rs.

Custom had taught the few civilian and the many naval and military
inhabitants of Dunkirk to regard calm moonlight nights with very mixed
feelings. It was seldom indeed that the Boche neglected such an
opportunity for an air raid. Not merely one brief bombardment from the
skies, but a succession of them, lasting from dusk until early morning,
and repeated night after night while the weather remained favourable.

Owing to adequate preparations for such attacks the casualties were
generally few, but the loss of sleep was nearly always great, unless the
individual was so tired with the day's or week's minesweeping, spell in
the trenches, or sea patrol that the "popping" of guns and the thud of
bombs merely caused a semi-return to consciousness, with a mild,
indefinable feeling of vexation at being momentarily disturbed.

To the majority, however, it meant not only the loss of sorely needed
sleep, but also hard work under trying conditions. To realise fully what
it is to be deprived of rest when the brain is reeling and the movement
of every limb is an agony, it is necessary to have worked, marched and
fought for days and nights incessantly, and then the _moral_ as
distinct from the _material_ effect of successive air raids will be duly
appreciated by those fortunate ones who spent the years 1914 to 1918
remote from the menace.

Although Dunkirk on this particular August night seemed uncannily quiet,
the hour was not late. By Greenwich time it was but a few minutes past
nine, and two bells had only just sounded through the many and diverse
ships lying in tiers alongside the quays. So warm were the soft summer
zephyrs, which scarcely stirred the surface of the water, that on the
decks of many of these war-worn sweepers and patrols men lay stretched
out under the sky in the sound sleep of exhaustion, while on the quays
and at other points in the half-wrecked town steel-helmeted French
sentries kept watch.

Of the British naval forces based on this little French seaport few were
ashore, as, without special permission, both officers and men had to
remain on their ships after sunset, and those not playing cards or
reading in the cabins were lounging and smoking on deck. Blot out of the
view the ruined houses, the shell-holes in the streets, the guns, the
dug-outs and the sentries, and few scenes more unlike the popular
conception of a big war base, with the enemy only a few miles distant,
can be imagined.

But Dunkir