As Mills and the remaining men make their way from the site it is obliterated by the German airforce. The men comment that the decision to order the battery to remain was akin to murder.
The unit find a deserted farmhouse where they are able to stay the night but then observe units of the German army approaching and they have to fight their way out during which one of the unit is badly injured and Mills takes the decision to leave him to the enemy to assist as they continue to make their way. One has concussion from an explosion and as he is helped across the road they encounter a British vehicle heading for the coast. He gives the unit a lift as far as the outskirts of the town where they are told to disable the vehicle and make their way to beach. Here there are hundreds of thousands of defenceless men waiting on the beaches systematically bombed and fired on by the German airforce.
The unit make their way as ordered as a column into the sea or it may have the Mole to board a British destroyer but this is bombed and sunk and the men escape into the water. Some are picked up by the small boats and taken to larger ships while others including Mills and the remainder of his unit make their way ashore back to where they had been before.
The craft owned by the Journalist is bomber and sunk but he survives and is picket up by Attenborough, but the colleague assisting him is killed. The trio attempt to take more men from the column waiting in the water but the vessel develops a fault and is beached just as Mills and his unit arrive to see if they can get passage. While Attenborough remains with one of Mill’s unit truing to repair the boat, the Journalist and the 17 year old go ashore and experience life on the dunes. The following morning, Sunday, they are again bombed while participating in a service and the Journalist is mortally wounded telling the 17 year old to tell Attenborough to tell his widow what happened. The boat is repaired and Mills and the unit take off but they encounter further engine troubles and drift back towards Calais which is the hands of enemy. Fortunately the decision has been taken by the admiralty to risk more naval warship and they encounter one and return home.
The evacuation of British, French and Belgium troops took place between May 26th and June 3rd 1940. While only 7000 were rescued on the first day a total of 338226 soldiers -198229 British 139997 French were rescued using 43 British Destroyers and 850 small civilian boats of various sizes, the smallest 4.6 meters called the Tamzine and now in pride of place in the Imperial War Museum. There were also a large number of Merchant Navy vessels utilised, Thames barges and 17 Lifeboats of the RNLVR Two. The 850 small boats rescued 22698 men with only the loss of seven boats. No one was left on the beaches but two French Division left to defend the retreated were captured.
However in total 200 craft were sunk including six British Destroyers and the three French. The Royal Navy claimed 35 German planes and the damaging of 21 others. The RAF made just under 5000 missions over the area losing 100 aircraft in the fighting and 177 overall from all fighting against 959 loses during May of which 477 were fighters. Most of he battles took places away from the beaches which led to the troops believing they were left unprotected. The RAF claimed to have destroyed 262 German planes. 2472 heavy guns were abandoned in France with 65000 vehicles and 20000 motorcycles, 377000 tons of stores 68000 of ammunition and 147000 of fuel.
Two French division stayed behind to defend the departure and were captured with their efforts enabling 100000 more men to depart over the 4 days they held out. Controversially about half the French forces who escaped quickly return to France to become prisoners of war. It is estimated that of the 400000 allied forces involve din the battle of Dunkirk only about 34000 were killed or wounded or declared missing at the time, against German forces of 800000 of which it is said 150000 were killed or wounded.
In addition to the 1958 film, the most moving fiction story is that of the Snow Goose by Paul Gallico about a lonely artist who participates in the evacuation and loses his life played by Richard Harris also featured Jenny Agutter. More recently Atonement included a four and a half minute segment of the evacuation shot on the beach at Redcar while in 2004 the BBC produced a television documentary drama.
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