Dunkirk 2004

Dunkirk Evacuation and the defences and weapons of the German Atlantic wall.

A beautiful hot weekend to the Pas de Calais and we spend most of the time in Tunnels!

First stop on this, the largest but the shortest of the Tonsley Time Team tours to date, was the White Cliffs of Dover from where Operation Dynamo was orchestrated. Many tunnels and at variety of levels.

We travelled across to France, in our three car convoy, by Eurotunnel. Travelling at speed and with faulty decompression units.

We visited a museum which housed the history of the battle of Dunkirk. The museum is located in the fortified port wall tunnels where Admiral Abrial installed his headquarters during the evacuation.

We then proceeded to drive off around the French countryside in search of the Le Paradis Massacre site – but after a couple of wrong turns the search was called off in favour of a well earned beer. We stayed over outside St Omer with fine food and wine at the 18th Century Mill: Le Moulin de Mombreux. Fantastic spot – and with no tunnels that even Jimmy Paterson could find.

The following morning we visited La Coupole a gigantic underground bunker designed by the Nazis, to store, prepare and launch the V2 rockets the secret weapon that Hitler was counting on to destroy London and reverse the course of the war. Some serious tunnelling here…

We then visited the proposed launch site of the third vengeance weapon. The V3 was a giant rocket assisted howitzer. These were intended to contain 25 enormous gun barrels, 130 metres long, and with a calibre of 150mm. They would have been the biggest guns in the world. Between them, they could have fired a barrage of rocket-assisted projectiles capable of reaching London, one every 12 seconds. The biggest of all the tunnels and an extraordinarily eerie place where thousands of workers were buried alive in deeper tunnels whilst sheltering from an air raid.

Finally we visited one of the four gun emplacements (Turm 1) of the German gunsite Batterie Todt in Audinghen on the coast. The most famous of the Atlantic wall batteries is now a museum dedicated to the Atlantic wall. One of the top pieces is an enormous German railway gun – (for those that went on the Cassino trip – this is similar to Anzio Annie).

Early supper, before our journey back was served in a restaurant located on the Opale coast between Calais and Boulogne in the village of Audinghen, where chef Vincent Prouvot treated us to an end of tour supper consisting of such delicacies as Les Moules de Chez Nous and home made Crème brulee!